I had a good interview at Google but I was finally rejected. The main issue was coding, according to the recruiter. I consider myself a good programmer, I've been coding since I was a teenager and I've written c++ (11/14/17) production code for years. One of the interviews was about coding a lot, and I think I did very well. Other two had a little of coding only. Now, my ego is hurt. Honestly, I don't know how I could have done coding better in the interview. I think I'll just move on, but I'd really like to know how they evaluated my coding skills.
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Maybe you aren’t as good as you think...? Just a guess
I consider that all the time
@intel Maybe this was a good calibration? Time to study up
Keep your head high and keep trying. This is a much more random process than you think. You’ve seen clowns at work, right? They interview people.
This. Just keep your head up and see if you can garner specific feedback — if it was communication or something, then see how to work on getting better at addressing it while coding (whiteboarding here works wonders)
Not to mention clowns in the management, the more senior the more they shine.
tldr; code quality and flow matter a lot I had quite a similar experience with my Google. Interviewer kept asking problems and I kept coding them. Interface was google docs and I had coded three problems in under 30 mins. I was super happy that I have definitely nailed it. Next day recruiter called and told that I have been rejected because my coding skills didn't match those for a staff engineer. I was taken aback because I had in my mind coded everything correctly, in really good time. Moreover the recruiter had clearly mentioned that interviewer was very happy with my communication throughout the interview. I messaged a friend in google also on a senior position. He too was surprised and he asked if I had the solutions still with me. Luckily I still had the google doc open in a tab. Although the access was gone I was able to extract the code using browser developer tools. As I copied the code and shared it to my friend, I realised what had been wrong. The code looked like what a guy just passed out from college would write. Code quality was terrible. There were long functions making code hard to understand. It was nowhere near what one would expect from someone with 8 years of experience. In my zest to code quickly I had completely neglected coding practices. I am not saying you would have made the same mistake. But at least in my case the biggest change I made in all my coding rounds is to emphasize on code quality even if it meant to overshoot slightly on time.
Thank you for sharing your experience. So how did you go about improving code quality ? What resources/tools did you deploy to get better ?
First thing structured code a bit in my mind before starting to code especially: * figuring out all the edge cases before hand as generally those are the ones that tend to turn code ugly. So now I first of all handle all edge cases before moving to general happy case. * For recursive solution decide upfront what all variables would need to be passed as arguments in recursive calls * For iterative decide levels of iteration upfront * For data structure based solution have the standard structure methods as black box as much as possible and only add logic to the ones where required. Then later implement the black box methods with standard implementation. Most importantly everytime I solve something on leetcode or interviewbit I now review my code myself to see what all I could have done in more concise manner. Also are there any unnecessary complexities that I added to the code.
It's partially random. Maybe the interviewer simply didn't like you. don't sweat it,those interviews are semi stupid, we all know it
Run after excellence and not the tag. May be you are destined for better. Good luck sir.
Good advice! I got rejected in a technical round as well, albeit w/ Google Cloud.
Not many. Maybe 15 medium, a couple hard. They asked me a medium question that I'd already solved in some production code.
I don't think LT was that important for my interview, since it wasn't for a generalist swe position. The coding question was related to my specialization.
It's random and noisy. Shit happens, try again in 6 months.
U r at Intel what do u code there ??? Stupid drivers what makes u think u r good ??
Ever heard of TBB, ICC, Vtune etc?
This comment is so stupid it hurts
Don't worry about it. Their interviews are nothing more than luck. Don't put Google on a pedastal their low TC ain't worth it.
says Nokia
Poor Google getting defensive? Aww
Coding rounds are really about communication. Perhaps your code was correct and optimal but you didn't interact with the interviewer? Anyone can memorize LC solutions with enough effort. You need to explain what you're doing, why, the tradeoffs and choices etc.
In that case recruiter would have mentioned communication as the reason instead of coding.
That's a bullshit way to evaluate talent. I understand the concern that someone might be memorizing solutions but you're also assuming that everyone's a chatter box. You change your question and change parameters of your question to challenge the candidate if you think the candidate is "cheating" I personally do not prefer to talk while I code. That doesn't mean I'm cheating by memorizing LC Solutions