Status: 10 years of exp
Position: SWE at Google
Location: Mountain View, CA
Date: 6 July, 2020

No phone screen:
Onsite (5 rounds): ...

• 1 Behavioral
• 4 Algorithm interviews
  Result: Offer !

Dear leetcode community.

I finally did it! I’ve cracked the Google interview for SWE position. I bloody did it!

Had the onsite back in July and found the team just last December.

It was a long road for me. Over 3 years of prep, 750 LC problems solved multiple times in Java and Py and over 30 interview trials. Obviously Google was not the only company I interviewed with. There were 5 (for different positions) onsites with Google, 2 with Uber, 2 Amazon, 1 FB and few other tech companies most of which rejected me after the technical phone screening.

I’ve got a great support team(a gang? lol) of friends who were at different FAANG companies and who encouraged me greatly in my prep. From them I learned about the books, courses that focus on interview prep, mock interview resources that everybody know and obviously the Leetcode.

Here comes a paragraph of appreciation: The recruiter matters. I interviewed with the same recruiter that guided me during the previous attempt last year. Despite my previous failure, I was so pleased with her professionalism and support last year that it was a no brainer for me to choose which recruiter to work with this year (and I know a handful of recruiters by now, lol). I was super lucky with my recruiter as she was so helpful and supportive. She definitely helped me to survive the whole process from application to offer and not to go insane ))) and I’m grateful to her for that.

I’d say the interview was not super hard. I’ve kinda seen it all, except for 1 algo interview that I bombed big time. Well … happens. That might be the reason I was given L3 instead of L4. I’m a bad exam taker )))
What I can mention is that having virtual onsite is definitely less stressful and thus easier than traditional onsite. I had a good sleep prior to the day, used my keyboard for writing code and had a whiteboard behind me to do some drawings on demand. Proper attire and haircut is a good thing, I think. It definitely won’t hurt. Somebody recommended me to use breaks between interviews to wash face and bite a piece of chocolate, so I did. Another advice (take it or leave it) is to try to be positive and make light jokes where appropriate (when you’re not writing code), I believe recruiters want to see the good human side of your character too! Also I had a cheat sheet that I glimpsed from time to time:

• constraints, results
• custom testcases !
• algo candidate, running time
• pseudo code
• code
• refactor
• test

Simple, right? But I tend to forget things from this list so I always had this script under my left hand.

Well, I guess that’s it. My deepest thanks to Leetcode and you folks for all your submissions, comments and infinite motivation that you share with each other. Wishing the success to everyone who is working on big fat offers, stay calm and solve LC !