Contacted by company for a Product Manager role (had previously interviewed last year, and didn’t get past the first phone screen).
Had an initial phone screen, and while I enjoyed the conversation I had with the phone screener, I walked away thinking I wasn’t likely going to get called back (he was a Google Cloud PM, see questions below).
Went to an on-site (and learning from last time, I pushed this on-site back as far as I could to give me time to prepare), where I found each of the interviewers very nice and collaborative if you chose to make it so, and I didn’t walk out feeling as drained as I thought I would.
NOTE: my preparation for the on-site consisted of “Cracking the Coding Interview”, Rocketblocks ($35), reading Stratechery ($10/month, from last year’s attempt), regularly used Elevate app to improve my mathematical comfortability, made a cheat sheet, scraped Glassdoor for interview questions, had practice interviews from a Slack group, and had purchased this video on Technical Interviews (from last year’s attempt). It was admittedly a LOT of material, and I did the best I could within the 3/4 weeks I gave myself (while juggling other interviews and a full-time job). I walked to my interview with some quiet confidence, but I could have felt solid with another 2 weeks. But I was also frankly burnt out.
The first interviewer gave me a strategy / insight question. She worked on Privacy and Ads. Nice, professional interviewer, and a collaborative experience.
The second interviewer was behavioral / technical done remotely, but it timed out due to the 40 minute deadline. I did good on the behavioral, but so-so on the technical (was timed out, so couldn’t get into much more depth). A really nice person.
The third interviewer was Product / behavioral, and they were either tired from before the interview, or I bored them out, but I caught him yawning and generally sleepy. He worked in advertisements, and had an impressive background, but was an admittedly humble person. We had a good initial and end conversation, but I’m going to have to chalk it up to him being just tired, which was annoying if that impacted my result.
I had lunch with a Product Manager from Google Shopping. Really nice, transparent person about the culture and work-life at Google (it’s not 24x7, you can have a life).
The fourth interviewer was Product-oriented, and really nice fellow. I don’t think I gave him the crisp, definitive answer he wanted, but I did give him plenty of information about my thought process as I tackled the question.
The last interviewer was interesting. He worked in Google Shopping and Express, and gave me both a strategy and estimation question within the 40 minute timeframe. I believe I flubbed both questions he gave me, because we both spent more time on the first question, and I only had about 10 minutes to answer the second. I say this interviewer was interesting because I didn’t necessarily consider him hostile, but skeptical of my reasoning. I became more collaborative and transparent to his constructive criticisms (which might have run counter to his expectations) and I actually felt it helped me to spur a pretty decent idea, though I can understand if he felt that I wasn’t able to answer the question. Still, 10 minutes for an estimation question (see below, you be the judge)?
NOTE: I just completed the on-site, so I don’t know if I am going to get an offer. But I’m leaning no, so I’m going to mark it accordingly.
From my description of my practice routine, it makes it sound as if the interview itself was a daunting experience. After you practice enough, it really isn’t that bad, I just had a bad time conveying that annoying metric to measure success.