Google | PayPal | SWE | ML | Nov 2020 | [Offer]
Anonymous User
12716

Hi All,

I learned a lot by reading interview experiences on Leetcode and Blind. Wanted to post my experience interviewing with Google & PayPal. My way of giving back :). This is my first post as well.

Profile : 1.5 YoE (1 yr in PayPal), MS from Top 20 in CS school.

PayPal MLE Position

Callback: Got PayPal referral through friends working in PayPal. A friend pinged hiring manager directly. Recruiter called back soon after.

Interview process:

1. Phone Screen: Interviewer asked to open leetcode on my browser, share my screen and solve random question [You cant pick a problem you already solved, haha]. Quite unexpected experience. I got a hard string problem. Managed to get solution that passed most cases and TLE'd  on the last few. Interviewer was happy. For ML part,  Interviewer followed up with general ML and NLP questions
2. Virtual Onsite: 4 rounds
	a. Coding  + ML theory: 1 coding question on DFS + matrix. ML, DL & NLP theory questions
	b. Coding + ML theory: 1 coding question (standard leetcode hard). ML, DL and NLP theory questions
	c. Coding + ML theory: 1 coding question (binary search variation). ML, DL and NLP theory questions
	d. Manager round: General ML/DL questions which test broad understanding of ML and DL rather than specifics

I did all the rounds exceptionally well. All the interviewers were very impressed and told me great job.

Google SWE in ML Position

Callback: Applied online without referral. Extremely lucky to get callback. Maybe because I applied within a few hours of the position being posted.

Interview process:

1. Phone Screen 1 : 1 leetcode style problem. Sliding window types. 
	I did not get the correct intuition first. Interviewer gave hint. I used it well and came up with a good solution. Clean code and worked through a few examples as well. 
	Should've barely scraped through I guess. 
2. Phone Screen 2 :1 leetcode style problem. Heap + sorting. 
	Did very well. Got optimal solution immediately. Wrote Clean code and worked through couple of examples (noticed and fixed a minor bug while doing this, interviewer appreciated that)
3. Virtual Onsite: 4 rounds + behavioral
	a. Coding: 1 leetcode style problem: started with leetcode easy. I coded it up very quickly paying attention to naming, indentation, and dry run with example. Then he modified the problem to leetcode medium. Discussed two approaches  (linked lists/hash maps), pros and cons.  Coded linked lists approach. Was 95% done with code. 
	b. Coding: 1 leetcode style problem. BFS with added logic. Got super confused at first. Interviewer helped to get on track. Got the final logic in an 'aha' moment about 15-20 mins into the interview. Feared not having enough time but, managed to code it up quite fast and quite well. Missed a couple of corner cases though. Interviewer pointed them out. I guess interviewer must have given not bad/decent feedback at best. This was my worst round. 
	c. Behavioral Round: Fun. Prepped all standard behavior questions. half of the questions were completely new, half were expected. Did very well.
	d. ML theory : A broad general ML prompt based on recommendation (more like ML system design question). Discussion for 40 mins on various ideas/ pros/ cons. Focused on DL more than ML
	e. ML theory :   A broad general ML prompt based on NLP
	Discussion for 40 mins. Focused on all the latest NLP approaches (transformer, lstm) discussed pros/ cons of each.
	

My overall Google interview performance was definitely not as good as PayPal. ML rounds went well but are subjective I guess. Coding was above average (at best). So was super anxious for result. But finally got L3, didn’t clear bar for L4.

Prep:
Programming: Leetcode (~137, 70% med, 20% easy, 10% hard). Read CTCI and EPI occasionally (focussed on Leet more). Though, I didn’t start from scratch. I had CP experience from school (codechef and Informatics olympiad experience)

ML: My MS focused on ML, so prepped with my NLP, ML, and DL course material. Lots of great online courses available too. Stanford CS 229, CS 231n, 224n. MIT DL course
I also read a lot of online blogs. I've given some links below (focused my prep on NLP because PayPal told me the team worked on NLP)
Mlexplained.com
machinelearningmastery.com
https://colah.github.io
https://workera.ai/resources/machine-learning-algorithms-interview/
https://www.mygreatlearning.com/blog/nlp-interview-questions/
Glassdoor MLE interview questions

One of my strong points in interviews is great communication. Always I try to keep the interviews more conversation than Q & A types, of course, while demonstrating the technical skills. I had also prepped well, so was quite confident and optimistic in the interviews.

Chose Google. a dream come true moment

I hope this experience is useful to someone. I especially felt that SWE in ML experiences were lacking, so hopefully, this post adds value there. Best of luck to everyone else prepping! Stay positive :)

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