Microsoft Software Engineer interview experience

I still tried to solve it using linked list thinking, and while my approach matched the intended direction, it didn’t end up being efficient. On top of that, I hit a segmentation fault while working through the implementation.

The difficulty marked for me was difficult, and I wasn’t selected. The interview felt like it tested both my conceptual coverage and my ability to translate that into working, efficient code quickly. I walked away feeling that I understood the general idea but didn’t have enough control over the specific tooling and edge cases to land it cleanly.