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      Software Engineer Interview

      22 Nov 2014
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google in Nov 2014

      Interview

      Applied online with employee referral. Also talked to an engineer at a university career fair. Was then offered an on-campus (school) interview about a month later, which consisted of 2 45-minute interviews. A couple days after that, I was called on-site in Seattle, which consisted of 3 60-minute interviews. Since I had a competing offer, I was informed of the decision 3 days later by phone, with the recruiter informing me that the hiring committee did not approve of my hire. The process was really dragged out (considering I originally applied in early September) and they only left me an hour to respond to my competing offer. Google HR can be surprisingly disorganized. For example, half of the interviewers had an outdated copy of my resume on hand, from an application I had submitted 3 years ago.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Signed NDA and will respect the NDA. For a new grad, they focus primarily on CS fundamentals, so know your data structures and algorithms well. However, be able to think through your code design in terms of scalability, even if they don't ask you to parallelize the code. I think they test the same concepts as Microsoft does, but I'll summarize the difference between the two companies without revealing any coding questions. Microsoft will ask you questions like, "If apples cost $2 and bananas cost $3, how much does it cost me to buy 3 apples and 2 oranges?" Google will ask you a question along the lines of, "If apples cost $2 and bananas cost $3, and I have a $1 million dollars, how many unique fruit combinations can I buy?" Simply put, Google questions are more in depth and require more thought and finesse, even though the same concepts are used in solving them.
      Answer question

      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

      29 June 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      New York, NY
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google (New York, NY)

      Interview

      Interview process consists of 2 rounds: 1st screening round (1 technical, 1 behavioral interview) 2nd onsite round (2 technical interviews) All technical interviews are still typical leetcode style DSA interviews, not the new AI based ones.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      They asked typical behavioral and technical interviews.
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      27 June 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      The interview process was smooth. I passed the phone screen but failed the onsite interviews. The bar seems to be lower for the phone screens. There were multiple coding/DSA rounds but no system design as it was said that at my location there are not many interviewers skilled at conducting system design interviews.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      The questions were rather typical leetcode-style puzzles. The phone screen was similar to LC 329 Longest Increasing Path in a Matrix.
      Answer question