I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY)
Interview
The interview started with an intro call with HR. She described quite a standard interview process in the company: 1 screening phone interview and 5 interviews for virtual on-site.
The onsite interview did not have a system design part. 5 coding challenges and one behavioral interview.
I got to interview with the hiring manager but I failed one of the onsite interview challenges, so the hiring committee denied my application.
Even though I did not get offer from google, I've received from another large company. I strongly recommend the following video for your preparation: "Dynamic Programming - Learn to Solve Algorithmic Problems & Coding Challenges" (can't use the link)
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
Screening question:
Write a "recursiveDescription" function for a UIView that prints out subviews tree in a following example:
<UIView>
| <UIScrollView>
| | <UIView>
| | | <UILabel>
| <UIView>
| | <UILabel>
A similar example could be a recursive iteration in folders/files or a tree.
Onsite 1:
A question is similar to "canConstruct".
Write a function that takes a string and an array of strings as input and returns a boolean if you can construct a string in the input out of substrings in the attay. Alternatively, you might need to return an array of substrings
Write a function that takes an array of floats (or doubles) as a parameter and returns a longest subsequence of floats where all elements have differences not more than 1 between each other.
For example input:
[4.2, 5.3, 4.6, 9.8, 1.5, 5.2, 4.7]
output: [4.2, 4.6, 5.2, 4.7], -> if you find the difference between any pair of elements here, it would be less or equal then one.
Recursive folder traversal in a file system. Very similar to the first screening phone interview question.
You get a folder-like data structure as an input and return a string describing a tree structure. As an alternative, each subfolder might contain files and you need to return a count of files contained in the folder and it's subfolders.
I didn't pass through on the DSA round. That was an amazing interview experience, though. The question I got was a hard level. The interviewer was very friendly and helpful.
Despite repeatedly asking recruiter about the nature of technical screen round, it turned out to be iOS domain specific while recruiter said it is going to be leetcode style programing and algorithms based. Completely devastated and horrible experience. No follow up and profile frozen for 12 months. Missed my shot because of recruiter's vague response!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
iOS Swift Color Palette. How to find color closest to palette for given raw form of color
The interview process for an iOS engineer position at Google typically includes multiple stages:
Initial screening: A recruiter or hiring manager conducts a phone interview to assess basic qualifications and fit.
Technical phone screen: A software engineer evaluates your coding skills through 1-2 technical interviews, focusing on data structures, algorithms, and iOS-specific knowledge.
Onsite interviews (or virtual equivalents): Usually 4-5 interviews including:
Coding interviews testing problem-solving abilities
System design interviews assessing architectural knowledge
iOS-specific questions about Swift, Objective-C, UIKit, etc.
Behavioral interviews evaluating teamwork and cultural fit
The "Googleyness" interview: Assesses how well you align with Google's values and culture.
Hiring committee review: A committee evaluates all feedback to make the final decision.