Most Pathetic Microsoft Interview Experience after 8 rounds - L61

I have been interviewing with Microsoft since late March 2024, possibly for an SE2 position. There is no HR involved. Engineers/Managers from Washington and Hyderabad call me or email me and schedule my interviews. Round 1 (Mar last week): Technical Round 2 (Apr first week): Technical Round 3 (Apr 2nd week): Technical Round 4 (Apr last week): HM Surpisingly, there is a round 5. Round 5 (May second week): Technical/HM My 5th interviewer said that there is going to be a 6th round of interview as well, by the manager of 5th interviewer. He also said, "Hoping that we will work together soon." As of the date of writing this post, my 5th interview was almost 3 weeks ago. I asked my 5th interviewer for an update and I got a response saying: "Sorry for the delayed response. I was so busy with many work items. At the moment we are on hold and we will reach out to you once we have the confirmation." After my 3rd round of interview, there was a gap of 2 weeks as well, and upon aksing my 3rd round of interviewer about an update of my candidature, he told me something similar. It did upset me but I did have a 4th round as well. Given Microsoft is hiring a lot right now, I feel confused why my candidature is on hold. I feel very frustrated and desperate for the offer. Because I am new to this, I would appreciate if anyone here, can help me with their experience ,what could be going on? PS: All my interviewes were extreamly well.

Trying to see companies that people here have had the dream to join, but didn’t ultimately work out. Have you now grown over it?

I had an interview today with a service-based company. The first round was conducted by someone who used to be a content writer but is now a community lead with no design background. During the interview: Interviewer: Asked me to showcase my proudest work. Me: Presented a detailed walkthrough of a feature, explaining every design decision and inviting questions throughout. Interviewer: Expressed high praise for my work and asked about my design system. Me: Explained my design system approach, including the collaboration and cross-team communication it required. Interviewer: Continued to be impressed. Me: Thanked them. Interviewer: Inquired about my salary expectations. Me: Stated my expectation. *Now things gets mad* Interviewer: Criticized my design system as outdated and implied my work could be done by a beginner watching YouTube. Asked me to prove my worth was really upto the salary expectations. Me: Pointed out that I had already justified my value through my work during the past 50 minutes. It's disheartening that the interviewer discredited my soft skills and the experience I gained from two years of designing. They seemed to dismiss my achievements due to a lack of "full-time experience." It would have been more appropriate if they had asked follow-up questions about my portfolio. This experience felt like a waste of time, as the interviewer appeared immature and conducted the interview poorly, despite having over 8 years of experience. It's a disappointing and unprofessional approach to an interview.

Was interviewing for a B2B SaaS which would've been a great company to join. Started speaking to them in December. Went through 5 rounds of interview, the last one with the founder. Ended up rejecting me because of my past work experience not being the best fit for what they want. This was such an incredibly frustrating experience. They checked my skill set with an assignment and product solutionising round, and yet relied on past experience to filter me out after being in conversation for months. Only thing for me to learn here is to never let your guard down, always be wary that you can be rejected at any point. Your skills, even if tested, matter only to the extent that you can combine it with telling them what they want to hear. That said, anyone looking for a product manager? :) Have ~2 years of experience as a PM (3+ overall).

Recently had a chance to interview at a pretty mature startup(moengage), a recruiter called me up, we set up a time and date for a machine coding round. I was pretty excited to be honest and looking forward to the interview. Fast forward to the day of reckoning , I join the interview with my intellij set up, my pen and paper to draw the ERD ready and my mind full of design patterns, only to be confronted with two DS & Algo questions(i legit gave up the moment i heard ds), the questions were interesting and the interviewer chill but it blindsided me by a whole lot and I couldn’t solve anything. It’s pretty weird that startups with so many resources at their disposal could be so out of sync internally.

I'm saying this because Microsoft has posted more than 240 software engineering jobs in India in just the last month, bringing the total to 547 software engineering jobs in India alone. However, despite this large number of job postings, I haven't seen a single new employee announcement on LinkedIn for any of these positions. Does nobody want to join Microsoft, or what?

Which company did you have the worst interview experience with?

I cleared all 6 rounds of a PM interview with an Edtech startup. The HR asked for current offer letter, 2 references (current and previous manager), and a couple of other docs. Then ghosted me for 2 weeks. When I followed up, the HR said they are in-process of interviewing other candidates Is it normal to do this now a days? I understand the company wants to interview more people. But then why ask for any details from me till you are sure that you are going to give an offer

desperately looking for a change so I gave interview in Deloitte, cleared the technical round but in techno-managerial round they asked even more indepth technical questions and even took a screenshot of the code I wrote. Overall it felt like they were out to reject me cause the questions they asked were pretty different from what I mentioned in my resume. Does anyone else have a similar experience?