Google Product Manager Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed May 2007 in Seattle, WA (took 2+ weeks)

Interview was for a Product Manager position with Google at Kirkland. The two phone screens with people in Mountain View were interesting and exciting; you got the sense you were going to join a company with really smart, energetic people.

The 1:1 interview loop in Kirkland itself was very frustrating and disappointing. The frustration starts before the interview itself: they deliberately won't tell you who you are going to see, presumably because they don't want you to look up anyone on LinkedIn before you meet them. Since the Google office in Kirkland isn't all that big, you can actually figure out before hand who you are most likely to meet, based upon an hour or two of searching through LinkedIn. For a company that's allegedly all about making information accessible, this was the first warning sign that there was a serious disconnect between what they preach and what they practice.

There were the usual IQ-style questions, which don't really measure anything to do with intelligence, much less wisdom. These are the same questions that Amazon and Microsoft ask, so you can look them up on the Web beforehand as well without too much difficulty.

I met a number of people, who ranged from very smart to smart alecs. As anywhere else, the conversations with the really smart people were interesting, challenging in a fun way, and get you motivated to move through the interview process. The smart alecs are all from Microsoft, which is ironic: Google has been hiring a bunch of Microsofties who obviously can't cut their emotional ties to the mothership. All the discussion inevitably leads back to "aren't Microsoft products the greatest?", which is a weird discussion to have sitting inside a Google conference room.

Google has very little interest in your actual experience, which means if you have done a bunch of interesting things over a long period of time, you will be sorely disappointed by the interview process. The interview process is designed by, optimized for, and run by people who are <5 years out of college; if you don't fit that demographic, you are out of luck.