Google "Level targeting Interview" experience

Apr 11 9 Comments

Previous post : https://www.teamblind.com/post/Google-Level-targeting-Interview-how-to-prepare-LAmtuoJZ

In short, I failed to target the L5 bar, and I'm going to taking "one more level target interview for L4".

The coding interview went like this: The interviewer gave me a question. (it's difficulty was LC Medium-Hard) I gave a bug-free complete code from the beginning within ~25 min. The interviewer asked me to extend my code to handle all bizarre edge cases. There were really difficult edge cases that requires the implementation to be significantly changed. (this was at LC Hard level) I was able to write a bug-free complete code for that within the time frame. My code was very idiomatic and clean, and the complexity was optimal.

The recruiter said : "To be considered as Google L5 target, in the feedback of technical interviews, it's unacceptable to see any ambivalent phrase like 'the candidate was not able to give perfect answer from the beginning, but the candidate was eventually capable of handling all cases'. Only feedback something like 'The candidate did everything perfect before my engagement so there is nothing to say' would be acceptable"

Come on, I have a lot of Google L4/L5 friends. I regularly conduct mock technical interviews with them. I think more than half of L5 employee can't make this bar if they re-interview. If I were to give coding questions as interviewer, I can come up with many subtle problems that they are very unlikely to bring up a perfect solution from the beginning. (How do I know? Because I watched it)

So what can I do? I'm not an US citizen, my country has shitty tech infrastructure, there is no other top-tier tech company here other than Google, so I have no choice.

TL;DR
1. Don't believe many coding interview tips that can be found in the internet something like "interviewers want to see your way of thinking, optimal solution itself is not very important". No, never. They are all bullshitting.
2. The interview bar is unlikely absolute evaluation, there is a matter of demand and supply

#software #swe #google

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  • Google / Eng
    LeeJaeDong

    Go to company page Google Eng

    PRE
    Amazon
     LeeJaeDong
    Based on your description, you didn’t solve the problem at all. The interviewer solved it for you, and you just wrote the code. That’s the description of an L3 interview performance. The interviewer did judge you based on your thought process, and wasn’t impressed.
    Apr 11 5
    • Google / Eng
      LeeJaeDong

      Go to company page Google Eng

      PRE
      Amazon
       LeeJaeDong
      I can only guess based on my experience in both real and mock interviews, in which the most common mistake by far is starting to code before fully understanding the problem, including every possible edge case. You mentioned the interviewer asking you to extend the problem to handle multiple bizarre edge cases, some of which required you to change the implementation significantly. Then the interviewer most likely wouldn’t agree with your assessment that your code was bug-free. They would see it as having several bugs, some of which are major. If there are only small bugs that require you to change one line of code to fix, and you noticed those yourself, that would be fine. But if they’re so serious that you had to make significant changes, then interviewers would see it as a lack of strong judgment to start coding without anticipating and resolving these issues first. This is exactly how it goes in real projects too - even a single missed edge case can result in needing a massive rewrite that takes months if you’re unlucky. You can argue that the interviewer’s expectations were unreasonably high, but what good does that do? If you really think you just got screwed by this one interviewer, you should be able to re-interview later with a different interviewer and get L5, or get L5 at plenty of other companies right now.
      Apr 11
    • OP
      There aren't "plenty of other companies" in my region that can make up for similar compensation as Google (of course Google employees' here are paid much much lower than in the US). Most tech companies here can't even make up for compensation as Qualcomm. If I was able to apply to US tech companies without visa problems, then sure, why bother just for Google, but that's not the case.
      Apr 11
  • Amazon
    sunbeamsb

    Go to company page Amazon

    sunbeamsb
    Interview thing is broken every where.. it carries equal luck factor along with hard work
    Apr 11 0
  • Google
    lufetfhjk

    Go to company page Google

    lufetfhjk
    You sound annoying. To put it bluntly - L5 interviews are not unrealistically impossible and plenty of people pass with even fewer YOE than you.

    Interviewers aren’t just trying to fail every candidate for any reason - they are just trying to make sure the candidate demonstrates the things they are looking for. Maybe you just have a poor self-assessment of your actual performance?

    Sure it’s also possible you got unlucky or whatever, but from your attitude it just looks like you’re looking for something to blame. Maybe introspect a bit more and see if it really is the case that you did as well as you thought you did. No google interviewer expects the candidate to give a perfect answer from the beginning, so it must be some other reason
    Apr 12 1
    • OP
      I didn't say how do I feel about what my performance was, I just wrote what happened in the interview.

      I missed some edge cases, so didn't consider them in writing the initial implementation. The interviewer guided me and I took them into account to write another implementation. That's all. If we assume that kind of edge cases aren't allowed, then the problem will be considered as LC medium. If we have to take into account all edge cases, the problem is definitely LC hard.

      I didn't say interviewers aren't just trying to fail every candidate. I just said that my interviewer wrote something like "the candidate was initially unable to consider all edge cases initially, but he did after being guided". This is what the recruiter at your employer told me, not my own guess.

      And hiring bars don't have to be the same for the same company. It may depends on region, available headcount, or individual interviewer. Many people passing L5 interview bars with <=5 YOE? It can be possible, but my acquaintances who work at Google (at my region) have never seen that.
      Apr 12