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    Google Software Engineer Interview Questions

    Interviews at Google

    3,227 Interview Reviews

    Experience

    Experience
    62%
    25%
    13%

    Getting an Interview

    Getting an Interview
    36%
    29%
    21%
    11
    2
    1
    0

    Difficulty

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    Interviews for Top Jobs at Google

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    Software Engineer Interview

    Anonymous Interview Candidate in Jersey City, NJ
    No Offer
    Positive Experience
    Average Interview

    Application

    I applied through college or university. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Google (Jersey City, NJ) in November 2018.

    Interview

    I passed the OA which includes two easy code questions and then failed the phone interview which only contains a medium code problem. (I got the interview for I have joined their campus talk a year before)

    Interview Questions

    • Input: Two linked lists representing two integers
      Output: A linked list representing the sum of the two integers   1 Answer

    Other Interview Reviews for Google

    1.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google.

      Interview

      First, you're given a coding challenge and afterwards an interview. Mine was over the phone with google slides where the code and examples were written. You can ask the interviewer questions as you are doing the challenge and both take about 30-45 minutes each.

      Interview Questions

      • How does a binary tree work and can you implement the parsing of one.   2 Answers

    2.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Mountain View, CA
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Easy Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in July 2019.

      Interview

      Applied online with referral link. After 2 months, got back to me with coding online sample and HR recruiter to schedule a interview. Filled out preference form. Did three over the phone interviews with google docs. One software engineer of the three, I felt came up with a slower solution and was convinced that his was faster by quick sorting which is slower than O(n) which was my solution. The other two were great and all of them were easy questions compared to other company's questions . Felt that the last interview destroyed me since I couldn't see how his solution was faster than mine. I heard this was a bit common amongst many interviews with engineers at google, but usually engineers figure out their mistakes too and correct it, but this clearly didn't happen with me. Also, the last engineer was not as talkative as the other two, which was already was a red flag since he didn't seem all that interested in me or the interview. The rejection notice was pretty slow too; took a few weeks so I suppose that is to be expected of the rejected individuals at google. This company is a hit or miss and will auto reject you if you reapply later (even with more referrals) within a certain time period which is kind of dumb if you ask me since they demand more experience in software development which maybe their engineers should also get before interviewing... Nevertheless, there were some ups and downs and from what I can tell from my friends and referrals, the offer is very luck based since it really depends on the engineers interviewing you. Best of luck to the interviewee who read this, you'll need it!

      Interview Questions

      • String recursive replacement:
        given "11122" replace "12" -> "1"
        given "abcbcbbccd" replace "bc" ->"ad"   2 Answers
      3. Join the Google team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in New York, NY
      Declined Offer
      Positive Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in April 2019.

      Interview

      Algorithm questions followed by behavior questions. Overall very friendly and positive experience. Interviewers gave a lot of hints, and do the interview on chrome book actually. Lunch is really good, and I am really happy with the interview

      Interview Questions

    4. Helpful (1)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Declined Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Google.

      Interview

      Phone interview followed by onsite. The two phone interviews were medium LC problems. The onsite had 5 rounds. 1 was a behavioral and 4 were technical. The first two interviewers had their attitude on check. The other two had a cynical and cocky attitude that i just felt like walking out of the interview. Just another huge organization which has lost its interviewer bar. Felt bad for the poor blokes who need to show up to this team to work everyday.

      Interview Questions

      • algorithm based, like recursion , array traversal   1 Answer

    5.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Mountain View, CA
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in July 2019.

      Interview

      I was brought onsite skipping the phone screen. There were 5 45min interviews and a lunch in between. Two in the morning, lunch, and then three in the afternoon. One out of the 5 is the Googlyness interview and the rest are coding.
      Some interviewers are very inexperienced. According to my interviewers, every employee has to do interviews after certain amount of time working there so the interview quality isn't every consistent. One of the interviewer I had didn't even remember his question on top of his head. He had to pull out his laptop and find the question he wanted to ask. And whenever I need to clarify something, he had to again pull out his laptop to find the problem... he wasn't even sure what he is asking. And a lot of the times the interviewers will just throw the questions out and let you do whatever you need to do and then take the picture at the end without any discussions at all. Also they don't seem to write down the feedback as soon as possible after interviews so the process can drag longer and they might forget about the details. It seems to have a lot of flaws in their hiring process. Even though the questions are pretty diverse and fair, but there are too many human factors that will mess your result up.

      Interview Questions

      • Not going to say the specific questions. But all of them are data structure and algorithm problems.   1 Answer

    6.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Average Interview

      Interview

      They asked why i wanted to be at google and other things in my career trajectory. They want to know if I would be able to go to California. They asked what I wanted in a position.

      Interview Questions

      • What was the most difficult project that you have worked on   2 Answers

    7.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Easy Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Google in June 2019.

      Interview

      I was reached out to by a recruiter from Google's Austin office. The recruiter talked 99% of the phone screen and was completely disinterested in my career goals and interests. The interview process was discussed and I was asked to apply online and then give times for a technical phone screen. I applied and followed up with the recruiter with times to do a technical. The recruiter ignored me after this and even after another follow up email. Watch out for Google recruiters from the Austin office! Very unprofessional and disappointing.

      Interview Questions

    8.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Mountain View, CA
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in July 2008.

      Interview

      I was contacted by a recruiter and given a phone interview. After I passed the phone interview, I was scheduled on an on-site interview. My interview was for 2 days. The first day, I interviewed with 4 engineers and got a free lunch. On the second day, I interviewed with 2 other engineers.

      Interview Questions

      • What would you like to work on in Google?   1 Answer

    9.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Mountain View, CA
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in March 2009.

      Interview

      In the end I did not get the offer, but interviewing with Google has been a very interesting. The interviews for the software engineer position consisted mostly entirely of algorithm and coding questions with a little bit of design. The algorithmic questions did not require one to 'remember' some obscure or very advanced algorithm. All questions were solvable using basic algorithmic knowledge. The interviewee is expected to be able to estimate the performance of the solution that he/she is proposing and to come up with a reasonably optimal solution.

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