Google Senior Software Engineer Interview

Interviewed Jul 2009 in Mountain View, CA (took 2 weeks)

The job was for a software development position. First a Google recruiter contacted me. Some initial questions to gauge fit and interest. Then a technical phone screen. If you have a solid CS background, this is pretty easy to pass. A couple general data structure and algorithm questions. And every Google interview asks about big-O notation. You need to know this or forget about working at Google.

Then the on-site interview. I interviewed with 4 engineers, 45 minutes each. They each spend about 5 minutes on my background or past projects. However, they are not really interested in this and didn't really pay attention to my answers. Next 35 minutes consists of technical grilling and about 5 minutes at the end for me to ask questions.

Each interviewer sets up a problem and asked you to solve it. Sometimes its hard to figure out what the interviewer is asking, but asking lots of clarifying questions helps. Some problems I solved and some I did with lots of hints. I was then asked the order of complexity of my solution and how I could improve the solution.

Then the real hard part, for me anyway. I was asked to write the code for the solution on the white board. Writing code in an IDE after thinking about it for a few minutes is one thing, but writing code on a white board in a short amount of time is another. I didn't do so well here.

After the interview and thinking about all the problems they asked, none of them were particularly hard and the coded solution is usually about 10 lines of code.

I found most of the engineer interviewers very polite and interesting to talk to. A couple of them were arrogant and came with an attitude that you had to prove that you were as smart as they are. But overall, I found the interview a positive experience and felt I learned something.