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    Google Software Engineer Interview Questions

    Interviews at Google

    3,250 Interview Reviews

    Experience

    Experience
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    25%
    13%

    Getting an Interview

    Getting an Interview
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    Interviews for Top Jobs at Google

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    Helpful (9)  

    Software Engineer Interview

    Anonymous Interview Candidate
    No Offer
    Difficult Interview

    Application

    I applied online. The process took a week. I interviewed at Google in August 2014.

    Interview

    Applied online and received an e-mail for a phone interview. I received some links and documents on how to prepare for the interview which are already in other reviews on glassdoor. The interviewer asked a programming question (to write a code for a simple game) which required the appropriate use of classes. The phone interview lasted around 45 minutes.

    Interview Questions

    • Going through the thought process aloud was quite difficult.   3 Answers

    Other Interview Reviews for Google

    1. Helpful (9)  

      Software Engineer Interview

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

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in April 2014.

      Interview

      I was contacted by a recruiter for Google in February 2014 for a new graduate software developer position. The interviews were outlined as follows (but were punctuated with many conversations with my recruiter):

      1) Phone interview with recruiter to assess goals and ideal company culture. I'm sure that other topics were discussed, but it felt more like I was being sold on the company than being interviewed.
      2) 1 hour technical phone interview using a Google Doc. I was given a small problem that required a lot of thought and had multiple solutions. The problem itself only required basic computer science knowledge, but was heavily dependent on your problem solving abilities.
      3) 4 on site interviews in one day. I can't discuss what transpired, but I can confidently say these were the toughest interview questions I've ever encountered. The day felt incredibly long, and by the time I got to my final interview I was already mentally exhausted.

      Now in August, I'm still waiting to hear back from my recruiter.

      Interview Questions

      • Can't say due to NDA. Sorry!   1 Answer

    2. Helpful (4)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Employee
      Accepted Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Google in November 2013.

      Interview

      They came to my school (UCI) and interviewed a good amount of people. Each candidate was given two 45 minute interviews. They ask difficult questions but not as difficult as a full time position. Then if you do well in that you go into host matching where they try to find an internship suitable for you after you give them your preferences. They described an internship and it sounded fun, but I later found out it was a very annoying project and was not satisfied with the initial description.

      Interview Questions

      • The conversion interview was at least twice as hard as the internship interviews.   2 Answers

      Negotiation

      I was too excited to get the offer. I didn't desire to negotiate.

      3. Join the Google team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3. Helpful (7)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Employee
      Accepted Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Google in August 2014.

      Interview

      Recruiter was very helpful, but the whole process can take a few weeks. Usually 4-5 technical interviews about algorithms and data structures. Each one gave a problem with a specific question but it develops several concepts. Be sure to think outloud and start from something simpler if you are stuck. Pretend the interviewer is your colleague. Spend some time beforehand practicing code on a site like hackerrank.com so that you are comfortable writing code on command.

      Interview Questions

      • One of the reviewers was a bit cocky. Stay calm in situations like that, ignore whatever is bothering you, and just address the question at hand.   1 Answer

    4. Helpful (22)  

      Software Engineer Interview

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

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in July 2014.

      Interview

      Google's actively seeking software engineers so it's not difficult to get an interview, but don't let that trick you into believing the interviewing process is easy. They're looking for engineers that have both good analytical and design skills.

      Once you're set up with a recruiter, he'll be your point of contact in terms of scheduling interviews. You'll first be given a phone interview and if you pass that, they'll bring you on-site for several 1:1 interviews.

      Interview Questions

      • Given a sorted matrix where the number below and right of you will always be bigger, write an algorithm to find if a particular number exist in the matrix. What is the running time of your algorithm.   16 Answers

    5. Helpful (1)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Google in June 2014.

      Interview

      Was approached by a recruiter, we had an initial phone screen. From there, I had a technical phone interview with a SWE. The questions were pretty straight forward, nothing too difficult. After that, I had four on-site interviews. Two of them went very well, one went pretty well, and I did pretty poorly in the other. I signed an NDA, so I can't go into details, but my suggestion to anyone would be to prepare as much as you can.

      Interview Questions

      • Low level question, which I wasn't expecting (far from my area of expertise).   1 Answer

    6. Helpful (1)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in New York, NY
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in December 2013.

      Interview

      Recruiter send you mail asking if interested then calls you for time and date for interview then send you mail containing guidelines then Phone interview - on site interview (1-4)- final interview

      Interview Questions

      • It was data structure related question.Is not hard but not easy too ?   2 Answers

    7.  

      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 November 2013.

      Interview

      Only have one phone screen technical interview and then onsite interview. I only have three interviews onsite. One wass in the morning, then two in the afternoon. They also would arrange two persons bring you to their food center. The food there is so nice. The process was easy and fast.

      Interview Questions

    8. Helpful (2)  

      Software Engineer Interview

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

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in July 2014.

      Interview

      45 minute phone interview: program a computational geometry problem, the phone interviewer did not ask anything else at all.

      onsite:

      preparation:
      I prepared for two weeks. I had been asked to brush up on my algorithms. So I basically took, the online versions of Prof: Tim Roughgarden's Algorithms class @ Stanford and parts of Prof. Erik Demain's class on Advanced data structures. @ mit. Also geeksforgeeks.org also helped me. Even if you don't get into google, I would say that taking these classes are very good for your future technical skills.

      5 people interviewed me, 45 minutes each. None of the 5 interviewers asked me any algorithm heavy questions. There was no topcoder style questions either. Most of the questions were related to my domain area viz: computer vision and machine learning. Since I had just switched into these areas, I was not an expert and my answers were often patchy. One of the interviewers asked me a question on large scale system design.

      I am just waiting for the results.

      Interview Questions

      • An open ended question on large scale system design, for this you need to be an internet programmer, knowing about issues related to data replication, data availability, large scale scaling etc. I was very patchy on all of these areas.   3 Answers

    9. Helpful (3)  

      Software Engineer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in New York, NY
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in April 2014.

      Interview

      Each of the questions were designed such that you will never get the perfect answer, especially on the first try. The problems were specifically made to stump you, and so you can continuously improve your design and show that you're curious to learn and improve.

      Interview Questions

      • They asked about servers and how networks functioned and I have no background with that topic.   1 Answer
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