Did anyone here think they performed really bad in a Google onsite for SWE position and were surprised that they still got the offer (downlevel offer counts)? By bad, I mean taking a long time in trying to come with an algorithm, maybe with some hints, and not able to finish coding due to only time but still on the right track and just discussed about optimizations at the end? And let’s just say these questions aren’t the warm up kind and are LC medium-hard. More like LC hard if you haven’t seen them before. TC: 215k
I thought I did poorly in a few rounds but I ended up getting strong feedback all around and an offer. It's more than just coding up quickly
I bombed one interview, barely managed to finish with a lot, a lot of help. Did extremely good in two others and decent in the 3rd. Got in.
By “bombed one interview”, were you clueless and gave the interviewer no signals that you can solve it by the end and wrote hardly any code? That bad?
So basically, I panicked and I was writing things I thought would work without explaining them. If calm, I would’ve solved the problem it was a code design problem, not sn algorithmic one. Basically the interviewer almost dictated me the logic at some point 😣
Contrary to what others have said, I bombed one, barely managed to solve one, rest were fine and I was rejected by recruiter without even proceeding to HC.
Did meh on 2 rounds, made some large mistakes on another, nailed SD/behavioral and passed HC. I think if you get good interviewers it’s more about showing you know your stuff and can communicate well rather than just flawless logic/code.
I bombed one, did poorly in another one, okay in the third one and really well in the fourth one. Ended up getting downleveled to L3 (this was a L3/L4 loop). I think what did me in was a poor behavioral round. This was my first behavioral interview I gave and I definitely didn’t do that well (answers were L3 scope). Recruiter said I was borderline L3. So I think coding only matters to a certain degree.
What’s your definition of “bomb” vs. “poor”? Like having no clue on how to solve it and not able to finish code?
Bomb = I struggled to find optimal solution for the first part of the problem (easy-level). Ended up taking the bulk of the time allotted so we only had 5 mins to tackle the actual problem (hard-level extension of original problem). Completely blanked out and couldn’t find the optimal solution. Poor = took too long/needed hints to find optimal solution for the actual problem
One of my interviewers was a person who was very well known in the industry for major contributions to a popular programming language. We talked for 45 minutes about compiler stuff and I had no idea what I was saying or how the interview went, and spent most of that time feeling super intimidated and full of imposter syndrome. Another interviewer was an self important German guy with a big ego who asked me to do mathematical proofs of my algorithm. This was hard to impossible - I was already 10 years out of college at this point, and I could barely recall how to formulate a proof and recall probability theory sufficiently to answer the question. Another interviewer asked me an algorithmic question that had one sorta tricky answer (from later research). I had. No. Idea. I fumbled around for 45 minutes implementing a dag and various DFS things that approached but never really fully solved the problem. As part of another interview, I was asked to do multiple back of envelope calculations to estimate the storage used by Google maps. My lame estimations skills combined with rusty mental math skills meant that I floundered throughout this. But... I got an offer (at L5), and wound up working there for 10 years, eventually leaving as an L7. I don't really know why they hired me, but I think I did ok irrespective of the interview :)
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I bombed 1 round but did very well on others and got in. Ive seen people bomb 2 and get in. Relax. Its impossible to guess the outcome
What is your definition of “bombing an interview”?
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