[NDA] Google | L4 | Sunnyvale | Apr 2020 [Offer Accepted]
Anonymous User
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Education: MS (Computer Science/Embedded Systems - 2012)
Years of Experience: 8+
Position: SWE (L4)
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Date: April, 2020

Interview experience:
Technical phone screen: 45 mins
Discussed resume for about 5 mins, then discussed hashing and how to write a hash function and one coding question about LinkedLists. This interview went really well.

On site:
No. of rounds: 5
Coding rounds: 2
Domain expertise: 1
System design: 1
Behavioral: 1

Coding round questions:

Graph based question involving DFS - went reasonably well; was able to solve the question in time.
C language question involving hash tables, sorting and LRU cache - went okay; The question was too open ended and so talking about design took a substantial amount of time and that ate into the actual coding. Could not finish the full solution in time.
(Can't go into specific details because of NDA)

Domain expertise:
My background is in the storage industry so my questions were mainly focused on storage protocols, their applications, their advantages, their drawbacks. This round went fairly well. I can see how it could have gone horribly if I did not know my stuff. The idea about this round is that they read your resume and then pick any topic that you have mentioned on your resume and try to dig down into the details to see where your depth lies. Prepare for every single point mentioned on your resume.

System design:
The question here was also very storage focused. Again, just like the domain expertise round, details are key. Difference between domain expertise and this round is mainly that you are given a specific design problem to solve and you need to use your domain knowledge to solve it. Key things to keep in mind are:

Maintainability
Scalability
Performance
(not necessarily in that order)
Also, you are the one driving this interview so feel free to come up with ideas. Expect the interviewer to throw wrenches into your design. Also be aware of the scale at which Google works and don't be afraid to think outside the box.

Behavioral:
Questions like:
"Tell me about a time when... "
Hypothetical questions like:
"You are asked to perform X task, how will you go about it?"
For these questions I kind of looked at Amazon leadership principles and prepared based on them. Just understand that Google is not Amazon and they focus a lot on making sure that you are not a jerk. So don't be one.

Hope this helps.

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