After sharing my SDE-2 interview experience at Amazon and Groww (and receiving some great feedback — thank you!), I thought I’d post another one — this time from a recent Google interview.

Hope you find it useful! As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Let’s dive in 👇

📌 Background
B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from one of the Top 10 IITs

10 months at a large service-based MNC

3 years at a product-based company

Current Role: SDE-2 in a product-based company

🧠 Interview Timeline
📞 Initial Call
Got a call in the first week of February from the recruiter. I was given one month to prepare.

🔁 Round 1 (Originally Scheduled on March 25th)
Type: DSA Round (45 mins)
Interviewer: Engineering Manager from Germany
Problem: A Quad Tree based image problem.

Given an image represented by a quad tree, where:

Leaf nodes can be black or white,

Black leaf = block of pixels are all black

White leaf = block of pixels are all white

Non-leaf nodes = gray

The task was to calculate the area of black pixels in the image.

The starter code was in Python, but I told him I preferred C++. He kindly offered to reschedule the round so I could be more comfortable with the setup. 🙌

💻 Round 1 (Rescheduled to April 2nd)
Type: DSA Round (45 mins)
Interviewer: Senior SDE from Europe

Problem: Given a 2D grid of 0s and 1s, find the area of the largest triangle formed by 1s.
You had to count the number of 1s inside the triangle.

Example:

Copy
Edit
1 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 1 1 1 0
0 0 1 1 0 0
0 0 1 0 0 1
1 0 0 0 1 1
Expected Answer: 6

I explained a BFS-based approach and began implementing it. After nearly completing the code, the interviewer asked if I could think of a different solution. I began exploring a DP-based approach, but time ran out before I could finish or dry-run my older bfs code.

🧾 Final Update
A week later, the HR called to check in. I told her the round went “okayish.”
Unfortunately, she informed me that the feedback was not positive.

Final Verdict: ❌ Rejection
Rejection #11 in the past year 🥲
Proudly added to my growing “Hall of Fame: No Offer” wall 😂

Failures hurt — but every round adds to the learning curve. Onward and upward 🚀

Hope you guys find it helpful. If yes, kindly upvote.

Groww Interview Experience :- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/6683943/groww-sde-ii-bengaluru-april25-by-a2sh8u-1nvq/

Amazon Interview Experience :- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/6654251/amazon-l5-sde-ii-april25-hyderabad-by-a2-umh1/