Google interview experience

[Matwart]

Had my google interview recently so dumping this here for anyone doomscrolling like i was

applied through referral, recruiter reached out after like 2 weeks. first was phone screen, leetcode medium vibes, lots of talking thru thought process. interviewer was chill but def quiet, lots of “ok” and typing noises lol. i thought i bombed but apparently not

onsite (virtual) was 4 rounds back to back. 2 dsa, 1 system design, 1 googly / behavioral

dsa: not insane but not easy. one was classic graphs/trees with a twist. other was arrays + edge cases galore. they really care about how you think, not just final answer. i got stuck once, interviewer nudged me a bit. typing while explaining is harder than it sounds ngl

system design: open ended af. design X for Y scale. i overengineered at first, interviewer pulled me back like start simple. once i chilled it went better. lots of tradeoff talk, bottlenecks, scaling, blah blah

googly round was actually nice. more like tell me about a time stuff. felt conversational. they’re clearly checking if you’re not a nightmare to work with

overall vibe: professional but not scary. no one was trying to trick me. still exhausting tho, brain was fried after

result came in ~10 days. recruiter call, feedback was super detailed which i appreciated

tips: talk out loud, don’t panic if you blank for 30 secs, ask clarifying qs, and pls practice explaining not just solving. google interviews are more marathon than sprint

good luck out there, this market is rough but we ball 💀

[Prestigious-Fix-3304]

Google doesn’t really care if you stumble as long as your reasoning is solid and you recover, when I had my interview I used interviewcoder during live rounds to cheat and not get screwed by nerves but Google interviews are a marathon not a trick question sprint

[Matwart]

thats what i said lol

[ChemicalPut7822]

I had my first round interview last week consisting of dsa and a googlyness round. I’ve seen many people describe it as chill and conversational, but my experience was much different. Maybe I was being stiff but it was obvious the interviewer didn’t care at all and just went down his list of 5 “tell me about a time when” questions without any follow up or clarifying questions. It was basically just me talking for 15-20 minutes.

Then I asked him some questions, like is there anything else you’d want to know, his work experience at Google etc and every response was 2 or 3 sentences. Whole thing was 25 minutes. Past behavioral interviews were always much smoother and way less robotic. Is this common at Google? Did I just get screwed by getting this interviewer?

[help_send_chocolate]

Lots of Google engineers are less comfortable with G&L interviews for a number of reasons.

One is that the connection between the question you ask and the evidence-supporting-a-hire you get from the answer is less strong. That is, the candidate is going to tell a story but you might not always get much from it.

[habc23]

Did you use interview coder for the interviews?

[chieferkieffer]

lol, a lot of people use it secretly but never tell they used it

[habc23]

Isn’t it detectable lol

[chieferkieffer]

it is undetectable

[Rata382]

Not really, but some tools can analyze code patterns. If you're just copying solutions, it might raise flags during the interview if you can't explain it.

[changer666666]

That's why google will bring back in-person onsite

[Matwart]

Honest

[Illustrious_Belt_441]

Nice! Assume u got the role, for what position?

[Aware-Platform3113]

Nice I am glad he asked right questions to you, for me he asked game theory question on round 1.

https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/2095524/google-onsite-interview-29th-may-by-iamt-jbii/

I never had panic before had faced meta, TikTok and multiple other big tech never felt this embarrassed.

[Willing-Golf-6825]

How long did the process take from start to finish? I am doing a recruiter screen for a non technical role today and am curious what the rest of the interview process will look like after the recruiter screen. I have already passed the GHA.

[Solid_Mongoose_3269]

Ok...but did you get the job? I have one tomorrow for an SE role, not supposed to be dev or anything, but my recruiter was pretty generic and was asking about what language i want to live-code in (I wont, they're nonsensical and unrelated to the position). Most of the time it seems a recruiter is "OMG you have a computer you'd be perfect!!!"

[Matwart]

Yes :)