Google SWE Interview - Code Completeness
Dec 8, 2018
25 Comments
Just did onsite this week. I am an ninja (coding) interviewer at FB and, compared to our style (or all 5 other companies I interviewed with lately including Amazon and Uber), Google interviewers seemed to use a lot less standard LC-ish questions and, surprisingly, doesnโt seem to focus on finishing clean code as much. In one of the interview, we didnt even really code although it was not a system design one.
I felt as if they were mostly concerned more about problem solving then coding itself. Is this a fair observation? or did I just get unique set of interviewers?
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In my FB experience I had to pump out perfect solutions for leetcode hard in 45m. Only managed it since I'd seen it before. Google interviews are at once both easier and more difficult.
I don't see the point in asking a candidate to code in every single round of interview (5+).
If at all I ask a candidate to code sth, it should usually take 5 mins to churn out a few lines of code. This is just a sanity check.
I don't see Googlers just churning thousands of lines of code every day. There is more to solving a problem than just writing code. :)
When someone is writing production code, the general expectation is that the final artifact is of very good quality. Just because the interview process doesn't obsess on high quality code, it doesn't mean people are okay with checking in crappy code. I am just being explicit about the expectations. Even senior engineers get code review comments and people have time to think through the design when they are working on day-to-day tasks. It is hard to simulate this environment during an interview, so it is okay to have few minor bugs as long as you are able to sketch your thoughts as code without difficulty. If you claim to have strong competency in a language or if a team is looking for an expert programmer who is familiar with a particular language, then the interviewer will look to see if you are using the language constructs effectively.
Do you think we should ask the candidate to code in every interview?
OP is not just talking about coding interviews. Read the question more thoroughly.
"surprisingly, doesnโt seem to focus on finishing clean code as much. In one of the interview, we didnt even really code although it was not a system design one.
I felt as if they were mostly concerned more about problem solving then coding itself."
"We didn't even really code" doesn't mean it wasn't a Google coding interview though.
In my phone screen with Google I hadnโt gotten the correct solution in code either. Just a bunch of approaches. And I got a yes for the on-site. It looks like Google is concerned more about the approach than the coding part itself.
I have on-site in a couple weeks. Fingers crossed!
Any idea what helped with your prep? (Since leetcode alone isnโt enough)