I am posting and rating this interview experience as negative only because of one person(Sr SDE) that was involved in the process, I will get back to her behavior later. First thing first,Hiring manager and product manager were really nice persons, they were very professional. My first interview was with product manager, which went for 45 min and I was asked some ethical, behavioral and product related questions. My 2nd interview was a technical loop with Sr SDE, about which I will discuss later in a separate paragraph. My 3rd interview was with Hiring manager, which lasted beyond time limit of 60 min, I was asked some tough questions but we both were enjoying conversation and he seemed impressed with my talk and experience. After the interview I was told by hiring manager that he will take hiring decision by eod tom only as he will meet everyone today evening or tom morning. After the interview I had the gut feeling that I nailed it, as I aced all 3 interviews. Though I can't comment on how my answers to behavioral and ethical questions were taken, but for some questions,I was told on the spot by product manager that what I answered was a correct answer and this was to test core values. My only concern was technical interview even though I nailed every question asked, because of behavior and conduct of interviewer, now lets jump to what happened in technical round.
I was introduced to Sr SDE( who was a tester for most of her career at MS, I think she was made SDE because of last year's changes in MS) by Product Manager. It was supposed to be a lunch interview for about 90 min, with lunch from 12:00 to 12:30 and from 12:30 to 1:30 continue interview in conference room. I greeted this lady but I was not given any response. She ignored the schedule and directly took me to conference room for interview. She didn't had copy of my Resume, I had 4/5 copies of my resume with me, so I shared one with her. She asked me a TSQL question on white board, which I resolved in like 5 sec, she then got surprised and tried to made it complicated, I resolved that too quickly, then she asked me what if each of these intervals are dynamic in nature, I resolved that too, she told me it will not work, I told her lets test to check and it worked. She accepted that it will work. Then she asked me ranking function related TSQL question, which again I resolved in 10 sec, she then asked me how you will test it. I told her about 7/8 test cases and how you can write all these in VS DB unit testing project. My resume has lot of other stuff like Big data, Machine learning, Python, Java and data science. It was very clear that she didn't had any experience with any of these as she completely ignored asking any question related to these. She then asked me how you will predict sales amount for our product, which is very open ended question, I talked about it for like 10 min(discussed different feature selection, model selection and validation tech and challenges around curse of dimensionality and how to take care of it) and it became clear that she didn't understood what I am talking and also she didn't asked me a single follow up question. Only question she asked me, how much out of these I have implemented. With her facial expression and postures I became sure that she didn't came prepared for interview and she also don't know much about ML/data science/Datawarehouse/Big Data/MPP and analytical technologies, for which she was supposed to interview me. She then asked me do you know .NET(not listed on my resume). I said no I don't , but then she replied, oh you know Java( I said yes as it was on my resume, expecting some follow up algorithm question or oop question), but she didn't asked me any question related to algorithm or OOP. She then ended interview asking if I have any questions. After the interview she took me to lunch area in Microsoft and though it was a lunch interview sponsored by MS, I PAID FROM MY POCKET FOR THE LUNCH as she pointed me to pay! After that she just wanted to leave me unattended(Though my MS issued ID said, I should be escorted all times for security reasons), I asked her can I sit in the conference room till start of my next interview, she replied yes and then she asked me to walk myself to hiring manager room after 15 min and she left me unescorted for next 15 min. I greeted her before she left, she didn't replied back and just left. Only idea I got at the end of this interview with her was that she didn't liked me at all from the very go. Later it took me 5 min to search for hiring manager room.
Though I am none to comment on the competencies and professional behavior of any individual. But this is the last thing I was expecting from a Microsoft Senior Software Developer. I would definitely like Microsoft HR to look into this issue.