Experience
62%
23%
15%
Helpful (2124)
Application
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA (US)) in April 2014.
Interview
Direct onsite because I interviewed in the past and did well that time. From the time I sent my resume to interview day: 2 weeks. From interview day to offer over the phone: 2 weeks.
The syllabus for the interviews is very clear and simple:
1) Dynamic Programming
2) Super recursion (permutation, combination,...2^n, m^n, n!...etc. type of program. (NP hard, NP programs)
3) Probability related programs
4) Graphs: BFS/DFS are usually enough
5) All basic data structures from Arrays/Lists to circular queues, BSTs, Hash tables, B-Trees, and Red-Black trees, and all basic algorithms like sorting, binary search, median,...
6) Problem solving ability at a level similar to TopCoder Division 1, 250 points. If you can consistently solve these, then you are almost sure to get in with 2-weeks brush up.
7) Review all old interview questions in Glassdoor to get a feel. If you can solve 95% of them at home (including coding them up quickly and testing them out in a debugger + editor setup), you are in good shape.
8) Practice coding--write often and write a lot. If you can think of a solution, you should be able to code it easily...without much thought.
9) Very good to have for design interview: distributed systems knowledge and practical experience.
10) Good understanding of basic discrete math, computer architecture, basic math.
11) Coursera courses and assignments give a lot of what you need to know.
12) Note that all the above except the first 2 are useful in "real life" programming too!
Interview 1:
Graph related question and super recursion
Interview 2:
Design discussion involving a distributed system with writes/reads going on at different sites in parallel.
Interview 3:
Array and Tree related questions
Interview 4:
Designing a simple class to do something. Not hard, but not easy either. You need to know basic data structures very well to consider different designs and trade-offs.
Interview 5:
Dynamic programming,
Computer architecture and low level perf. enhancement question which requires knowledge of Trees, binary search, etc.
At the end, I wasn't tired and rather enjoyed the discussions. I think the key was long term preparation and time spent doing topcoder for several years (on and off as I enjoy solving the problems).
Conclusion: "It's not the best who win the race; it's the best prepared who win it."
Interview Questions
Negotiation
You can and should negotiate politely. You are in a stronger position if you have another offer, but even otherwise, you should ask for more of every type of payment!
Helpful (1399)
Application
I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google in April 2015.
Interview
Phone interview:
The Interviewer was late for 20 mins... Ask nothing on my resume.
Tow questions:
1) A string consists of ‘0’, ‘1’ and '?'. The question mark can be either '0' or '1'. Find all possible combinations for a string.
2) Give you a text file, remove duplicated lines.
Follow up: If the file is very large, general hash map takes too much spaces, come up with a better solution.
Interview Questions
Interview
Very tight run and very easy going process. Didn’t feel pressured to give the right answer but to be myself during the entire interview. Questions were very helpful for myself to reflect on what I needed to work on to become a better interviewee.
Interview Questions
Helpful (1)
Interview
Interviewing at Google is interesting; it's very slow, but they act like they're on your side along the whole process. Your recruiter will follow up between interviews (which can be spread out over a long period of time while WFH) and team selection. Although they only offered me one team, I'm confident I could have asked for alternatives if I really didn't feel it.
Interview Questions
Interview
the whole interview process was very smooth, I get to interact with at least 5 different people throughout the process and learned a lot about the company from them. One of the interviewers came late but it didn't affect my experience too much. The questions are pretty standard data structures question. There is also a behavioural/cultural fit interview which I enjoyed a lot.
Interview Questions
Interview
The interviewers were friendly and supportive, and I really enjoyed getting to talk with them about my work experiences and learn more about the company. Searching for a job is filled with ambiguity, but Google also has a very structured and streamlined hiring process, which eased the process on my end.
Interview Questions
Application
I applied online. I interviewed at Google.
Interview
One phone interview with recruiter
One phone interview with software engineer with two coding questions in 45 mins
5 onsite interviews in one day because of pandemic they were virtual
Interview Questions
Application
I applied online. I interviewed at Google.
Interview
Took a long time to hear back in between interviews and communication was spotty. It was lengthy and very informative. Spoke with multiple people of whom the position reports to. Asked about experience.
Interview Questions
Interview
They had a very lengthy process but give you lots of information to help prepare. During quarantined times everything is done virtually which was not ideal but worked out okay.
Interview Questions
Interview
The full process took over a month. The generic interview was nothing surprising, a bunch of design and analysis questions. I had to come back for a non-traditional final round, however, that didn't go well. I didn't get a good sense of what I was being judged on and the one person who held my fate in their hands rubbed me the wrong way from the start.
Interview Questions
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