Hey everyone,

This was my one and only FAANG interview, I am only targeting Google.

Just wanted to share where I’m at in my journey — partly to vent, partly in case it helps someone else in a similar spot.

I recently completed my third and final onsite round with Google.
Here’s the feedback so far (at least what’s been shared with me):

Round 1: Lean Hire
This was a twist on the classic Number of Islands problem. The interviewer gave only a vague prompt — no constraints, no clarifications. I had to ask everything, and even then the answers were pretty open-ended. I proposed two different solutions and we agreed to go with a DFS/BFS version. I answered the follow-up correctly and genuinely thought it went well…
Until the recruiter told me the feedback was just “okay.” That stung. 😅

Round 2: Strong Hire
This one started rough — the problem description was 30 lines long and took a while to parse. But once I understood it, the implementation was short and clean (around 10–15 lines of code). I designed a streaming server to efficiently handle a data structure. Not trivial, but very doable. This round felt solid and the interviewer seemed happy.

Round 3: Lean Hire
A string-based problem — couldn’t find an exact LeetCode match, but I’d call it easy-medium. I solved it pretty fast.
However, I fumbled when asked about time and space complexity — gave a wrong answer, got nervous, and it showed. I did answer most follow-ups, but not as confidently as I’d have liked.

I honestly thought I nailed the first round, so the “lean hire” feedback was a bit of a curveball. It’s now been about 3 weeks since I wrapped up the interviews. Still no final decision, no third-round feedback, and no response to my follow-up email. I’m in inbox-refresh limbo 😅

This was my third real “reset” of DSA + systems prep. I pushed myself harder than ever, and I know I’ve grown from it. But it’s tough not to feel disheartened when the outcome’s out of your control.

If you’ve gone through something similar, I’d love to hear how you dealt with the waiting, the ambiguity, and the mental weight of it all.

EDIT:
My phonescreen was skipped based on my experience.
Googlyness interview didn't happen yet. I am still waiting on the final feedback.