Hey all. I completed the Google SDM interview loop a couple wks ago, and I just had a phone conversation with the recruiter, I was told I am not moving forward. :-( Although I didn't get it, it was a positive experience. Without checking out the insights shared in the Blind community, I probably couldn't even have the positive experience. Thx to those shared the insights! Mine is a failed case, but want to share experience, and payback to the community. Hope this helps your prep. . Applied for a PM position. (I am senior SDM, but open to try out something new) Next day a recruiter reached out to me, asking if I am open to SDM positions. I said yes. he said he will get back in touch. A month later (almost forgot about it), the recruiter came back saying, there are multiple teams interested in me, want to move forward to the interview loop. (FYI, in my case, I had no initial screening call with someone from the hiring team or group. It was Recruiter call, then straight to the interview loop) Two weeks later, Full 5 round interview loop got scheduled, and got them done. They were, 1. Code Review Interview: The recruiter told me to pick between Coding and Code Review in my choice of programming language. I picked Code review in Java. FYI, I haven't coded for a decade, and zero confidence for this interview. The interviewer was nice, and helped me a lot, but I didn't deliver what they need. RESULT - Not Pass 2. People management: it was general team management interview. Nothing super special. RESULT - Pass 3. System Design: The recruiter actually asked me what type of system design (in area) I want to be interviewed for. We picked 'Mobile app design', and I made my mistake here, During the interview, I did design for the entire system including the backend+mobile stack, and I couldn't put/focus enough time for the design in the mobile stack. I should've focused only in the mobile stack. RESULT - Not Pass (but the recruiter shared a feedback saying 'Strong in distributed system design, but couldn't assess the mobile design well) 4. System Design: The recruiter gave me a choice for this too. We picked 'Mobile Admin design'. In the actual interview, we talked about something else. a creative project, not so related to the mobile admin design. It was a fun white boarding session. RESULT - Pass (with 'Strong' feedback) 5. Technical Leadership: I would say this was 'Leadership Behavioral' RESULT - Pass Two weeks later, today, I had a phone call with the recruiter. The recruiter shared the results (above - 3 passes and 2 no-passes), and told me we can't move forward. The recruiter said, since I didn't terribly fail everything, there is a chance a team requests me to re-take the code review and/or system design interviews. I asked if that really happens, the recruiter said it happens sometimes. I don't have much hope on the 're-interview' part (idk it really happens or the recruiter was making me feel better). But anyways overall, it was a good experience. Good practice before I interview for other companies (I got interview loops coming up with other big tech companies), and refreshed a lot of management fundamentals (for interview :-) ) Additional info: still not too familiar with 'level' at Google, but I believe I was interviewed for '6' since I signed NDA, I don't feel comfortable sharing the exact questions asked in the interviews Topics for system design interviews were multiple choices #google #SDM #googleSDM #engineering #manager
Thanks, do you know when your can re interview
I believe one year. I asked if ok for me to apply for other positions at G now, and the recruiter said yes, and mentioned that they keep my interview results for one year. so they won't block me from applying for other positions, but once hiring manger and/or recruiter like my profile, they get to see my interview results for next one year. If they 'really' like my profile, they would request me to re-take the 'Not Passed' interviews. But IMO, why would they bother looking into profile that is already marked 'Failed/Rejected Interviews". Conclusion: once failed the interview loop, probably no new chance for one year.
Just curious, for code review, other than Java, are there other options?
/https://google.github.io/styleguide/ check out there. I believe they are ready to give you a code review interview with any language listed there.
Thanks for sharing.. what are the resources you are using for prep? And how much time you put in for prep?
Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks for sharing your experience! What resources should be reviewed for Code Review and System Design?
For the system design interviews, I just watched a lot, yeah a lot of system design mock interviews. It's something I have been doing as a part of my job, but the mock interviews helped me to construct how to present the idea in the interview format. Especially mock interviews from Exponent Youtube channel has the multiple mocks done by managers, that was helpful to stay at high level as most managers would do (having holistic view of the system) and drill down into a component at low level as needed. For the code review, I knew it's something I couldn't refresh in short time. I didn't prep for this at all. I went in with a plan just sharing what I have been doing the code reviews in my real life. The interviewer agreed and liked my way of doing it, but didn't show enough technical capability how the interview was designed to ask. Since I did mine in 'Code review in Java', I only can speak for that. As you guys know, the usual mistakes in Java, handling the exceptions, memory mgmt, code efficiency, etc. you should be able to identify and propose a fix for that. In my case, I felt the given code block could improve in all the areas I mentioned above, but I FAILED to make suggestions (in code).
Thanks much for sharing your experience. Being in academia, I have some prep to do!