Microsoft Interview - mostly behavioral

Marvell
elkdead

Go to company page Marvell

elkdead
Jul 6, 2019 26 Comments

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

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TOP 26 Comments
  • Bloomberg / IT
    MagikMike

    Go to company page Bloomberg IT

    MagikMike
    What resources would be helpful to prepare for this kind of interview?
    Jul 6, 2019 4
  • 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.
    Jul 6, 2019 3
    • 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?
      Jul 6, 2019
    • Marvell
      elkdead

      Go to company page Marvell

      elkdead
      OP
      They sounded like it was sort of architect position and a lot of questions were around cross team collaboration. I say ‘sounded like’ because there were questions on the broad level design of a product, its impact, approach towards desiginig a product, legacy software reuse and deviations, adopting technologies to name a few
      Jul 6, 2019
  • What role you interview ?
    Jul 6, 2019 3
  • New / IT
    kbnW66

    New IT

    kbnW66
    I interviewed for Microsoft senior software engineer having 7 yoe and they had one quick behaviour interview lasting 20min.
    Jul 6, 2019 0
  • Apple
    purifier

    Go to company page Apple

    purifier
    That’s very strange for principal dev IC. You sure the position wasn’t for manager?
    Jul 6, 2019 3