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Google Software Development Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

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Updated Feb 5, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 19 ratings

3.8

“Difficult” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 19 ratings

Positive	53%
Neutral	32%
Negative	16%

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5.0

Very Difficult Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2012 (took 1 week)

I earned my phone interview one week after I posted my resume for a particular job in youtube. First I received a 5-7 minutes phone call from HR, it was just about usual stuff, what I am doing currently and what I have done in the past. Then I scheduled with their HR person a 45 minute technical interview. The interviewer told me he is working in youtube. After 5 minutes of intro stuff about my previous work, he asked me to start writing on the shared doc. The problem he posed to me was not usual algorithm and data structure stuff. I found it really very hard, first to understand and then after few more minutes of his explanation, I still had little clue. I don't know if he was unable to make me understand or my brain was just blocked.

Interview Questions

We have a schedular. Timer is available to the schedular. The clients of this schedular want to call this schedular with 2 parameters, 1) time interval in ms 2) callback function. The schedular will invoke specified callback function after specified time intevals. Design data structure and implement it.

Answer Question

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Sep 2011 in Chantilly, VA (took a day)

Professional, four people interviewed, very professional, and as expected whole process went smooth

Interview Questions

Why do you want to work with this company

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

5.0

Very Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2010 (took 4+ weeks)

The interview process at Google is very smooth and organized. The recruiter kept me updated at every step of the interview process. Initial round consisted of phone screen interview of 45 mins. Questions were based on Data structure & algortihms and then coding them. I got the interview result within a day and they asked me to come for an onsite interview which I scheduled for after 3 weeks.

The onsite interview lasted for 4 hours (4 technical rounds and 1 lunch interview). All the interviewers were very good and the questions were based on Data structures, Algorithms, OS/Kernel, Networking and then coding in C(or your language of preference).

Out of 4 rounds I did pretty good in 3 but I screwed up badly in 1. And that's why the rejection. Had it been any other company I would have got the offer but google looks for best answers not just an answer.

Interview Questions

Based on data structures and algorithms. Can't post the original questions as I signed NDA with them.

Answer Question

onsite interview: implement timers write code as if you are writing them in 1 single for loop in kernel.

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2010 (took a day)

The guy from Chrome team called me up and asked me a bunch of general and coding questions. The guy was very friendly and explained what the team is up to (this happened at the end when he knew I probably wouldn't make it)

- Coding : addition of 2 big numbers (represented by 2 byte arrays)
- Pasted a function and asked to fix

Interview Questions

Addition of 2 big numbers (represented by 2 int arrays, assuming each integer can only be 0-9)

Answer Question

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

5.0

Very Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Sep 2011 in Mountain View, CA (took 2+ weeks)

I met the company's representative on campus and applied through their website and I received an email soon after asking me to select my preferences for the on-campus interview. The interview was tough, but if someone is thorough with the topics and has practiced quite a few problems then it should be manageable.

Interview Questions

Given a a new dictionary of words in English alphabets but the ordering of the alphabets are not necessarily as the English alphabets, that is, say c comes a in the new alphabet series. Hence, the dictionary would also contain words in a different ordering than the usual dictionary. If you are given enough words in this new dictionary so that you can find enough relationships between the new series, find the new series.

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Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2010 in Cambridge, MA (took 3 weeks)

Had a pre screening phone interview with the HR who described the different teams working the Cambridge office, then had a technical phone interview with one of the developers in the team. Finally I was called in for a full day of technical interviews.

Interview Questions

How would you design and develop a URL shorting service

View Answers (1)

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Jul 2011 in New York, NY (took 1 week)

2 Initial Phone Interviews followed by 3 day schedule of on-site interviews with interview on 1 day at the Port Authority of New York office.

Interview Questions

Subset of all sets using bit arithematic.

Answer Question

Convert string to integer like atoi in C

Answer Question

Reason for Declining

Salary

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2011 (took 1+ week)

Submitted my resume on the google jobs site and got an email from the university recruiter a couple of days later. Scheduled two 45 minute back to back phone interviews.
Interview 1: Gruff guy with a thick accent. Didn't seem at all willing to be on the phone and when I was thinking out loud he put me on mute and I had to check from time to time whether he was till there.
Interview 2: Very pleasant person. It was more of a discussion of a certain problem and how I would approach it.

Interview Questions

Given a list of integers, find 3 numbers that add up to a given number. ie, find a,b,c,d such that a+b+c=d

View Answers (1)

List out all the data structures you know

View Answers (1)

Given a bunch of N random points in space, how would you draw a line such that N/2 of them were to the left of the line and N/2 to the right of it. Complexity

View Answers (2)

Interviewer 2. How would you generate a stream of random numbers? Optimize for space.

Answer Question

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2011 (took a day)

I applied online and then got in touch with employees though LinkedIn. The recruiting team is very helpful and lets you know when they would be making decision about their applications. If you're selected, they ask you fill out a company questionnaire and ask you a list of times you would be available for an interview. Then, they set up a time for the interview

Interview Questions

It felt like a stress interview. The interviewer sounded pissed from the start and seemed like he was in no mood for the interview. He called me up and the first thing he said was "I have a coding question for you!". Then, he asked me to write a code for traversing a binary tree. As soon as I had given him the solution. He says that it will be all and slams the phone down. It was one of the weirdest interviews ever. I was surprised on how they were judging, because I did get the code right!!

Answer Question

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jun 2010 in Mountain View, CA (took 2 days)

2 phone interviews (one with programming questions) followed by an on-site interview with 6 different folks.
These interviews mostly consisted of problem solving (math or programming, some algorithm understanding, etc.). Lunch was good. Apparently I scored really well on the interview, but they declined to make me an offer because there were no relevant openings at that time. Then why bother interviewing me???