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YouTube Interview Questions & Reviews

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Updated Jan 14, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 8 ratings

3.4

“Difficult” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 8 ratings

Positive	50%
Neutral	50%
Negative	0%

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4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2011 in San Bruno, CA (took 2 days)

Contacted by a recruiter who set up a phone interview. Spoke with someone on the team for 30 minutes about my opinion on internet trends and policy issues. Immediately contacted by recruiter who set up an on-site interview. On site interview included 4 individual interviews and a team lunch. Found out about a week later I didn't get the job.

Interview Questions

Why do you want to work at YouTube?

Answer Question

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2011 in San Bruno, CA (took 6+ weeks)

Started off with a phone interview. I did not hear back for about 3 weeks so I thought they were not interested but then the interviewer called back and scheduled a 2nd phone interview. That went well and they called me in for an on-site-interview. Their campus is really nice and they give free breakfast and lunch. On-site interviewers were professional except one of them. He jumped to technical questions without even introducing himself or asking me about my background.

Interview Questions

Mainstream database questions and a few Java questions since my background was in Java

Answer Question

Given N people on an MxM grid, find the point which requires the least total distance covered by all people to meet at this point.

View Answers (1)

Assuming that an English dictionary is available, design a spelling corrector.

Answer Question

Design the data structures for the Snake game.

Answer Question

Given K sorted buckets which in total have N elements, merge these buckets so that the resulting bucket is also sorted. Also, do it better than O(NlogN).

Answer Question

Other Details

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

More YouTube Software Engineer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Jul 2011 in Dublin, County Dublin (Ireland) (took 3 weeks)

I applied online in April and heard nothing until July, when I received an email from a Google recruiter. The recruiter wanted to know if I could take a phone call, so we scheduled one for the next day. the phone call lasted for about half an our. Some of the questions asked inclluded, "what are your salary expectations?", "have you had any other job offers recently?", and "why do you want the job?".

Afterwards, I was told that the recruiter would be recommending that I proceed to the next round, which was to involve a telephone interview that would last for 40 minutes. A time was set for this, but the call never came. I found this very unprofessional; I had made arrangements to make myself available for the call as the designated time.

After twenty minutes, I received the call. It was an enjoyable interview. Questions included: "how many hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute?", "can you name a currently trending video", "can you think of a (hypothetical) video that would be controversial for YouTube?", and can you name events from the worlds of politics, sports, and entertainment that would have been popular on YouTube over the past week?".

Almost as soon as this interview was concluded, I was invited to attend an on-site interview in Barrow Street.

Having heard great things about Google, I was disappointed to be ignored by the receptionist for five minutes, and kept waiting, without acknowledgement, for ten minutes after my interview had been scheduled to start. Nevertheless, I was escorted by my interviewer to a room close to the employee floorspace where the interview began. This lasted for 45 minutes and was enjoyable. All questions were job-related. I was asked at one point why I wanted the job, given that I am "over qualified" for it. This surprised me, because the academic requirements for the job were pretty rigorous. Yet, it seemed that the actual role of Operations Associate is quite unskilled. With this question, the interviewer actually put me off the job.

I was then invited to ask the interviewer some questions. The first related to how many people would be a part of my team. This question could not be answered for reasons of confidentiality. I then asked about the potential for career development and the chance to branch out into different roles, assuming greater responsibility. I was told in no uncertain terms that were I to take the job, I would spend 70% of my team reviewing YouTube videos, and that this would not change. This also turned me off the job.

When this interview ended, another one began immediately. This one was quite similar, but questions all related to workplace scenarios. Some of the questions were very nebulously phrased, so I had to tease out more detail from the questioner. It ended after 25 minutes, and I was shown out, without being given a tour of the building or an offer of lunch, like I had been led to expect.

Interview Questions

How could you bring innovation to YouTube?

Answer Question

What's your favourite YouTube video?

Answer Question

Reason for Declining

The experience left me severely underwhelmed. I had been expecting a workplace nirvana; instead, I beheld mediocrity. I disliked the fact that employees don't have cubicles or, it seemed to me, adequate workspace. I don't think I could tolerate working in such conditions for very long. I also got the impression, perhaps wrongly, that Operations Associates are the grunts of YouTube. I am far too educated and skilled to do that indefinitely with no prospect of career growth. Also, the place was too youthful. No one seemed to be over thirty. I'm all for youth and energy, but there is a lot to be said for working with more seasoned colleagues, too. When the offer came, I declined it.

Other Details

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

More YouTube Online Operations Associate Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Mar 2011 (took 2 days)

it was awkward becaus the employers made fun of people walking by the whoe time

Interview Questions

what brands do you wear

Answer Question

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Skills Test and a Personality Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

5.0

Very Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2010 in San Bruno, CA (took 4+ weeks)

A Youtube recruiter somehow obtained my resume and called me up to schedule a phone interview. The phone interview went quite smoothly - it consisted of a few background questions, some broad technical questions, and some more specific programming questions. For the last part, we used a shared GoogleDoc, such that I was able to type out my answers.

I was flown out to the Youtube campus (they paid) and put up in a really nice hotel with a group of ~30 total candidates (for what it's worth, 90% of these were graduate students). We had a day-long group tour, including four 1-on-1 interviews, finishing with a dinner at a 5-star hotel restaurant.

The 1-on-1 interviews all had at least one technical question, but the rest of the content varied depending on the interviewer. Some asked questions about spam prevention, others about memory allocation. There were no questions like "how many pennies can you stack end-to-end to the moon?"

It's been almost a year, so I can't remember too many specific questions.

Interview Questions

Implement a malloc-like function such that it only returns pointers evenly divisible by N (presumably some power of 2). Use as little overhead as possible. Implement the corresponding free() function.

Answer Question

Solve Youtube's comment-spam question.

Answer Question

Rather straight-forward bucket sort question.

Answer Question

Rather straight-forward hash question, touching on complexity, hash function distribution, etc.

Answer Question

Garbage collection

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

More YouTube Software Engineer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2010 in San Bruno, CA (took 1 week)

I applied for the job by having an employee submit my resume internally. I was later contacted by a recruiter to schedule an initial phone interview. The phone interview consisted of a couple simple interview questions about my past experience and also what I knew about YouTube. I did not move further in the interview process because the position had already been filled before they could discuss my interview.

Interview Questions

Do you know how YouTube makes money?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2010 in San Bruno, CA (took 2 weeks)

First was a skills test which was confidential, so I can not tell you about that. However, after that, there was a series of two interviews at the San Bruno site. Each one took about half an hour and covered such basic questions as what are your strengths, weaknesses, the usual gammut. In addition, they also asked me for potential solutions and ways I would handle customer service problems. The locale is quite nice and the people were very laidback and friendly. The next part was the waiting, which took about 2 weeks to get a response from Youtube if I was accepted or not, which I was not.

Interview Questions

What possible tools could Youtube develop to help filter inappropriate videos?

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.

More YouTube Online Operations Associate Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Apr 2010 (took 3 weeks)

First had a telephonic interview.. general questions on C++, Regular expressions and online coding.
Final onsite interview, 4 ppl will interview and will ask problem solving questions...