company: google
location: banglore
years of experience: 1.5 (at the time interview started)
role: SWE 2, L3
timeline - jan - june 2025
Mid jan
First recruiter text, she shared profile and i showed the interest. After staying in touch for a month i got my interview scheduled.
Mid February
My eleiminator round was scheduled for the first week of march. There was a gmeet setup as well, to go over each round and what to expect in each of them. This meet was a group one, with around 200 participants.
Early march
Eliminator round took place, interviwer joined on time and started with some introduction and then gave the question. Question was very open ended as he just say, "Create a python class for implementing directory structure, to store the file in file system". After many clarifying questions, i implemented using Trie quickly.
He was satisfied and then extended the question to incorporate the file size as well and given a folder name or file name, i should be able to tell the total size of it.
Did it too and he extended to implement delete feature and everytime we delete.
Implemented this and next was to optimise. I also did it in time, coded everything properly and shown the dry run too.
After 2 weeks i got a call that i have cleared my eliminator round and moving to onsites now. Onsites will have 3 technical round + 1 googlyness.
End of march
Round 1:
Started with intro then a question on dfs, kinda something like topological sorting, where we start with top most node and go to leaf nodes. Just need to create the graph from the array first properly using intuition and creating formula to find which two nodes can be connected.
Round 2:
Was given to implement powershell styled thing. Question similar to 3481 leetcode problem. But since problem statement was vague, asked many clarifying question to arrive on what is being asked.
He asked me to throw errors in case given input is invalid. for example in case of circular dependency, incorrect string etc.
Round 3:
Series of easy dsa questions but were asked very quickly, based on sorting, iterating and optimising memory and time.
like printing next n odd number starting from t. Grouping and sorting of class objects while maintaining order of same element too.
Round 4
Standard googlyness, went amazing as i had very interesting and healthy discussion on all topics like work experience, hoobies, academics etc.
After 2 weeks i got a call again, recruiter congratulated me for clearing interviews. I got strong hire in all of my rounds.
In next 2 months i had team matching round, 1 from blr and 1 for hyd office.
I politely declined 1 team matching as i was not feeling that it aligns with what i seek.
In june end, i got call that they are going ahead with offer and got the offer letter.
Overall experience was good, won't complaint as i know the scale is immense, the hiring is so tremendous, its like 100s of people being interviewed almost every month.
And its their process, we already know it takes months for it.
My recruiter was helpful too, she replied everytime i had any concerns or followups.
All folks joined on time too, and were very kind as well.