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      Software Engineer Interview

      3 Feb 2014
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Mountain View, CA
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

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

      Interview

      First phone interview was short and very easy -- basic questions about data types, complexity, concurrency. Second phone interview did not happen: interviewer got sick and did not warn the recruiter. After struggling to reschedule for about a week they decided to skip that phase and do an on-site interview. Onsite interview consisted of five rounds 45 minutes each. Most of the interviewers gave one large problem and kept me polishing the solution until the time ran out. I did not really get a chance to ask a lot of questions about the company (just asked two and answers did not really amuse me). I don't remember the most difficult problem, but two largest ones were: write `Game Of Life' (not in pseudocode, in Java!) and write a procedure that draws a line in a bitmapped array (again, in a real programming language). That had to be done on a whiteboard (side note: while I has writing interviewers were copying my solutions into their notebooks by hand). All problems throughout my interview included questions about complexity and some included questions about optimization and testing. I got a feeling that the work is challenging from technical point of view, but the interview process seems quite ridiculous (especially writing substantially large programs on the board) and most interviewers' attitude can be described as `quite arrogant.' I did not get any background on the company and its nature of work I throughout the interview process and did not feel frustrated when they did not proceed with an offer. P.S. One tiny upside, their recruiters are the best: prompt, good at personal communication and very organized.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      I don't remember the most difficult question, it was something along the lines of computational complexity, but I got two really long problems (see review).
      Answer question
      1

      Other Software Engineer interview reviews for Google

      Software Engineer Interview

      4 May 2014
      Anonymous employee
      Auburndale, FL
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Google (Auburndale, FL) in Apr 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."
      2501

      Software Engineer Interview

      23 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      2 rounds of interviews with the first round being a technical and a behaverial. The second round being two technicals. The format was straight forward and the interviewer was professional.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Talk about how you resolve a conflict.
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      24 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      There was a technical screen within their coding platform, followed by a first-round technical interview, followed by a first-round behavioral interview, followed by second-round interviews, both technical and behavioral interviews.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      What was your role on a technical project you've worked on?
      Answer question