YOE: 12 years I recently interviewed for a Sr Software Engineer L5. Out of 5 rounds, I thought 4 went decent to good & one coding was bad. Coding # 1. (Doubly linked list) It took me a long time understanding inputs for the application, at the end I came up with my own inputs and coded, I don’t think my logic was accurate. This round was the worst among all. Feedback would probably No Hire for this round Coding # 2 (array traversal ) It took my sometime to get to a logic and solution, interviewer gave me hints few occasions which I was able to understand and implement it, overall interviewer seemed satisfied with logic and space and time complexity. He asked me to optimize from O(n), for which I came up with a solution (verbally) to optimize it to log(n). I am not quite sure if the interviewer would say No hire because he had to provide hints on multiple occasions. My hunch is Hire. Coding#3 (graphs) Same as above, I was able to solve it with some hints, definitely less hints than previous solution. We finished 10 min prior and then we chatted some usual stuff after that. Since we completed early I’m thinking my solution was acceptable and he was convinced. My guess is Hire Behavioral#4 I thought I answered all the questions with scenarios. I personally thought it went well but this is a kind of interview you never know how it went. My guess is Hire. System design #5 (large scale distributed application) I think this went the best among all after behavioral round. Interviewer kept on asserting that I’m hitting all the areas he was looking for. My guess is Hire for this round. What are the chances of getting through the interview with one bad round? My rating NH, LH, H, SH, SH ****Edit **** Just got a reject from the recruiter. Bar was not met from coding standards in all three rounds but Feedback from System Design and Behavioral was very good.
Poll please
About 5
Having interviewed with google in the past, more likely this would be no hire
Mantra is "When in doubt, no hire. There are plenty of fish in the ocean."
I hate to be the carrier of bad news but based on the information you gave, I think its gonna be a no hire
Definitely no hire. First two rounds don't sound good. As a senior engineer the second interviewer would have expected a better solution coded and without as much prompting
He asked me to code and get to a solution and asked me not to bother about most efficient code to start with. He later said now that your code works, can you think of optimization. He even mentioned you have approached the problem in a good logical progression meaning get to a solution first and then optimize it later
I've had similar feedback with rejections. Just relating to my experiences. Hope it works out better for you.
You are not able to articulate clearly what went wrong. Articulation is a key factor imo.
In the first round Inputs to the programs weren’t clearly defined. Spent lot of time to clarify that and just ran out of time. Second round was more like I had a brain freeze moment and couldn’t think clearly but recovered later..
Sorry to disappoint, but what you're describing is lean no-hire, or at very best, lean hire for rounds 2&3. So on your three coding interviews you would have let's say NH, LNH, LH. That's almost certainly a no-hire recommendation from the HC. Even if you got very lucky and got LNH, LH, LH that wouldn't be good enough. The good news is that you were good enough that Google will want to interview you in a year or so.
Thanks for your feedback, does a SH for system design and behavioral help in any way?
Does it help? Sure. Does it move you over the bar to hire? Probably not. In the best case scenario I think you get another coding interviews that you would have to crush. I just don't see HC recommending hire for a general swe role when your coding is mediocre at best.
Sounds like a no hire. Given how you struggled in the first 2 rounds, it’s hard to believe that you can finish the #3 interview 10 mins early. That’s a lot of time for following up questions. The interviewer probably gave up on you (and you didn’t figure out that your solution was completely wrong)
I think OP still has a chance... What if the ones they did well end up being strong hires? Maybe one of the bad ones ends up being leaning hire... Still undecided I'd say.
Polla