I interned at Microsoft's London office as part of my degree during May 29th 2017 to 15th September 2017 (4 months). I managed to learn and accomplish a lot during the short term that I was there. This was in part thanks to the incredibly friendly and super talented team and the vast amount of resources available. My main work was on the Windows Search Box for Windows 10.
Interview Process
Securing your first internship (particularly in the field of computer science) can be extremely tough. There are a number of factors: getting your resume noticed (biggest hurdle), organising dates and then the actual interview process. Microsoft's London office was extremely late to the game when it came to advertising internships, and this kind of worked in my favour since I was yet to secure an internship (this was late Februrary).
The first step was a skype interview, roughly 30-40 minutes with a split of 5-10 minutes general discussion with the interviewer and 25-30 minutes of coding. I managed to get through 3 programming questions that were relatively simple, but it was definitely stressful coding "live" in front of someone who codes daily.
The next round involves a series of 3-4 back-to-back onsite interviews. The first interviewer focused on statistics, machine learning and one programming question. I was not expecting machine learning to crop up, but I was able to recall a lot of detail having taken an ML course recently. The second interviewer focused more on programming, giving me a range of questions that I was able to plug away at. The third interviewer was more interested in system design and my general understanding of how search engines worked. Those three hours went by really quickly, and I've never thought about so many different areas of computer science in a short period of time. After each interview, I could feel the sweat in my palms. The onsite interviews were very rigorous in testing my ability, and gave me a fantastic impression of the people working there in terms of their skills, friendliness and enthusiasm. In comparison to the other companies that I have intereviewed at, Microsoft definitely gave a really positive vibe and outlook on what it would be like to work there.