Microsoft SDE-2 — one online round plus four rounds in a single day

## Process overview
Five rounds in total — one standalone online coding round, then four back-to-back rounds condensed into a single day.

## Online coding round
DSA-heavy, on a platform similar to HackerRank. Two problems between medium and hard. To clear it you need to **fully** solve at least one including all hidden test cases; partial credit across both isn't enough.

## The "big day"
The remaining four rounds all landed on one day (typically a Friday or Saturday slot). Each round is sequential — you must clear one before the next, with no skipping ahead and no second chance if you stumble early.

## Round-by-round

### Round 1 — DSA
Pure DSA, leaning hard toward the difficult end: a mix of **dynamic programming and graphs**. No warm-up at all.

### Round 2 — LLD / DSA
This round can go either way depending on the interviewer. Mine was an **LLD** discussion: clarify requirements first, walk through the design, then handle cross-questioning — especially on why I'd chosen C++ and how language-specific decisions played into the design.

### Round 3 — DSA
A genuinely unusual problem built around **trees and queues**. Not something I recognised from practice platforms, so it was less about recalling a pattern and more about reasoning through something unfamiliar under time pressure.

### Round 4 — System design + resume deep dive
With a partner-level interviewer, combining a deep dive into my work experience with a **system design** problem. Less a puzzle, more a conversation about how I think and what I've built.

## Verdict
Cleared all five rounds. **Selected.**