Introduction-

YOE:- 2 years
Prior experience:- Product Based Company
Timeline of Interview:- March-April 2022

I applied on the career portal with a referral. The recruiter reached out to me after couple of days. I asked 6 weeks for preparation.

My phone screen round was skipped.

Due to NDA, I can't share the exact questions but can discuss the topics tagged with the problems.

Round 1(Coding) - A string-based problem stating to do some encryption and decryption with some constraints. There was a follow up question to the same problem.
Algo/DS Used:- Adoc, Implementation based, more on problem solving skills
Assessment:- Hire / Lean hire(Based on my own. It may vary with the actual result.)

Round 2(Coding) - A geometry-based problem with 2-D points. Follow up was the extension of the above problem with the points being in dynamic form (like the stream manner with additional add and delete operation).
Algo/DS Used:- Adoc, BSTs, slope and knowledge of basic geometry.
Assessment:- Strong hire / Hire(Based on my own. It may vary with the actual result.)

Round 3(Coding) - One of the best rounds I had. Array and permutation-based problem with some constraints. There was a follow-up with no constraints in the original problem. I was able to code both solutions pretty quickly. So, The interviewer asked about another problem related to string. I was able to code that as well.
Algo/DS Used:- List & Maps, DP.
Assessment:- Strong hire / Hire(Based on my own. It may vary with the actual result.)

Round 4(Coding) - The problem was based on geometry 2-D plane with a follow-up related to implementing something in language specific to the problem above.
Algo/DS Used:- Maps, Implementing good hash function and knowledge of basic geometry.

Assessment:- Hire / Lean hire (Based on my own. It may vary with the actual result.)

Round 5(Googleyness) - The interviewer was very friendly. They asked about my previous projects, leadership qualities, and challenging the status quo. All in all, it was a good conversation rather than an interview.
Assessment:- Strong hire / Hire(Based on my own. It may vary with the actual result.)
Since the rounds were positive, the recruiter went ahead with Team Match. I had various team fitment calls. I chose the team which I liked.

After this, my packet went to HC and got approved :)

My Journey

I took MIT Courseware 6.006 on YouTube. And then solved problems on HackerRank, SPOJ, CodeChef, Codeforces, etc in my college years. I wasn't really good at it tbh. And then I started solving Leetcode. And that's my journey.

Preparation Strategy- I took 6 weeks to prepare myself. I solved various problems on different topics. I bought LeetCode Premium for a month( not promoting tho) and solved Google tag questions in increasing order of frequency. Plus, I did Graph and DP related problems in terms of increasing order of frequency.

Sources Used

• Leetcode discussion is gold mine.
• Tushar Roy YouTube channel
• Errichto YouTube channel (for few problems)

Compensation link:- https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/1988661/Google-or-L3-or-Bangalore

Notes to remember:-

1. It can take multiple tries to succeed.
2. Hard work is the key to success.
3. Be patient.

Please let me know in comments if you have any questions.