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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comments
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.
Speed also matters. I have a very simple question, but it has a very large number of follow-ups, and how many follow-ups we get through tells me at what level you are.
Also, we were repeatedly told that we were to leave the candidate feeling like they did a good job, even if they didn't.
I was a disaster of an entrepreneur for 7 years before I made any money at it.
I've seen hoardes of idiots and very good designers, both in Google.
Having a large graveyard isn't necessarily a bad thing. Especially with Google's graveyard, where most of the discontinued services are actually great, this doesn't indicate bad talent. Instead this indicates bad processes and misaligned performance metrics.