Status: 5 years of experience
Position: SDE L5 at Google
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Date: May 4th 2022

Technical phone screen (45 mins):

• Algorithm question

The interviewer did not introduce herself. I was really shocked. From the start, there was negative energy between us. She had very poor communication. It was really hard sometimes to understand her English.
I solved 1st problem. Started with a brute-force solution O(N^2), then improved it to O(N) and implemented it. So far so good.
Then, she tweaked a problem statement and made it more difficult and challenging. At first, I misunderstood her and went in the wrong direction. (Although I asked for clarification first, she said YES). But after a few mins, I myself understood that what I understood was not what she wanted. Anyways, some mins were lost so far. I came up with a Brute-Force solution and was explaining. it. But she interrupted me and said you have 2 mins to fully explain and run over a test case.

I started feeling some pressure, anyways managed to explain to her my solution.

She did not properly goodbye either. When I said "it was nice to talk to you, I had the real pleasure, I wish you a good rest of the day", her response was only "OK".