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      Software Engineer Interview

      19 Mar 2014
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google in Feb 2014

      Interview

      I had applied through their job portal online. I was contacted by the first recruiter in January 3rd week. We exchanged emails, she had me fill out a couple of forms, and then I was handed over to another recruiter. She, in turn, handed me over to yet another recruiter. The recruiter coordination was not good, their responses were all over the place. Two recruiters were working in tandem to schedule my phone interview and they managed to convert the interview time from PST to my local time with an 1hr error. This ended up with me waiting for the phone screen call one hour earlier than it actually was. I had given up and decided that the person would not call and then I receive a call 1 hour later. The interview itself was appallingly conducted. First of all, the interviewer seemed to be in a room with a lot of echo. Second, he must have been using some kind of phone system on speaker or something similar because I could hear my own voice echoed back. I mentioned this to him twice, since it made it difficult to hear his words with the reverberation in the room blurring his voice and my voice echoing. The first time, he said I must be using a headset and that the microphone was too far away from the mouth. I told him that I wasn't using a headset. He waved it away. The second time, he said the same thing. By then I had given up on the interview. I couldn't hear much, he wasn't helping. Trying to decipher the conversation and trying to code simultaneously had become a horrible adventure. Besides, he wasn't listening to half of what I'd said, be it trying to explain my problem-solving method or be it my concern regarding the fact I couldn't hear much over the garble. Some of the start-off questions (break-ice questions) he had asked regarding my resume were pointedly patronizing or so I felt. I understand however that a phone screen doesn't give you enough indicators about these things and I could be wrong. The questions themselves were basic programming, then some threading, concurrency, map-reduce trivia questions. I understand many people have the ambition or life-goal to work for the company. Perhaps to them this process might be forgivable. Most interviews probably aren't like this and I might have had something of an exception. I consider it disrespectful of my time and an unwillingness to listen to what I could potentially provide.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      nothing too difficult, many trivia questions
      Answer question
      3

      Other Software Engineer interview reviews for Google

      Software Engineer Interview

      4 May 2014
      Anonymous employee
      Auburndale, FL
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Google (Auburndale, FL) in Apr 2014

      Interview

      Direct onsite because I interviewed in the past and did well that time. From the time I sent my resume to interview day: 2 weeks. From interview day to offer over the phone: 2 weeks. The syllabus for the interviews is very clear and simple: 1) Dynamic Programming 2) Super recursion (permutation, combination,...2^n, m^n, n!...etc. type of program. (NP hard, NP programs) 3) Probability related programs 4) Graphs: BFS/DFS are usually enough 5) All basic data structures from Arrays/Lists to circular queues, BSTs, Hash tables, B-Trees, and Red-Black trees, and all basic algorithms like sorting, binary search, median,... 6) Problem solving ability at a level similar to TopCoder Division 1, 250 points. If you can consistently solve these, then you are almost sure to get in with 2-weeks brush up. 7) Review all old interview questions in Glassdoor to get a feel. If you can solve 95% of them at home (including coding them up quickly and testing them out in a debugger + editor setup), you are in good shape. 8) Practice coding--write often and write a lot. If you can think of a solution, you should be able to code it easily...without much thought. 9) Very good to have for design interview: distributed systems knowledge and practical experience. 10) Good understanding of basic discrete math, computer architecture, basic math. 11) Coursera courses and assignments give a lot of what you need to know. 12) Note that all the above except the first 2 are useful in "real life" programming too! Interview 1: Graph related question and super recursion Interview 2: Design discussion involving a distributed system with writes/reads going on at different sites in parallel. Interview 3: Array and Tree related questions Interview 4: Designing a simple class to do something. Not hard, but not easy either. You need to know basic data structures very well to consider different designs and trade-offs. Interview 5: Dynamic programming, Computer architecture and low level perf. enhancement question which requires knowledge of Trees, binary search, etc. At the end, I wasn't tired and rather enjoyed the discussions. I think the key was long term preparation and time spent doing topcoder for several years (on and off as I enjoy solving the problems). Conclusion: "It's not the best who win the race; it's the best prepared who win it."
      2501

      Software Engineer Interview

      25 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      London, England
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google (London, England)

      Interview

      Had an intro screening call. They were mostly interested in how well I could code in python and java. They did not give me a follow up interview. I enjoyed my experience.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      What is your favourite programming language
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      23 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      2 rounds of interviews with the first round being a technical and a behaverial. The second round being two technicals. The format was straight forward and the interviewer was professional.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Talk about how you resolve a conflict.
      Answer question