I (YOE:1.6, Tier 2 College) recently had the opportunity to interview at Google for the Web Solutions Engineer position.

How It Started

A recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn. After applying, I had an initial conversation where the recruiter discussed the role and asked a few basic computer science and web tech questions (covering topics like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and data structures & algorithms).

After that introductory round, the recruiter informed me that they’d be moving me forward to the next stage and explained the overall interview process.

Round 1: DSA + Problem Solving + Web Tech

Asked to design a Product Inventory System.

Each seller could submit an order with a price and timestamp.

The system needed to support a getMinPrice() API that returns the order with the lowest price.
I discussed a min-heap–based approach for efficient retrieval of the minimum price.

Follow-up:
Sellers should be able to remove their orders at any time.

Handled this by implementing lazy deletion to avoid costly heap updates.

We also discussed time complexity trade-offs and possible optimizations - including an approach using a self-balancing binary search tree (like TreeMap in Java) for cleaner removals and better order maintenance.

Despite reaching the optimal solution and explaining the design trade-offs, it eventually turned out to be a lean no-hire.

Endnote:

What I realised is sometimes, even with the best approach and explanation, the outcome might not go your way and that’s okay. Every interview like this sharpens your design intuition and problem-solving depth.

If you’ve faced similar situations, would love to hear how you approached them or what patterns you noticed.

Upvote if find helpful!😉