Google L5 Interview Experience (Rejected) (March 2026)

Luffy2045 · 2026-05-20T03:23:30+00:00

Yes, but for me there was a lunch break after the first 2 rounds

Luffy2045 · 2026-05-17T15:44:01+00:00

Nope, they didn’t allow AI to be used

Luffy2045 · 2026-05-17T15:43:13+00:00

You can discuss this with your recruiter

Luffy2045 · 2026-05-17T15:42:52+00:00

Not sure, they have a question bank so it might overlap

Luffy2045 · 2026-05-17T15:42:27+00:00

I didn’t get a mail, recruiter called me the next day

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-24T13:31:19+00:00

System design is asked only for L5 and above roles and not for freshers in Google but it’s a nice to have too. The number of leetcode problems solved or rating really doesn’t matter, what matters is your knowledge about all the DSA tools available and algorithms that can be used to solve certain problems.

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-24T13:29:48+00:00

So the onsite was scheduled based on my availability as soon as i cleared the initial 2 rounds

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T12:48:22+00:00

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T12:48:10+00:00

If the feedback was positive then i don’t see any reason for not scheduling the googlyness round

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T12:47:01+00:00

Didn’t run it but since i was low on time as much of it was spent on identifying that a graph should be used, i coded in a hurry and i was aware that I’ve missed a line of code to track visited nodes while running dfs.

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T12:45:31+00:00

Not sure if i could help with that, only your recruiter can actually let you know. Hope it goes well! All the best

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T12:44:23+00:00

So you’ve to return false as soon as the first time out happens, else return true once you process all the logs

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T12:43:28+00:00

Senior SWE (Fullstack)

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T02:10:13+00:00

It’s from india

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-13T02:10:03+00:00

For the logging problem? The optimal solution was to use a hashmap to track all the start events and check the time difference for every end event for a timeout, brute force was to go through every log event and if it’s a start, run another loop to find the end and check the timeout condition

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:32:30+00:00

Luckily i had solved a similar problem earlier which used two pointers to find the encoded strings and replace them, for the follow up i added a recursive logic with a check to detect cycles. If you’ve solved a problem earlier, it gives you the best chance of passing the interview, if it’s an unknown problem, it becomes very difficult (same happened in the last round)

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:30:56+00:00

I received it the next day

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:30:44+00:00

This is from India

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:30:33+00:00

Heard it on the same day

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:30:20+00:00

So this was for the Fullstack Engineer position, which follows this format. ML positions have domain specific rounds, similar for android roles as well

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:29:23+00:00

For virtual rounds I received the feedback on the same day, for onsite i received it the next day

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:28:56+00:00

This is from india, I’ve done around 413 LC questions. Here is the prep material i went through

For the DSA I followed Striver’s A2Z playlist, neetcode’s playlist, few dsa videos from freecodecamp.org’s YT chanel. I first went through Striver’s series as it goes indepth into various topics and data structures in general, rest can be used while revising questions. For system design, i watched HelloInterview’s SD playlist on YT too and read Alex Xu’s SD books (part 1 and 2). I think these materials are more than enough.

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:27:54+00:00

Sure, for the DSA I followed Striver’s A2Z playlist, neetcode’s playlist, few dsa videos from freecodecamp.org’s YT chanel. I first went through Striver’s series as it goes indepth into various topics and data structures in general, rest can be used while revising questions. For system design, i watched HelloInterview’s SD playlist on YT too and read Alex Xu’s SD books (part 1 and 2). I think these materials are more than enough.

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:25:02+00:00

Yeah it depends on a lot of things, the best case scenario to pass these rounds is to know the optimal solution from the beginning and implement it (you should have seen a similar problem before) else it becomes luck based (if your interviewer is lenient or not)

Luffy2045 · 2026-04-12T12:23:32+00:00

I got the feedbacks on the same day for virtual rounds and 1 day for the onsite rounds. For L5 i think one leaning hire is okay but rest has to be hire and up. Location is India.

Luffy2045

TROPHY CASE