In total I had 6 technical rounds. Aced 3/6 rounds and completely flunked 3/3 rounds.. The ones I aced had simple Bfs, sorting/set, heap, backtracking. LC easy-medium I would say. The ones I flunked had greedy+DP(2 of them), and one had a trick related to time complexity. All questions are unique and not on LC enough. What pisses me off is the amount of variation each round at Google has. Unlike FB, Google doesn't ask verbatim LC questions. At least at FB I can memorize top 100 questions and get through. With Google I am at the mercy of the interview. If you saying practice makes someone perfect then you are wrong on all fronts. Practice just prepares you for algorithms and variations of problems you have already seen. In hope that you will encounter a Similar question. But try it out with greedy, dp, trick based questions. You all will pee in your pants. If everyone could just practice and ace interviews then the whole world would have been at Google. Clearly that's not the case. Which means those that got through were a bunch of lucky kids or the ones that have been doing competitive programming since 12 (Russian coders). PS - don't give the BS of pattern matching bla bla. You can't do shit if it's a greedy problem. Greedy+DP problem is all about thinking capabilities unlike your generic BFS/DFS algorithms.
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No question is unique. It’s your ignorance that you only prepare from leetcode lol
No question is unique. Sure if you can come up with task scheduler solutions on the first try then you would be at Google. Not at Amazon
Looool I don’t wanna rest & vest as of now. Growth > being Stagnant
I’ve solved lots of algorithm problems I’ve never encountered by using techniques present in other LC problems and just using reasoning
Yup, that's how I too solved in the interviews. But if you run into problems that involve tricks then you ain't gonna be able to solve them.
I hate interviews that are just trying to be smarter than the interviewee. It's not proving anything and provides little signal on a candidates ability to get work done
I ain't trying to smart. If I am given a problem with a greedy solution expected in the most optimal way with tricks involved then how am I supposed to come up with the solution? Unless my brain in those 20 minutes can exactly move in the direction of optimal solution without the help of the interviewer. If it's your generic DFS/BFS algorithm then I can easily pattern match and find the solution. It's quite obvious as it's theoretical knowledge of the Algorithm. With greedy algorithms you are forced to think in certain directions in 20 minutes
Google has some issues. It’s fine because there is no work to do in google anyways so they are very selective in bringing in people. Google usually hires competitive coders who have high ego. They usually have solved many questions that they have that thinking mindset but most LC crammers won’t be able to solve those imo
How do you all even know which interviewers had what feedback? My recruiter treated me like an ex-convict and wouldn’t tell me shit - not even who were going to be my interviewers. The only feedback was that I didn’t make it and to try again later.
If you can memorize the top 100 LC answers for FB and make it through their interview then all that means is that FB has shit interviews. Who the fuck cares if you know the answers to the top 100 LC questions? That is a terrible indicator of if you can do the job.
But it's already fair that everybody gets asked the same lol
Partially agreed--the question bank is massive to prevent people from gaming this system. This means that the average loop will also, unfortunately, have a higher variance in difficulty than other companies. I, like you, was frustrated with the randomness in the interview process and thought that would be it after getting in. Having worked here, I can understand why the interviews are designed the way they are. Many of Google's other things are subject to the same randomness--promo is really slow unless you manage to get a good project or a good manager (sometimes you need both--better pray your work doesn't get canceled or deprioritized), readability really depends on how nitpicky your reviewer is and how they feel that day, etc. Is this something you'd like to deal with on a day-to-day basis? If not, I'd encourage you to reconsider your thoughts on the interview process and take it as a red flag to stay away from the company. This is something I didn't realize when going through interviews, and I have some regrets about accepting an offer here. If someone tries to show you who they are, you should probably believe them.
Maybe that's why people just rest and vest and stop caring about promo or comp. Refreshers keep coming in to ensure TC stays the same and randomness in promo or project can take its own sweet time.
There's still a cliff, and TC is tied to perf, so on average growth is slow (again, unless you're a rockstar, know how to game the system, or have a good manager and project). You could definitely just give up and rest-and-vest, which is what I expect most people that stay here would do. Benefits are great and community is good. If you're looking to grind, I'd suggest a different FAANG or, even better, a unicorn.
This is just wrong. People are so scared to admit its their fault lmao. There are definitely questions where you probably wont be prepared for but most should be ok
Wow so you think you can come up with a DP solution for an unseen problem in 20 minutes. I am sure 99% of the population won't.
Ive been given unseen DPs and solved it. Also, its not all about writing the optimal solution. Ive done plenty of interviews where I didnt have time to write the complete optimal solution and got offers like at Google. Communication and behavior is really important too and a lot of candidates lack these
Wouldn’t you be even more pissed if you cleared the interview and they lowballed and downlevel you? Better to just skip Google nowadays.
Lol. Because meta is good 👍 right. Rolling my eyes.
In what ways do you think Google is better? I feel like my career growth has stagnated despite getting a ton of scope and learning a lot since coming here--I see by your username that it's not an uncommon feeling (though I'm not L7)
There is always luck factor to interview. If you practice enough problems the solution should automatically strike. People at Google are humans too they cant come up with innovative questions all the time they usually modify existing problem and present it in different way. It is upto you to clear the confusion and simplify the problem.
Kinda agree. I got asked an esoteric mathematical theory for the first round of my on-site a few weeks ago. That was all she wrote. Gotta work harder
Yup 0 help all throughout. In fact for one of the backtracking questions the interviewer gave me an hint and I was able to solve. He basically gave a no hire because I took his hint
I’m gonna try again for Google next year. I’m gonna put in some work with CLRS the actual textbook cause at Google u need to know the why behind every thing u claim during an interview, unlike almost everywhere else where it’s pure LC pattern recognition