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111 Interviews*

* Posted anonymously by interview candidates (updated Nov 20, 2009)

Difficulty Rating [?]
“Difficult”
3.7
Interview Experience [?]
Positive 43%
Neutral 32%
Negative 25%

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41 - 50 of 111 Google Interviews Sort by  

Software Developer at Googlestudent candidate

Posted Aug 23, 2009

4.0
Difficult Interview
Overall Neutral Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2009 (took 4+ weeks)

The entire interview process consisted of a phone interview and a day of interviews at their boston office.
The phone interview went pretty well with one main programming question. He asked me to explain how I would solve the problem and then asked me to code the answer in a google doc.
The on site interviews were pretty similar. Most consisted of on main question that I had to solve and then follow up questions on how to make it better.
In terms of the people, some were very nice and encouraging, but I also had a couple interviewers who acted like they didn't want to be there. Overall, google left me with a pretty neutral impression. Part of it might have been the ordinary boston office, but It felt like pretty much any other company.

Interview Questions

How would you reverse the image on an n by n matrix where each pixel is represented by a bit?

Other Details

I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

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Associate Product Manager at Google

Posted Aug 14, 20092 of 2 people found this helpful

3.0
Average Interview
Overall Negative Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Apr 2008 in Santa Clara, CA (took a day)

I was emailed after submitting my resume through their online process (canned email). Two weeks later I received an email saying they would like to have a phone interview. I replied yes and they scheduled something for the next day (no alternative times offered). I had two phone interviews with Associate Product Managers. The first consisted of questions to show how much I loved Google (how much do you use our products and how many products can you name). The second interview had more questions about what new product I would want to champion for development at Google.

1 week letter I received a thank you for applying email. A day after that an email asking me to provide feedback on their interview process.

My opinion of their interview process: I would say that it felt like they were checking the box by replying to my resume and had no real job available (aka they wasted my time). This was reaffirmed by my interviewers attitudes which sounded like they had no time. One of them was also fairly rude and full of himself which I was told after the fact is not uncommon in the company. Finally, if you aren't drinking the "Google is the best place in the world ever to work" Kool Aid I wouldnt bother applying.

Interview Questions

If you were at Google what new product would you like to have developed and why?

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Software Engineer at Google

Posted Aug 14, 20091 of 1 people found this helpful

4.0
Difficult Interview
Overall Negative Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2009 in Irvine, CA (took 2+ weeks)

Recruiter called and asked some basic questions e.g,
1) What is the time to search in a balanced binary tree.
Then 1st phone. I was asked to equals and hashCode for a class.
In the 2nd phone interview I was asked to search for an ineger in an array which is circularly sorted.

Interview Questions

Given an array of integers which is circularly sorted, how do you find a given integer.

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Software Engineer at Google

Posted Aug 9, 20092 of 2 people found this helpful

3.0
Average Interview
Overall Positive Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2009 in Mountain View, CA (took a day)

I initially submited my resume online for the position of Software Engineer at Google.
About 2 months after, I received a call from HR asking me if I was still looking for a job, and if I was interested in a position at Google. I said yes and listed a number of positions I was interested in: Research Scientist, Software Engineer and Used Design Scientist. Two days after the call I received an email stating that my resume will fit the position of Software Engineer and was scheduled a technical phone interview 3 days later.
The interviewer was nice and polite. I gave a first answer to the puzzle but he wasn't really satisfy with the answer. I got stuck for 20min and didn't get much help from the interviewer.
The interview last 45min. I was given 10 minutes at the end to ask him question about his job, the life at Google, etc... Then he hang up the phone in a manner that let me knew I wouldn't go through the next step...

Two days after the interview I received and email from the HR stated that I was rejected.

Interview Questions

The question was the following. I'm rephrasing the question to make it clear for everyone to understand:

- You are going on a one-way flight trip that includes billions of layovers.
- You have 1 ticket for each part of your trip (i.e: if your trip is from city A to city C with a layover in city B, then you will have 1 flight ticket from city A to city B, and 1 flight ticket from city B to city C.
- Each layover is unique. You are not stopping twice in the same city.
- You forgot the original departure city.
- You forgot the final destination city.
- All the tickets you have are randomly sorted.

Question are:
- Design an algorithm to reconstruct your trip with minimum complexity.
- How would you improve your algorithm.

