Google interview performance

Nov 21, 2020 11 Comments

I had a full interview loop at #google yesterday for a Staff software engineer position. Pretty sure I bombed one of the system design interviews but did very well on all the others (another system design, 2 coding, and 1 googlyness). What are the odds that I get through hiring committee? Will I get down levelled? Additional stuff: I have a strong referral and very good resume (large scope at MS and 5 years at FB before MS).

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TOP 11 Comments
  • New
    Uber.

    New

    Uber.
    @OP what type of questions did you get for your system design?
    Nov 21, 2020 4
    • New
      Uber.

      New

      Uber.
      Btw based on your practice and learnings for the system design what should generally be an approach when they throw at you a problem Do you start asking questions and start drawing boxes and relating those to each other or you you start with database or you start with a specific component of the system, what's the best way to go about solving problems in your opinion?

      Also any good resources that can help with prep?
      Nov 21, 2020
    • So the mistake I always make when I do poorly is to get distracted by the part of the problem that I don’t understand and jump immediately into trying to work it out. EG in the problem I messed up the correct database schema was super unintuitive. I spent a bunch of time focused on that to the extent that it didn’t let me discover other parts of the problem that had big hints, or talk about parts of the system I did understand.

      A good strategy for me in hindsight would be to always start with the REST API design. This is something I have lots of experience with so it’s easy for me to talk about. And, it is a good way to clarify the problem and make sure you and the interviewer are fully aligned.

      The other thing I would suggest is to revisit decisions you made earlier and revalidate them. Question yourself even if you are right.

      In my example I would have rocked it if I had:
      1. started with API design and roughly proposed the request / response payloads
      2. Go to Database design and talks about the schema and query model
      3. Revisit the API and make sure I actually have the stuff I need to support the query model. Update if necessary
      4. Once solidified, move on to the systems design, start adding caches / shards / load balancers to actually scale things out
      5. Revisit DB design again etc
      Nov 21, 2020
  • Oracle
    whoAmI%

    Go to company page Oracle

    whoAmI%
    It is hard to figure out your own performance in system design interviews unless you did really bad. Some interviewers have a style where they ask a lot of questions but that could mean they are able to access depth of your knowledge. If it was actually bad, it will depend on how good other interviews went.
    Nov 21, 2020 0
  • Amazon
    ATT89

    Go to company page Amazon

    ATT89
    Yeah all the other interviews need to be good. HC may ask for a follow up single interview for more data. I was told I did really well in my interviews and passed HC easily but my recruiter did not tell me they approved me for PgM but not TPM and kept stringing me along into team matching, comp committee and a verbal offer. A later recruiter told me of that downshift. I think it was because of the design challenge question by a guy I could barely understand due to his accent. He was trying to have me solve a problem he was working on... live shifting to a new quota system.
    Nov 21, 2020 1
    • Yeah, I also struggled to understand the interviewer in the one I performed poorly on. Bummer that there is some luck of the draw involved in this stuff
      Nov 21, 2020
  • @op : did you receive any feedback?
    Dec 9, 2020 1
  • Facebook / Eng
    xLBm15

    Go to company page Facebook Eng

    xLBm15
    Wish you all the best! I’ve my G interview in a week. May I DM you for pointers? Thanks!
    Nov 22, 2020 0