So I interviewed at Microsoft bellevue campus a few days back. What surprised me was that the interviews were heavily (90%) towards behavioral. The decision is not out yet but I was wondering it that is a norm at microsoft? I have 13yoe with a few direct reports but I’m not a manager in my current role. One of the interviewer told me i’m being interviewed for principal sde. I was also asked whether i’d like to be IC or take manager route to which I said i’m looking to pivot to managerial role in coming years. What confuses me is the heavy behavioral part. Is it possible they already had finalized another candidate so didn’t go too deep into technical stuff?? EDIT: i was a manager in my previous company....in case it had anything to do with that
What role you interview ?
I thought it was for swe, but i think it was for principal because one interviewer told me so
Principal is a level not a role
Did any of the interviews involve talking about the role? Unlike some companies, Microsoft still mostly interviews for specific positions, especially at that level. In some cases a Principal Engineer role is what we call an Architect, which is often a broad scope leadership (but not people management) role with less emphasis on writing code (though typically these are the best coders on the team, which makes it somewhat of a shame we encourage them into non or less-coding focused roles). They also are probably taking your experience into account, it’s hard to gauge much in a few one hour interviews about coding ability in any situation, and extra hard to get much value out of that from someone with 13 years of experience. That said, we do typically have at least a couple coding interviews even for managers. My guess is it’s a factor of the team you interviewed with and either the specific role or the interviewers they had available.
Yes one intverviewer told me its for principal position.
That’s just the level. Did they talk about it as a Tech Lead or Architect sort of position? Anything unique or special about what they were looking for? Any particular experience they were hiring for? Or was it just a generic Principal SWE position with no other details?
That’s very strange for principal dev IC. You sure the position wasn’t for manager?
Receuiter reached out for swe role. Phone intvw heavy technical including LC medium. One onsite round 80% technical but mostly on subject matter
For principal IC role you should have a couple on problem solving and a couple on system design. At least this is when I was there.
What resources would be helpful to prepare for this kind of interview?
Amazon LP principles. And a lot of online resources. But have examples ready for every LP
Thanks!
Which group is this? This kind of thing is typical in CSE Org.
I interviewed for Microsoft senior software engineer having 7 yoe and they had one quick behaviour interview lasting 20min.
Their justification is they are interviewing you for a good fit for the company not just the position. You will get lots of behavioral questions especially if the position has lots of qualified applicants.
Ok thanks. Its just that i wasnt expecting every interview to be heavily behavioral
I think it's great that MSFT is asking behavioral questions as part of their interviews. Not all deeply technical architects have the emotional quotient to handle working with people of all walks of life in addition to dealing with situations such as being told that they might be wrong.
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What type of behavioral questions were they? Managerial or ...?
Yes most of them were managerial....some towards product architecture but mostly related to avoiding and dealing with technical issues
If you were to go back what resources would you use to prepare for these behavioral type questions?