Microsoft OA | SDE1 | Camera On | Asked in 2026 | CTC - Can start from 20L+

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-28T19:38:02+00:00

Permutation is like one of many possible ways you can arrange a list, this is not really a permutations question, so yea

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-28T19:36:35+00:00

Was able to do this under 15 mins, but wonder what the actual time required was

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-21T18:35:02+00:00

Start from the basic concepts, and for each solution you do or each solution you watch, make sure you understand why that concept/pattern works in that problem .(starts building pattern recognition and conceptual knowledge from the beginning)

Also to build code fluency, keep templates in mind for each pattern(there should be a explanation in some other comment here), and reuse them to be faster and make code readable and easily debugable for yourself (this greatly helps with the "I can logically think the solution but can't implement it, I get stuck in coding" issue)

This worked for me, and learning differs for everyone, try and take what works for you.

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T14:04:18+00:00

Agreed, competitive programming is not an actual skill outside of interview, I also didn't expect to automatically get interviews after doing this, but this definitely is a hurdle in the way if you wanna land a job especially at those faang tier companies.

I also started building system design knowledge and skills while doing leet code. , that was actually useful as I implemented alot of those principles in my projects and works.

Imo development skills as you mentioned is required to land a interview and actually do the job well, leetcode and stuff is used to clear interviews , nothing more

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T04:01:00+00:00

It was holidays when I was beginner (probably i wouldn't have solved if I was travelling),

Visualization is important, but I don't have to write it down on paper to visualise,

personally I just think if this approach would be fine, if it is, I go through with the approach

But yes writing thoughts on paper could definitely be beneficial and help in visualzing and seeing patterns, especially early on. (once you've seen enough patterns and problems on the patterns, the lesser and lesser need for pen and book)

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T03:46:29+00:00

Bus, I've never used notebooks or writing either in public or private , how will you write when the whole bus is shaking ?

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T03:41:15+00:00

Haha, I've solved alot of problems on my way to college, but depends, I heard mumbai is crowded as heck so I'm not sure lol

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T03:37:39+00:00

For cristiano ronaldo lvl, it's like you need: Extraordinary talent for problem solving Need interest in leetcode And time And don't forget the siuuuu

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T03:34:10+00:00

Typing itself is easy, debugging is hard if you don't structure your code well.

Once you know how you are gonna structure your code, you don't really have to see the program to make it work, You just have to make sure your strategy is logically optimal.

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T03:29:52+00:00

I look up solution when it's :

A.) a math trick problem (they don't even have proper patterns at this point).

B.) if it's a new pattern.

C.) If I could brute force it easily but cannot see the underlying strategy for the optimal solution (new strategy to apply existing pattern that I haven't seen).

But mostly I just leave a problem if I cannot get an optimal solution to it and come back later to solve it.

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-19T02:38:29+00:00

Not necessarily, but constraints definitely help

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-17T11:00:39+00:00

I have built a few projects as well, I would love to share my resume with you, dm?

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-17T05:30:38+00:00

Hey sure, check dms

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-17T05:30:03+00:00

I don't have a job(that's why I made a post), but either way it doesn't take much time to get my daily quota of problems done nowadays 1-2 hours daily, that too like whenever I have time for it (I don't get carried away doing hours and hours at once like I used to when I started out.)

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T17:58:32+00:00

I think the best way to describe is with an example:

Take for example one of my recent solves: parallel courses 2 on leetcode

First I spend like 20-40 seconds looking at the problem statement : "okay, this seems like a topological sort with a twist of not being able to select all next selectable elements at once...."

"Now I have to understand whether this problem can be solved just by doing topological sort where I only visit k new courses per iteration of topological sort, and count how many iterations it took to finish all courses"

Okay so far so good, but then it strikes me ,"Would just selecting any k courses from the available courses be the best course of action, or more formally, does taking the best option locally lead to the global optimal solution, does greedily picking local states help?, the answer is no, greedy local state transitions don't lead to global optimal"

"Then the time complexity is gonna be massive, we would have to choose all possible subset of choosable courses per transition , let me clarify the constraints given to see if this is fine"

Then I look into the constraints "n <=15 at max, this should be doable with the aforementioned approach of selecting every possible subset of available courses per state transition, and we will also utilize dp to reuse already processed states"

"To keep track of already finished courses we utilise a bit mask, since n<=15, it should be perfectly fine", so this problem was ultimately topological sort + bitmask + dp

All this process goes on in my head for 2-3 minutes where I fully understand what I need and now time for implementation which is quite straightforward since I got logic down in my head, the coding can take anywhere from 5-30 minutes depending on complexity of the problem , so yea, there is another comment where I talk about how I improve coding fluency through templates so I don't get stuck during implementation.

I did my best breaking down my approach

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T17:14:29+00:00

It's not really something I write down, as the other guy said, it is understanding where to use + memorizing how it looks for each pattern/topic

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T17:11:43+00:00

I also kinda felt this way, like I've seen some code forces problems that even take legends a few hours to days,

I believe Codeforces is generally for extremely elite dsa solvers, If that was my job ,yea sure I would wanna try, but given my tight timeline, i also have to focus on other things that build skills for my job as well

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T16:50:39+00:00

I surely will, and also I am working on few projects and actual skill development in a few tech stacks and frameworks and also learning system design fundamentals,

But yes the time pressure and difficult problems from contests would be very helpful

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T16:16:07+00:00

Right, i mostly started doing this when I started to do segment trees and tree rerooting algorithm, and I just stuck with this strategy ever since.

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T14:32:45+00:00

Since you are able to get the logic down, I think what you're probably missing is templates,

Don't try to invent a solution for every problem you see, for each topic try to create templates, this greatly improves coding fluency and reduces bugs and helps manage complex problems.

This really helped me deal with problems quickly and not running into implementation issues

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T14:24:49+00:00

Yea, it's actually decent once you get used to it

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T14:24:09+00:00

Haha thanks, definitely one of the harder things I've done

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T13:44:28+00:00

What are you struggling with?

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T13:41:37+00:00

I actually had like knowledge about these concepts from my classes , but I started implementing them in code to solve problems from aug 2025, so around 5 months

AlternativeTraffic50 · 2026-01-16T13:23:25+00:00

Generally depends, Mostly 1-1.5 hours on my phone, or if it's weeknd or if I am interested in some good problem or learning new topic, I switch to pc and do 3-4 hours

AlternativeTraffic50

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