Current Status : Currently working in a startup.
Current Position : Sr MTS
Current Experience : 3.6 Y
Education : M. Tech (CSE) from NIT

Position Interviewed For : L4 Backend

Application : Applied directly on Google carrers in April End.
Recruited reached out after that directly and asked basic details and scheduled mock round and then screening round after given 1 month of preparation till screening round.

I prepared by selecting 200 questions from leetcode asked in google.

The format for all interviews

• Technical phone screen (45 minutes):
  • Algorithm question :
    • Initial Question on BFS
    • Modified question uses Dijkstra (find min path using obstacles)

After Lean hire on screening round. I asked for another month before next 4 rounds (3 technical and 1 googlyness on same day)

• 2nd technical onsite (45 min):

  • Algorithm question : Similar to rotten oranges with 2 initial starting points (different disease) and 1 destination point, asked did 2nd type of disease will reach the destination if 1st disease is more powerful and will not let 2nd disease to overcome and 1st disease cannot move forward.

• 3rd techical onsite (45 min):

  • Algorithm question : `Similar to platfrom trains on gfg you are given timings of arrival and departure of employess. For each arrival or departure you have to print the current status of available employees with timings. For example :
    • E1 : (10 : 20), E2(15 : 45), E3 (35 : 70)
    • print :
      - (10 - 15) -> E1
      - (15 - 20) -> E1 , E2
      - (20 - 35) -> E2
      - (35 - 45) -> E2, E2
      - (45 - 70) -> E3`

• 4th technical onsite (45 min):

  • Algorithm question : Find peak in mountain array but the array can contain duplicates (With duplicates it becomes difficult. I was not able to come up with fully correct code if anyone knows please leave comments)

• 5th round googlyness (45 min)

  • General questions about how did you handle challenging time and so on.

After above round, I got lean hire in 2 round and 1 lean no hire and 1 strong hire in googlyness.
The feedback is not so positive so before sending my profile to hiring comittee they did team match. It was great.

After sending my profile, they decided to take 1 more coding round (Array question). But I totally flunked it.

I got rejected.

My mistakes :-

• I was not considerate towards interview timing which is 45 mins.
• I gave them algorithms name but didn't discussed the edge cased and my assumptions that it won't work for negative cycle and all
• Speed for thinking optimal approach was bit slow.

Pros for me :

• I started preparing with my job (it was tough but be consistent)
• Started my journey for preparing again
• Learned a lot

The recuriter was awesome and was trying everything in its position to help me out by giving proper feedback and much more so shoutout to him.
I hope you learn from my mistakes and happy coding and good luck.