Current Employment
Status: Tier 3 College in India, Not from IIT, NIT, IIITs
Position: SDE1 at Amazon
Location: Bengaluru, India

Total Rounds (Summary): 1 Phone Screen + 3 Technical Rounds (DSA) + 1 Googliness & Leadership Round + 1 Additional Technical Round (DSA)

Background

Mid-July 2023: Applied for Google L4 SWE3 role via their careers page with an referral. After a few weeks, I received an email from the recruiter asking about my availability for the phone screen round.

Phone Screen (DSA - 45 minutes)

The phone screen was conducted by an engineer from Google Hyderabad office.

• Problem: Similar to Leetcode 142 - Linked List Cycle II
  • Solved using slow and fast pointer approach.
  • Discussed time and space complexity.
  • On top of it I had to discuss and prove the mathematicall feasibility of the solution I presented. The interviewer seems very statisfied with the solution.

After 3 days, the recruiter confirmed that I passed the phone screen and asked my availability for onsite technical rounds.

This 3 days took around 6 months of waiting period - the recuriter ghosted me and didn't reply over email or phone call. During this 6 months waiting period, I focused heavily on medium & hard problem on leetcode and improved my problem-solving skills in time bounded way. Participated on leetcode live/virtual contest by heart.

After 6 months around Jan 2024 - Another recruiter reached out to me from LinkedIn and asked about my availablity for technical rounds and skipped my Phone Screen round this time.

Round 1: Technical Round 1 (DSA - 45 minutes)

Interviewer was very friendly and based out of Google Munich office. We started with introductions and a brief discussion on my projects at Amazon.

• Problem 1: Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/lru-cache/
  • Implemented using HashMap + Doubly Linked List.
  • Discussed optimizations and edge cases.
  • Solved in 25 minutes.
• Problem 2: Same question: https://leetcode.com/problems/pacific-atlantic-water-flow/description/
  • I initially found myself on trouble since I had pretty less time to cover this problem
  • I directly jumped to the optimal approach and code it out, and guess what I ran out of time and my solution was not correct.

Interviewer had to stop me and He began to ask some question around my current work related stuffs.

Verdict: Lean No Hire

Round 2: Technical Round 2 (DSA - 45 minutes)

Interviewer was very calm and supportive.

• Problem: Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/cheapest-flights-within-k-stops/
  • Solved using Dijkstra's Algorithm.
  • Discussed edge cases and performance optimizations.
  • Wrote test cases and dry run the code on Google Sheets.

Verdict: Hire

Round 3: Technical Round 3 (DSA - 45 minutes)

Interviewer was very engaging and supportive.

• Problem 1: Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/alien-dictionary/
  • Solved using Topological Sort with BFS.
  • Discussed failure cases and optimizations.
• Problem 2: Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/simplify-path/description/
  • Solved using Stack DS.

Both problems I solved it in ~35 min, rest we discussed about Google vs Amazon working culture and technical ethics.

Verdict: Hire

Round 4: Googliness & Leadership (GnL - 45 minutes)

Interviewer was a Senior Manager at Google.

• Discussion on past projects, challenges, and collaboration with cross-functional teams.
• Situational questions like "Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a colleague" and "How would you handle conflicting priorities?"
• Emphasis on Google’s core values like collaboration, respect, and inclusivity.

Verdict: Hire

Round 5: (Additional Round) Technical Round 4 (DSA - 45 minutes)

After the onsite rounds, the recruiter informed me that while I had positive feedback in two rounds, the Hiring Committee felt I needed to demonstrate more consistency to meet the L4 bar. Hence, one additional DSA round was scheduled.

Interviewer was very friendly and supportive.

• Problem 1: Give NxN matrix containing black holes find the shorted path from top-left to bottom-right

  • Solved it using BFS
  • Found edge cases while coding

• Problem 2: Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/search-a-2d-matrix-ii/

  • Solved using Binary Search + Two Pointers Approach.
  • Discussed edge cases and optimizations.
  • Able to dry run of code.

Verdict: Strong Hire

Hiring Committee & Team Matching

After the onsite rounds, the recruiter informed me that my performance was positive in all rounds and my profile would be forwarded to the Hiring Committee.

Hiring Committee took around 2 weeks to review the feedback and gave a Final Hire Decision.

Post that, the Team Matching Process started, where I was connected with Google Ads team, HM joined the interview and asked me about my background, discussed about tech stack, my preference of
work etc etc - I enjoyed the conversation.

Final Result

After 1 week, I received the Offer Letter from Google

Till the offer came I've joined Microsoft as an SDE2. I was coming from Amazon where PIP culture is quite prevelant - seeing the PIP taking it's place also at Google I didn't joined + At that time I had urge to prefer Noida location rather than staying at Bangalore.

Also Google had offer available for 1 year from month of offer letter aligned - just new team matching will happen or may be 1 extra round of DSA as confirmed by Google Recruiter.