Google Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – I had previously interviewed with Google during my final year as a Computer Science Engineering undergraduate student. I didn't get an offer, but the recruiter said that it was a close call and that she would follow up with me after two years once I had more experience. I joined Microsoft right out of college instead.

Exactly two years later (literally same day/month), a new recruiter followed up and I began the interview process again. A week later, I had a phone screen. After 4 days, the recruiter informed me that I passed and could move on to the on-campus interviews. I was assigned a new recruiter. Two weeks later, I flew out and had a total of 5 interviews at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Two weeks later, the recruiter informed me that I passed the hiring committee. One week after that, the recruiter informed me that I had passed the final executive review and I was provided offer details. In general, the recruiter was polite and knowledgeable, though late to call me on a few occasions when we had chats scheduled. Also, the recruiter began discussing relocation and job perks, as if I had the job, before an offer had been extended (after approval by the hiring committee, but before executive review). It sounds as though a fair number of candidates are rejected at this stage, and as such I feel this was somewhat inappropriate.

I found the on-campus interviews to be very academic-slanted. Though I had only been working in industry for one year, I expected more focus on what I had learned and accomplished there, rather than my knowledge of algorithms and data structures (most of which I hadn't touched since graduating from college). I don't know whether I will use these algorithms much in my day-to-day work, but I feel as though I am qualified for the job because of how I approach real-world software engineering problems, not my knowledge of algorithms and data structures.

My first on-campus interviewer was about 15 minutes late, but he had a sufficiently geeky excuse and I wasn't annoyed. Although some may find this lack of "professionalism" frustrating, I didn't mind, and he turned out to be my favorite interviewer.

A couple of the interviewers asked me to implement (in full or in part) algorithms to solve board games/strategy games. Think of the category of games that use a board with a grid of values, where solving the game consists of putting the right values onto the grid, or extracting knowledge from the existing grid arrangement -- this is what I'm talking about. Per my NDA I won't get into specifics. These questions were very in-depth and it took the majority of the time for me to come up with solution (or a sufficiently-developed line of thinking that would lead to a solution). In each case, my solution was incomplete or had minor errors/inefficiencies that the interviewers called me out for. I then used the interviewers' hints to refine the solution.

Another interviewer proposed a hypothetical product (a web application, with some sort of user interface, some amount of business logic, and a database backend, with a set of interesting scalability features) and asked me to talk through the process of testing it. This was an open-ended question which I enjoyed very much -- I felt like I was able to demonstrate my breadth of testing knowledge by touching on a number of potential test angles, and I went into detail on the ones that the interviewer found interesting.

Another interviewer asked me to design and implement a data structure that had constant-time performance for two specific operations. The constraints weren't satisfiable by any single simple data structure -- the solution involved a hybrid of two different ones. I believe this type of question is common at Google -- I had a very similar question (though with different data structures) two years earlier. I talked through the problem with the interviewer and, with a few hints, arrived at the correct solution and implemented it.

I didn't deliver perfect answers to any of the problems. I think I received an offer because I was able to talk through what I was thinking and doing as I was doing it. This allowed the interviewers to follow along, ask clarifying questions, and get me back on the right track when I made a mistake. I was able to demonstrate that I'm a competent programmer and pleasant to work with, even though I'm not an algorithm or data structure rockstar. I believe that better programmers than me get rejected because the interviewers are only able to evaluate their raw technical competency, rather than their people skills or problem solving process. If you are able to converse freely with them, as if you were tackling the problem with coworkers, they will feel much more comfortable overlooking minor technical flaws in your answer.

Best of luck, and hopefully I'll see you inside! :)

Negotiation Details – I didn't negotiate. With only one year of industry experience, the offer provided was slightly higher than a new college graduate offer, which is acceptable since I'll be learning an entirely new technology stack after working at Microsoft for a year, and therefore I consider myself to be a "new college graduate"-caliber hire.

