Google Software Engineer Interview Questions | Glassdoor
Google Interviews
Interviews
  • Jobs
  • Companies
  • Salaries
  • Interviews

    Google Software Engineer Interview Questions

    Interviews at Google

    3,573 Interview Reviews

    Experience

    Experience
    62%
    25%
    13%

    Getting an Interview

    Getting an Interview
    37%
    29%
    20%
    11
    2
    1
    0

    Difficulty

    3.4
    Average

    Difficulty

    Hard
    Average
    Easy

    Interviews for Top Jobs at Google

    More

    Helpful (2107)  

    Software Engineer Interview

    Anonymous Employee in Mountain View, CA
    Accepted Offer
    Positive Experience
    Difficult Interview

    Application

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

    Continue Reading

    Interview Questions

    Negotiation

    You can and should negotiate politely. You are in a stronger position if you have another offer, but even otherwise, you should ask for more of every type of payment!

    Other Interview Reviews for Google

    1.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Interview

      Our interviews begin like most, with a 30-minute chat over the phone between the recruiter and candidate. The phone interview begins with the recruiter giving the candidate a brief outline of the company history, an overview of products and cultural environment, as well as the logistics of the interview process.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

      • Q1. Describe the process you have for a programming task, from requirements to delivery.   Answer Question

    2.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Employee
      Accepted Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Average Interview

      Interview

      The process is slow and doesn't necessarily involve meeting the team you might end up working with. Care isn't always taken that you'll work with the technologies you discuss. Their interviews are overly reliant on the ability to write implementations of algorithms under pressure.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

      • Ugh, it's hard enough to come up with good interview questions. Stop ruining them for us.   1 Answer
      3. Join the Google team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Employee
      Accepted Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Interview

      Very good, organized, difficult questions but not impossible. 4 DS and algorithms and 1 behavioral (Googleyness). There was a good mix of questions, from trees, graphs, Binary trees to linked list and data structures. Lots of good follow up questions.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

    4.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Interview

      4 round interviews. They will take you to have a tour during the lunch. The question is medium difficulty that followed with hard following-up. Every round is about 45 mins.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

    5.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Interview

      2 rounds of online interviews (Hackerrank etc) with 2-3 questions each. 1 Onsite full day with 4-5 different engineers each for about an hour each. Asked all kinds of programming questions including algorithms, graphs, trees etc.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

      • Reverse sum of Integer Linked Lists   1 Answer

    6.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Interview

      The interview process was hard. I struggled with a couple of the questions and took a long time to think about it. I didn’t figure out the questions. However, my interviewer was nice. I will try again next year. Hopefully, there will be better results.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

    7.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Easy Interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Google.

      Interview

      1 phone screening, and recruiter thought it would be a good idea to reach out to another recruiter from a different team for my profile. Ended up not liking the role.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

    8.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Easy Interview

      Interview

      One round of phone interview, after speaking with the recruiter he told me that I would be a great fit for another team. But didn't quite like the role after speaking with another recruiter.

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

    9.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Interview

      Engaging but Difficult. However, the interviewer was very nice and tried his best to help me in the entire process. I knew what I did wrong in the end and I enjoyed the conversation despite that I did not get to the second round

      Continue Reading

      Interview Questions

      • Number of islands. (BFS question - Leetcode)

        Why BFS over DFS in this case?

        How can we improve this time complexity?   Answer Question
    Don't Miss Out On a Job You Love
    Upload a resume to easily apply to jobs from anywhere. It's simple to set up.