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

    Google Software Engineer Interview Questions

    Updated Oct 17, 2017
    2,595 Interview Reviews

    Experience

    Experience
    60%
    25%
    13%

    Getting an Interview

    Getting an Interview
    33%
    30%
    21%
    11
    1
    0
    0

    Difficulty

    3.4
    Average

    Difficulty

    Hard
    Average
    Easy

    Interviews for Top Jobs at Google

    More

    2,595 Candidate Interview ReviewsBack to all Interviews

    Filter

    Sort: PopularDateDifficulty

    Filter

    Sort: PopularDateDifficulty

    Helpful (1657)  

    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."

    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. Helpful (662)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Employee
      Accepted Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Google.

      Interview

      I first had a phone screen interview. After this, I was asked to come onsite for further interviews. I had 4 whiteboard and 1 lunch interview with the Youtube team. After this, I was told that my application is going through the Hiring Committee.

      Hiring committee asked my HR to find a team for me before giving any decision. I then had two phone interviews with different teams in Android. I informed my HR that I am interested in the first team. Next day, HR emailed me and said that this team no longer has an open position. I again went through the same process. This time, platform team was interested in talking to me. I gave 2 phone interviews wherein they made me write code. After their feedback, I was put through the Hiring committee again and this time I got a thumbs up from them. 1 week after that I was put through executive committee and got my offer.

      I had 7 other offers and my HR asked me about all of them before putting me through executive review. They gave me more than any other company I had offer from.

    2. Helpful (549)  

      Software Engineer Interview

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

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in July 2015.

      Interview

      The interview went seemingly smoothly, except for a couple quirks in the code on the whiteboard. The questions were way easier than I expected. The interviewers were not intimidating at all and did not try to make the process stressful. I felt like I passed and according to HR, the overall feedback was positive. My application went to the hiring committee which, in turn, rejected the offer.

      3. Join the Google team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3. Helpful (1)  

      Software Engineer Interview

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

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA).

      Interview

      The phone screen was pretty straightforward and easy as always is for most companies. The engineers were very polite and asked reasonable questions.

      The hiring manager was awful and made me feel like walking out. He walked in opening with a ‘I didn’t even bother looking at your resume but maybe I did months ago.’ Big red flag to me. If a candidate walks in unprepared it’s a show stopper, and if an interviewer/manager does that then it is the same way.

      I had very good questions from the rest of the team and did solid on the coding interview. They do however need to make sure their hangouts have been properly set up before clipping 8 minutes of my coding time and stop offering coding challenges in Google Docs. It’s not cute and very unprofessional. Every other company uses a proper code editor without the perks of an IDE.

      Overall this was my second bad experience with Google where it felt like they didn’t even care. The first time, the engineers seemed more interested in making themselves look smart. I won’t be applying again in the future and I’d rather work for a place where I makena difference, not just a number.

      Interview Questions

      • How do you deprecate an asset and use the newest version for a web page without changing the name and with concern to caching.   1 Answer

    4. Helpful (293)  

      Software Engineer Interview

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

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in September 2015.

      Interview

      Awesome process. Very simple questions. Keep your nerves cool. Don't worry about very complex questions on the Internet. Do basics and you should be good. I screwed up two simple questions and not expecting offer. I will apply again next year .

    5.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Google.

      Interview

      No recruiter met me, straight to developer, who was 15 minutes late. 45 min per interview, 5 technical interviews. Very algorithms focused, no system design questions. Hardest interview I've done. Requires a lot of algorithmic knowledge.

      Interview Questions

    6. Helpful (1)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Interview

      An online assessment followed by an Onsite interview in the mountain view HQ. Onsite had 5 interviews back to back. Online assessment was very easy. Onsite was very hard and tiring .

      Interview Questions

    7.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied through college or university. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Google in October 2017.

      Interview

      I got a phone interview with Google for the Software Engineer position. The interviewer was not friendly at all. The interview question is kinda open-ended. At the end, I could feel that she thought I was wasting her time because she wanted to end the interview as quickly as possible. It was a really negative experience for me. Google, please have someone friendly to interview candidates...

      Interview Questions

      • Introduce yourself and a really confusing coding question   Answer Question

    8.  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Google.

      Interview

      One hour technical phone interview. Spoke with a recruiter who explained the on site interview process and answered any questions I had. On site interview consisted of 4 separate one hour technical interviews with a 35 minute lunch "interview" between.

      Interview Questions

      • Find n closest points to the origin (any language)   2 Answers

    9. Helpful (1)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Employee in Mountain View, CA
      Accepted Offer
      Negative Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 6+ months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in September 2017.

      Interview

      I had phone screen, two separate onsites (5 people and 2 people), then two or three more committees.

      The frustrating thing is, the process from application to offer took SIX FREAKING MONTHS. Yes, thats SIX (6) months. Granted, a month of that was my own scheduling conflicts, but still, I felt like they were dragging their feet even though I had a competing offer. The phone screen interviewer even forgot to enter feedback. It was utterly frustrating.

      Interview Questions

      • NDA, but none of the questions were predictable. I believe Google strongly encourages interviewers to ask NEW questions, so your best bet is to focus on fundamentals not any particular types of problems/techniques   1 Answer
    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.