Microsoft Pre-Placement Offer Interview

At the end of my summer internship at Microsoft India Development Center (Microsoft IDC), I had the opportunity to go through interviews for getting a Pre-Placement Offer (commonly known as PPO).

IDC is Microsoft's largest development center outside US. The different groups here are involved in development of almost all of Microsoft's major products. In fact, there are some products that have originated here. I don't doubt that Microsoft IDC is the best place to do some good software development work in India. I went through 2 tech interviews:




Interview #1

1) Design classes and implement member functions for playing Tic-Tac-Toe on an N*N board. You win if you get N pieces in a row, column or diagonal.
Follow Up: Briefly explain how will you implement the AI

2) Reverse every word in a string.


Interview #2

1) You are given an M*N board. You are given blocks of different shapes as found in a Tetris game. You have to give an algorithm to check whether all the blocks mesh perfectly in the M*N board. Also, give some heuristics that to speed up the algorithm.

2) How would you test a blue marker?