Education: B.Tech in CS/IT from Tier 1 college India
Years of Experience: 1 year 9 months at interview time, 1 year 11 months now
Prior Experience: SDE1 at a leading product based company
Current TC - ~29L(26L cash + stocks)
I got reached out by a google recruiter in March 2022. I replied a few days later and then the recruiter also took 2-3 weeks to reply back.
In Apil first week, we connected over a phone call and discussed the opportunity. We had a discussion over my current role and the work I had done till date. They also asked about what I am looking for in my next role and my reasons for a change.
After that the recruiter explained the interview process at Google and tbh, I didnt have much context about the process. They explained in details how each round will be strictly 45 mins with 2-3 medium/hard questions and I need to be able to solve a hard question in 10-15mins tops.
I told them I needed atleast 7-8 weeks to prepare and give it my best shot. The recruiter was very accomodating of this and told me that since interviews can't be scheduled more than 1 month in advance, they will connect with me in May second week again to check in with me and schedule the interviews.
We conected in May second week and I scheduled my interviews in June 3rd week.
I had 4 interviews spread over 2 days(2 interviews each day). I am not the kind of person who can sit for more than 2-3 round in a day(I need 3 hrs gap between 2 interviews xD).
My screening round was skipped. I had direct onsites.
Onsites
Round 1:
The interviewer was a quite experienced person.
Duration 45 mins
Question: https://leetcode.com/problems/find-leaves-of-binary-tree/
We started with this question and I gave the optimised solution and working code with 15-20 mins. Then we moved on to multiple variations of this about the ways we can delete the leaves and what would be pros and cons.
The interviewer then asked me to code up of the variations and also note down the time and space complexity.
He was quite impressed with my answers here and asked me to note those points down in the doc so that they have my ideas documented for feedback.
At the end of the interview, the interviewer told me that I did very good and wished me luck for next rounds
**Verdict: Strong hire. **
**Round 2: **
Duration: 45 mins
Interviewer again was an experienced person.
Question: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/2064646/google-screening-interview-question-may-2022
The question was a variation of this question. Intially all routers had same range, then different range. Range was also unbounded. Then we moved to a variation where src and dest are not in the list.
Then a variation where multiple queries would be run for different source and dest. Pre-compute was required here.
There 1-2 more variations we covered and discussed the approaches for.
One variation was where some routers were swtiched off and couldn't transmit.
The interviewer clearly told me the expectations at the begining of the inter view. They were - Optimised algorithm, Working code and OOPs based class structure of the router and other model i use.
He was also focusing on how much change my code required to accomodate the changes for each variation.
Variable names and how I break computations into different fuctions was also evaluated here I guess.
I had answered all the queries he had and also the time and space complexity of each of the approaches/variations.
At the end, he said we covered quite a few scenarios. It was a good discussion
Verdict: Strong hire
Round 3:
Duration: 45 mins
Googlyness round.
I was expecting a tech round here but interviewer told me it's the googlyness round. It took me 2-3 mins to context switch for behavioural questions.
I was aksed the usual behavioural questions.
Conflict with colleagues.
Tight deadlines from PM/EM/PgM and how I handled it.
TIme when I discovered midway project that we missed some critical aspect.
TIme when I helped a colleague.
Can't remember all questions but there were a few more.
He was done with all his questions in around 38mins and then I asked about his team and work for a few mins.
Verdict: Strong hire(This was told to me by the recruiter just a few mins after the interview ended)
Round 4:
Duration: 45 mins
It was similar to above question but we had to give the first such index where this can be possible.
We started with strings of same length. I suggested that we can two pointer approach but then I was stuck for 4-5 mins here on the next step, but then gave the optimised solution.
We then discussed the case where strings are not of same length.
I had to give working code for both variations and then the time and space complexity.
Question 2: I cant find the link, but the question was.
Given a partially filled array/buffer containing only As and Bs. You have to remove all the As and double the Bs in the buffer. No extra space allowed and in place modification is to be done.
If its not possible to do so, return the original array.
I gave the optimised solution, pseudocode and time/space complexity for this.
By the time we finished 1st que, only 10mins were left in the interview. The interviewer was 3-4 mins late and 2-3 mins went in the intro part. So effectively we only had 40 mins.
**Verdict: Strong hire. **
The last round interviewer took nearly 2 weeks to submit her feedback since they went on leave soon after the interview.
This delayed my decision from HC.
I was also interviewing with Amazon and I was expecting a decision from them just a few days after Google interviews, so the last feedback was important for me to make a deicison.
When I got confirmation from Amazon for SDE2, I informed my Google recruiter about the same and she told me that 3 rounds feedback was L4 recommend and she was confident that they would be able to offer me L4 too. She just needed the last round feedback officially to take it to HC.
In the meantime, she set up a team matching call for me. The manager too liked my profile and was quite eager to have me in the team. He gladly backed me for L4.
Once the feedback was submitted for last round, the recruiter got the packet approved for L4 within 24hrs since I was on a tight deadline to accept/decline my Amazon offer(They had also given comp numbers by this time). I verbally shared these numbers with my Google recruiter so that she can start with alteast matching them to avoid further delays.
Timelines:
Recruiter connect: April 2022
Interviews: June 2022(3rd week)
Decision: ~July 7-8
Offer with numbers: 2nd week of July.
Other than the last round delayed feedback, my experience was quite good and the recruiter was also very understanding and accomodating.
Note: Google expects optimised solution and working code for each of the questions. The code needs to be clean with proper variable names. Slight miss on one of these can get you downlevelled even if you have considerable exxperience.
Compensation details link: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/2288747/google-l4-bangalore-accepted/1505200