I applied through an employee referral. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at YouTube (San Bruno, CA) in Sep 2016
Interview
I send my CV to a friend at Google on May and after receiving a No Thanks from a recruiter after 3 weeks, instantly received a phone screening invite from another, it was weird but I wouldn't ask, In the interview there were a few normal questions about my background and I was schedule for a coaching session.
At some point in the week they change me to a Youtube recruiter because of my background and after that I was invited to a on-site interview (that was schedule about a month after), where I was through a 5 interviews in which apparently I answered the problems too fast because it was 1 problem per interview but because we had some "extra time" in 4 of them I got 2 programming problems, the fifth one was one problem about system design and a normal programming problem.
After I came back it took about 2 weeks to receive the notice that my reviews were weird because there were good and neutral good reviews but one was a no hire, so they decided to gave me another set of interviews (2 phones interviews) that apparently went well but my recruiter need to chase one of the interviewers for 3 weeks to get the feedback.
And well they noticed me that the hiring committee had approved me and then the team matching would start, at this time was mid December so nobody were in the office or weren't easy to reach out so we postponed it to starting January and after some calls we found a mutual match team and I got my offer and said yes.
So about difficulty of the problems they are easy if you practice, I was studying in preparation about two months before the interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
System design could be the most difficult thing they ask because, there is not just one correct answer and it depends on the point of view of your interviewer
It was a 3 round interview process with 2 technical rounds and 1 HR round. I was mostly asked DSA focused questions. Trees, heap, graphs and sliding window were mostly stressed for me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Trees, heap, graphs and sliding window were mostly stressed for me.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at YouTube in Oct 2024
Interview
Long and slow. There were four rounds of interviews spanning over a month and they don't get back to you quickly. The interviews themselves were ok and took an hour each.
The interview process was demanding as they asked several questions about my masters degree thesis and on my research projects, which were challenging to remember as I had done these more than 7 years ago.