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      Software Engineer Interview

      Jul 22, 2012
      Anonymous employee
      Mountain View, CA
      Accepted offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jan 2011

      Interview

      I was contacted by a YouTube recruiter by phone - presumably after he saw my resume on LinkedIn. After a phone screen, I was called in for a round of in-person interviews. It was around 6 people over about 4 hours. From my understanding, Google usually goes through multiple on-site interviews, but since I already had an offer from a major competitor, I convinced them to speed up the process and make do with only one on-site. I got the offer about 2 weeks later and accepted it. The questions were standard CS algorithm/design/coding questions, but cumulatively were definitely the hardest round of questions I've ever faced. I don't remember them any more, but they really made me think. Google lives up to it's tough-as-nails-interviews reputation.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      The phone screen was the hardest. It was something that involved two separate concepts - one was a dynamic programming algorithm and the other was a trie data structure - and somehow combining them to make up the answer. I don't remember the exact question, but somehow it involved storing the words in a dictionary into the trie structure and then using the algorithm to determine something...
      Answer question

      Other Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Google

      Software Engineer Interview

      May 4, 2014
      Anonymous employee
      Auburndale, FL
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Google (Auburndale, FL) in Apr 2014

      Interview

      Direct onsite because I interviewed in the past and did well that time. From the time I sent my resume to interview day: 2 weeks. From interview day to offer over the phone: 2 weeks. The syllabus for the interviews is very clear and simple: 1) Dynamic Programming 2) Super recursion (permutation, combination,...2^n, m^n, n!...etc. type of program. (NP hard, NP programs) 3) Probability related programs 4) Graphs: BFS/DFS are usually enough 5) All basic data structures from Arrays/Lists to circular queues, BSTs, Hash tables, B-Trees, and Red-Black trees, and all basic algorithms like sorting, binary search, median,... 6) Problem solving ability at a level similar to TopCoder Division 1, 250 points. If you can consistently solve these, then you are almost sure to get in with 2-weeks brush up. 7) Review all old interview questions in Glassdoor to get a feel. If you can solve 95% of them at home (including coding them up quickly and testing them out in a debugger + editor setup), you are in good shape. 8) Practice coding--write often and write a lot. If you can think of a solution, you should be able to code it easily...without much thought. 9) Very good to have for design interview: distributed systems knowledge and practical experience. 10) Good understanding of basic discrete math, computer architecture, basic math. 11) Coursera courses and assignments give a lot of what you need to know. 12) Note that all the above except the first 2 are useful in "real life" programming too! Interview 1: Graph related question and super recursion Interview 2: Design discussion involving a distributed system with writes/reads going on at different sites in parallel. Interview 3: Array and Tree related questions Interview 4: Designing a simple class to do something. Not hard, but not easy either. You need to know basic data structures very well to consider different designs and trade-offs. Interview 5: Dynamic programming, Computer architecture and low level perf. enhancement question which requires knowledge of Trees, binary search, etc. At the end, I wasn't tired and rather enjoyed the discussions. I think the key was long term preparation and time spent doing topcoder for several years (on and off as I enjoy solving the problems). Conclusion: "It's not the best who win the race; it's the best prepared who win it."
      2501

      Software Engineer Interview

      Jun 15, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      There are two back-to-back rounds, the first is a code interview, and the next is a BQ interview. I think my interviewees gave me positive feedback, and they are nice.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Asked me a question to design a function to find a simpler Wordle game.
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      Jun 12, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Declined offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      3 rounds of coding + 1 behavior Questions from leetcode google question bank, mostly medium level questions, ask about complexity. Interviewers are generally nice, there are no test cases but need to write ur own tests and think of the edge cases.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      For behavior describe a project u have worked on
      Answer question

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