Example:
- randomly sorted:
New York->London
San Francisco-> Hong Kong
Paris->New York
London->San Francisco

- sorted:
Paris->New York
New York->London
London->San Francisco
San Francisco-> Hong Kong

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Software Engineer at Google

Posted Aug 12, 20091 of 1 people found this helpful

5.0
Very Difficult Interview
Overall Positive Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2007 in New York, NY (took 2 weeks)

A Google recruiter contacted me (I never applied for any positions in Google). Within a week I had my phone interview which went very well. They decided to skip the second phone interview (at least that's what I was told) and invited me to the NY office for in person interview. In person interview lasted the whole day with me talking to 6 people and having a lunch with a team. I found the office to be super cool and fun atmosphere and people were very nice. They questions asked were fairly reasonable. What threw me off was recruiter stressing several times that Google's approach to interviews is very academic. I was more technical then academic (I thought) and spend the next week reviewing algorithms and data structures and such. I was told at the end that I have very strong professional qualifications, but my knowledge is more academic and were looking for somebody with more hands on experience (after me throwing theory at them left and right). At the end I think I overdid it. I think you need to find a good balance if you want to get hired.

Interview Questions

Most phones now have full keyboards. Before there there three letters mapped to a number button. Describe how you would go about implementing spelling and word suggestions as people type.
Implement on a board a shortest path algorithm when traveling from point A to point B on a board. Once you produce a solution, they throw modifications to an initial problem like what if you know that points x, y, z cannot be used in a path.

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

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Software Engineer at Google

Posted Aug 15, 2009

3.0
Average Interview
Overall Negative Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2007 in Los Angeles, CA (took a day)

Recruiter contacted me and then sent me 3 exam questions to be completed in 2 hours.After 2 days she scheduled telephonic interview. Interview lasted 1 hour and 15 mins. Questions ranged from data structure design, wrting unit tests and algorithms complexity. I was asked question to find abotu tree traversal. Random quesions like why do we use desig patterns were asked.

Interview Questions

Write a program to find depth of binary search tree without using recursion

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Engineering at Google

Posted Aug 7, 20091 of 1 people found this helpful

4.0
Difficult Interview
Overall Neutral Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2009 in Mountain View, CA (took 4 months)

It takes FOREVER from when you apply to get an interview (in the ballpark of 4 months, easily). You'll get contacted by various HR people, who don't really coordinate with each other.

The interviews themselves were fairly difficult technical questions; I'd recommend studying extensively and being systematic in your approach.

Interview Questions

Find the maximum rectangle (in terms of area) under a histogram in linear time.

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a Presentation and a Skills Test.

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Software Engineer at Google

Posted Jul 31, 20091 of 2 people found this helpful

5.0
Very Difficult Interview
Overall Negative Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jun 2009 in Mountain View, CA (took 5 weeks)

The interviews were with 4 different Software Engineers. From what I gathered online and from the feedback I got from friends currently Software Engineers at Google, I though I had decent chances: strong knowledge of at least one current language, some knowledge about algorithms and data-structures as well as Big O notation. I was surprised to be asked non software questions like various network speed efficiency of various wireless technologies, solve math brainteaser in a language I specifically said I had not used in years, and being told that the code had to compile and run as is, regardless of potential typos.

It took several weeks for Google to come back to me but I got a quick offer from a competitor with a more realistic interview process. I'm glad I did not hold my breath, I think I should have left after the second person, it was pretty obvious the process was a plain waste of time.

Interview Questions

Which wireless channel should you choose for you home wifi, considering there is no interference on any of them.

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.

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Developer at Google

Posted Aug 3, 20090 of 1 people found this helpful

4.0
Difficult Interview
Overall Positive Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2009 (took 2 days)

A few months ago I received an e-mail from a recruiter at Google asking for an opportunity to talk to me about available development positions. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. I’m fairly happy in my current job, but–it’s GOOGLE. You don’t say no to an interview opportunity at Google.
he phone interview went very quickly. He was very nice and asked about my specific talents, things I enjoy doing, and projects I’d worked on–especially those I listed on my resume. He asked about the ray tracer I wrote in college, since he had an interest in that. He also asked some general questions about the stuff I do for work.

Interview Questions

Do you have time to do a coding exercise?

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Adsense at Google

Posted Jul 29, 2009

4.0
Difficult Interview
Overall Positive Experience Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2009 (took 3 days)

Submitted a resume and they called a few weeks later. The first interview was just basic HR questions and some simple CS stuff. Next interview was mainly focused on algorithms. No code, just discussing algorithm design and basic run time. Third phone interview was a coding session over the phone using Google Docs.

They were all really nice, even if you were stuck on something. Interview 1 & 2 just wanted to make sure you knew what you were talking about.

Interview Questions

Describe recursive mergesort and its runtime. Write an iterative version in C++/Java/Python

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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41 - 50 of 111 Google Interviews
Google Overview (GOOG )
Web
www.google.com
Industries
Size
5000+ Employees, $21B+ Revenue
HQ
Mountain View, CA
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The difficulty rating is the average interview difficulty rating across all interview candidates.

The interview experience is the percentage of all interview candidates that said their interview experience was positive, neutral, or negative.

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