Google Interview Experience

Long time lurker here. Blind has been super helpful in helping calm my nerves as I read of others' experiences and timelines (while making up worst-case scenarios for myself), so decided to share my experience and timeline of Google in case it might help calm the nerves of others who might stumble across this post. I think my timeline is about average for those without competing offers or deadlines. I'm also part of the "Early Career SWE" process. Sourcing recruiter reached mid-August to start the process. I heard back with a scheduled phone-screen by the end of the week. The phone-screen was scheduled for early the following week. Phone screen: Medium difficulty graph problem with topological sort. Interviewer was really receptive and helped out as she heard my thought process throughout the interview. Was notified of moving to onsite a couple days later. Also recruiter is now changed from sourcing recruiter to technical recruiter. Met with recruiter to discuss details and sent availabilities. Onsite was scheduled for a little over a week later. To avoid redundancy, I will say that I really enjoyed talking with all the interviewers; I felt really welcomed and at ease. This reinforced what I've heard about engineers at Google being smart but humble. All the problems, I would say, are medium. Hard problems on Leetcode I've noticed always have a obscure algorithm or trick, which these questions did not have. They all resorted to DS&A fundamentals. Onsite: Interview 1 (googliness): Met with a new Googliness interviewer. Interviewer mentioned it was their first time doing this type of interview. We had a good discussion on what I would provide to Google and what I found attractive about Google. Interview 2: Sliding window problem. Was able to solve the problem with hints from the interviewer. My initial approach was not the optimal, but with a couple minor hints, was able to get the optimal solution. Interview 3: Another sliding window problem. After telling the interviewer about the similarity of the problem to the previous one (it was pretty similar), they decided to continue with the existing problem. Ironically, I this was probably my worst interview lol. I reused the basic algorithm structure of the previous problem, but was unable to think clearly about the modification needed to get it working for this new problem. With hints and pointers, was able to get a solution with ugly looking code. Interview 4: Backtracking/recursive problem. My best interview in terms of communication and connection with the interviewer. Had a good time describing and walking through my solution and discussing runtime and space complexity with them. No hints were needed Interview 5: Backtracking/recursive problem. Could have been solved with DP, but I went with recursion and memoization. Explained runtime and space complexity. Lots of time remaining so had a second question without code (just explain approach and complexity), which I was able to provide. Complexity I gave was slightly incorrect when I thought back later... Now the hardest part begins: waiting lol. Hinging on every email hoping it was an update. Just over a week later, notified I passed HC and was moving to team matching. Two weeks after that, I was reached out by a team match specialist. Gave my availabilities and a few days later, was notified of 4 team match (all GCP) scheduled for the following week. Was notified of a matched team a little under two weeks after my final team match call. Final approvals took 3 days and got an offer after. Small negotiation and received a follow up offer the next day. And that's basically it. From time of initial recruiter reaching out to me signing an offer took a little over two months. The people I worked with have been great; the hardest part was the waiting in different stages, especially towards the end when I could see the end in sight. Thanks Blind for introducing me to resources like levels.fyi, and helping me stay a little more sane through the process. Going to stop using this app after a few more days lol. Not about that TC-chasing life. Current and future location: Bay Area Current TC: 175k Initial TC: 180K, L3 New TC: 210K, L3 YoE: 2 #google #googlehc