Interview Details – contacted me 2 days after filling out the online application

Interview Details – Was contacted by HR from LinkedIn. Then I was connected later to interivew over the phone with a technical recruiter. The recruiter called on time and I was asked to type in code via Google docs. I was asked to write code to invert a Map. I had listed JAVA as my proficiency and this question tested it. It wasn't very hard but felt I needed more time...

Interview Details – I applied through a friend and was contacted by HR almost immediately. They scheduled me for on-site interviews at the Mountain View office without a technical phone screen.

I arrived early at Google's West Campus and found parking easily. It took a while to find a non-employee entrance to the building I was supposed to go to but I found it and signed in on a computer. The HR person then met me and took me to a conference room where I had two technical interviews, took a lunch break with an engineer who was not interviewing me, and had three additional technical interviews.

I can't discuss the specific questions but they were rather easy except one which was moderate. Four involved programming on the whiteboard and the last one covered system design. All of the interviewers were courteous and polite but two of the interviewers and the guy I had lunch with were especially warm and friendly.

The questions already posted on Glassdoor under Google are a bit harder than the questions I was asked but they are good preparation. I got one question which was listed here so I admitted that I knew it and gave the answer right away. I didn't get a follow-up question so that one was probably a free pass.

Most people asked questions in three phases. The first part is trivial. The second part is moderate and the third part is moderate or hard depending on your familiarity with the subject area (dynamic programming, recursion, hashtables, etc.)

I don't know whether I'll get an offer or not yet but since that's not an option on this form, I'll say that I did and accepted it.

Interview Details – Interned at Google the summer before. Loved the place. The team seemed to like me. Am graduating. Well, let's do interviews!

I contacted my intern recruiter asking for a full-time job opportunity, and s/he quickly referred me to the recruiter responsible for that. Since I was a former intern my phone screen was waived (had two 45-minute screens when applying for internship), and my former intern host was asked to provide a feedback. I was asked to do a job talk (as a PhD) followed by 4 rounds of interviews, 2 research and 2 engineering.

The job talk was 45-minutes followed by 15 minute questions. I was basically talking about what I did during the graduate school years, so it was quite pleasant and I was excited to see people interested in my work. After that it was a casual lunch with my intern host, so I devoted every minute enjoying the food.

The two research interviews were conducted by people familiar with the field, and had challenging questions on the overall understanding. I found it very exciting as both of us would get involved into discussion about the state-of-the-art. A little coding and math details were asked, but mainly about research ideas.

The two coding interviews were very standard - I did not get those very difficult questions like "implement sudoku in 30 mins" that someone allegedly encountered. The interviewer was constantly copying my whiteboard writings down, which created a little down time. I asked the interviewer and s/he said it was recently required and no worries. I guess if this could be disclosed by the recruiter earlier it would be better.

After the interviews the recruiter followed up promptly, with accurate estimates of when I would get updates. The hiring committee approved the application in a week, followed by the final offer a few days later.

Overall it is a nice experience and Google apparently provides great opportunities.

Negotiation Details – Gave the recruiter other offers to beat, the recruiter returned with reasonable numbers. Very simple and frank negotiations.

Interview Details – 2 rounds of phone interviews and then onsite

Interview Details – Applied on google website, 1 week later got an email from HR, and scheduled a phone interview in the following week.
The interviewer picked a place at their cafe, and a lot of noise out there. He apologized but all the loud noise around him stopped me several times and I don't feel he really care. Asked him to mute. Of course, it was not good.

Interview Details – Although the recruiter contacted me quickly after my referrer posted my interview, she was unprofessional in that she failed to make phone calls as scheduled. This resulted in long waiting times and uncertainty about the situation.

There was a phone screen and 4.5 hour long in-person interview.

Interview Details – Phone screen was 100% technical, with coding via Google Docs, and was told I did *VERY* well.

4 one-on-one onsite interviews - coding on a white board, systems design. I thought I did very well.

Was asked to travel back for a final onsite, but declined due to existing offers on the table... and if you can't look at my resume, see my successes and figure me out after 5 interviews, don't expect me to jump through hoops for you... other companies are willing to make quicker, informed decisions.