Google problems are so different...
I noticed that a lot of LC Google problems are a bit different and have a pattern to them. A lot don't seem to have optimal or straight forward solutions. A lot of Google questions seem to bend your brain a little. I feel like you need to focus on mixing multiple concepts to get an approach. It might not be the most efficient solution, but man...kudos to the folks who come up with these kinds of problems. Does anyone else notice that?
Did you just do a phone screen or something? I usually find their problems to be quite interesting because they mask it in a story usually, and you need to drill down to understand the core processes that need to take place to solve the problem. I've only had one super bad google experience where the guy asked me about computational geometry after he said he saw that I have no experience in the subject.
I wish mines were masked in stories lol. I’ve had 2 phone screens and they were never stories. They’re always “You have X, and now get Y based off of that.”
Problems straight from LC are banned at G so we have to get creative.
Maybe for you. I just passed the google interview and it was all leetcode medium types.
One I got this morning for a phone screen wasn’t even on leetcode. Seems like they pull them from geeks4geeks cuz that’s the second time it has happened.
What was the question? Link?
Given the dimensions of a grid: n and m, find the total number of squares that fit inside. A cell in the grid counts as a square. And squares can overlap each other. Worst part is that you’d need to use math for the optimal solution. I used DP which is better than brute force but still not optimal. Heck if you’re really good at math, you can do it all in constant space and linear time. This was Uni͏v͏ersit͏y grad. Meanwhile I know a guy who was asked 2Sum off of leetcode, which is also shown in Life At Google’s YouTube channel. The power of luck is kinda annoying.