I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY)
Interview
Sailed through the initial phone interview (a series of technical stats questions) and then moved to a virtual onsite. This was 5 back to back 45min interviews with other employees, and no break in between sessions. With one exception, everyone seemed rushed, unhappy, and totally uninterested in their work. One interviewer was nearly impossible to communicate with bc of echoing sounds on mic and poor English language skills. It was live coding and or doing math in a Google doc for 90% of the time on complex problems that interviewers seemed to expect a quick simple answer for, rather than a discussion of trade-offs under different scenarios. Responses to my follow up questions were generally misleading or unhelpful. The most useless "brain teaser" task was to derive the CDF of an exotic distribution I had not worked with before but could simply be looked up in 2s on Wikipedia. This came after three other questions I had already solved. I'm not sure what they're selecting on here but it was a genuinely bad experience and the interview day provided a strong signal that it would not be a good fit for me. Not surprised about the outcome, but it was a real waste of my time and the recruiter provided zero feedback about the rejection because of "NDA policy".
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
write code to generate iid draws from distribution X when we only have access to a random number generator
In the technical round, I faced a challenging A/B testing question regarding YouTube thumbnails that pushed my analytical skills. I was also asked to discuss metrics for evaluating user engagement, which had me thinking on my feet. The behavioral section was tough, but I found the principles I studied on PracHub to be incredibly relevant. The overall experience was intense and demanding, yet I received an offer in the end. Ultimately, I decided to decline, as I felt it wasn't the right fit for my career goals.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design an A/B test to evaluate the impact of a new YouTube homepage thumbnail design on user watch time. How would you choose the success metric, sample size, and handle novelty effects?
It was all good, the interviewer was very nice. Technical questions were a bit challenging but overall it was good. The hiring manager was looking for some hands on experience
I applied online. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Apr 2026
Interview
Got email from the HR and scheduled 2 virtual onsite interviews. It went well. I went through another 3 rounds of VO. My packet was submitted to the committee. They do not like it and gave me another round of VO. In the 6th round VO, my application got rejected. It was a total waste of time for everyone.