microsoft | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
The interview began with a discussion about my resume. The final question involved a technical problem related to handling a large file with specific formatting.
Technical Questions
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Given a large file where each line has the format: block size, block compressed size, block checksum, block address. Each line represents a block and may contain duplicates. The requirements were to:
- Identify and retain unique blocks, defined as blocks with the same size and checksum but different addresses.
- Write the unique blocks to another file.
- Calculate the redundancy rate using the formula: (total block size - unique block size) / total block size.
Constraints included:
- Physical memory limit of 16GB.
- Expected redundancy rate of 10%.
- Expected total record duplication rate of 3%.
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Discuss how to design the API and data structure for this problem.
Tips & Insights
The interviewer was friendly and open to discussion, which made the experience comfortable. It is important to clearly understand the problem requirements and constraints before diving into the solution.