In this video, I share my honest Microsoft interview experience for an SDE3 role—step by step, exactly how it happened and what I learned. I’ve been working for 8.5 years (3 years at Adidas as a frontend developer), and I started my DSA prep in Oct 2025. I applied directly via the Microsoft career portal (Noida roles), got an OA mail on 31st Dec (I missed it first), and finally attempted it after the reminder. My OA questions were around monotonic stack and sliding window patterns—because I was already preparing, I felt confident. Then I got scheduled for a Friday drive where rounds happen on the same day. R1 was coding + problem solving (one question was like LeetCode 395: Longest Substring with at least k repeating characters) and a discussion-based DS question (CEO hierarchy → tree). R2 was LLD + coding, and I was asked to design Zomato; I drove the interview with entities, relationships, flows, data structures, and even pseudo-code. My biggest takeaway: Microsoft interviewers were friendly and want two-way communication, but my HR coordination experience (third-party) was honestly bad—no proper updates. Even after a good performance, I got a “not selected,” and that’s why I keep saying: keep trying, keep applying—if nothing else, it’s experience.