ByteDance vs Microsoft Interview Questions
ByteDance lists 64 LeetCode interview questions while Microsoft lists 192. They share 36 problems — 56% of ByteDance's bank and 19% of Microsoft's. Focus on the overlap first, then drill into 28 ByteDance-only and 156 Microsoft-only questions.
Overview
Preparation Strategy
Step 1 — Shared core: Solve the 36 overlapping problems first. These are the highest-yield questions for candidates interviewing at both ByteDance and Microsoft.
Step 2 — Company-specific depth: Add ByteDance-specific problems like Remove Duplicate Letters, Smallest Subsequence of Distinct Characters, First Day Where You Have Been in All the Rooms and Microsoft-specific problems from the exclusive lists below.
Step 3 — Difficulty tuning: Microsoft skews harder in our data. Budget extra time for Hard problems if you are targeting that company.
Difficulty Comparison
Top Shared Topics
36 Shared Questions
High-priority problems to practice for both ByteDance and Microsoft.
| Problem | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| LRU Cache | Medium |
| Number of Islands | Medium |
| Course Schedule | Medium |
| Combination Sum | Medium |
| Merge Intervals | Medium |
| House Robber | Medium |
| Regular Expression Matching | Hard |
| Two Sum | Easy |
| Word Ladder | Hard |
| Trapping Rain Water | Hard |
| Search in Rotated Sorted Array | Medium |
| Combination Sum II | Medium |
| Rotting Oranges | Medium |
| Add Two Numbers | Medium |
| Basic Calculator | Hard |
| Maximum Subarray | Medium |
| Multiply Strings | Medium |
| Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock | Easy |
| Restore IP Addresses | Medium |
| Single Element in a Sorted Array | Medium |
| Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters | Medium |
| Kth Largest Element in an Array | Medium |
| Climbing Stairs | Easy |
| Subarray Sum Equals K | Medium |
| Subsets | Medium |
| Longest Palindromic Substring | Medium |
| Merge k Sorted Lists | Hard |
| Reverse Linked List II | Medium |
| Find Peak Element | Medium |
| Valid Parentheses | Easy |
Showing top 30 of 36 shared problems.
Unique to ByteDance (28)
Problems in ByteDance's list that do not appear at Microsoft.
| Problem | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Remove Duplicate Letters | Medium |
| Smallest Subsequence of Distinct Characters | Medium |
| First Day Where You Have Been in All the Rooms | Medium |
| Basic Calculator II | Medium |
| Shortest Bridge | Medium |
| Maximal Square | Medium |
| Top K Frequent Elements | Medium |
| Design Memory Allocator | Medium |
| Longest Increasing Subsequence | Medium |
| Longest Common Subsequence | Medium |
| Maximum Width of Binary Tree | Medium |
| Decode String | Medium |
Unique to Microsoft (156)
Problems in Microsoft's list that do not appear at ByteDance.
| Problem | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Merge Sorted Array | Easy |
| Median of Two Sorted Arrays | Hard |
| 3Sum | Medium |
| Group Anagrams | Medium |
| Reverse Nodes in k-Group | Hard |
| Merge Two Sorted Lists | Easy |
| Roman to Integer | Easy |
| Spiral Matrix | Medium |
| Container With Most Water | Medium |
| Rotate Image | Medium |
| Palindrome Number | Easy |
| Sort Colors | Medium |
Frequently Asked Questions
How many LeetCode questions do ByteDance and Microsoft share?
ByteDance and Microsoft share 36 LeetCode interview questions. 28 problems appear only in ByteDance's list and 156 appear only in Microsoft's list.
What topics overlap most between ByteDance and Microsoft?
The most common shared topics between ByteDance and Microsoft are Array (16 shared questions), String (8 shared questions), Dynamic Programming (7 shared questions), Hash Table (5 shared questions), Linked List (4 shared questions). Mastering these areas prepares you for both companies.
Which company asks harder LeetCode questions: ByteDance or Microsoft?
ByteDance has 4 Easy, 51 Medium, and 9 Hard questions. Microsoft has 55 Easy, 109 Medium, and 28 Hard questions. Microsoft has a higher proportion of Hard problems in its interview set.
How should I prepare if interviewing at both ByteDance and Microsoft?
Start with the 36 shared problems since they cover what both companies ask most often. Then add 20 ByteDance-specific and 20 Microsoft-specific questions to round out your prep.