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      Software Engineer Interview

      May 20, 2014
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      New York, NY
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in Apr 2014

      Interview

      One in person interviewer openly told me that he hates his job and that he would not recommend anyone work at Google...when he first walked into the room! He didn't even say hello, it was just the first thing he said! Overall after speaking with 6+ people only 2 introduced themselves or told me what teams they work on. My phone interviewer called 1.5 hours early and apologized for being 30 minutes late. He told me either get to a computer or the interview is off. He never introduced himself, he hung up during the call for 10 minutes while I coded and called back after I was done. He looked at my answer, asked a few questions for 10 minutes, and then just hung up without a goodbye- I never even got his name! Apparently he was happy with my answer though because I got a call back from a recruiter only 20 minutes later. My onsite timing was very poor. My first interviewer went on for over 1.5 hours The next interviewer was upset that he had to wait outside for over 45 minutes and not only didn't introduce himself, but was also happy to take his frustration out during the interview. He took his interview over in time, leaving me only 15 minutes until the cafeterias closed for lunch. Therefore we went to a smaller cafeteria which had nothing to drink but water. This would have been fine except after rushing through a meal and desperately needing caffeine (and bathroom) I was not in great shape for the next interview. The first 15 minutes were fine as I wrote 6 different tree algorithms for pre, post, and in order traversals in both iterative and recursive forms. The interviewer then asked me if I likes sudoku to which I replied that I didn't actually know the rules of how it worked. At that point he immediately ended the interview saying he wouldn't have time to explain it before asking his interview question. I was surprised that he didn't want to explain his interview question, but more surprised that he didn't have a backup question either. Since we were over an hour over schedule anyway the next person was already at the door and this is likely why he ended after only 15 minutes. I never got his name, team, or had an opportunity to ask a single question- which was also true for the next interviewer. He asked me a classical question that is common in universities. I already knew some of the possible answers and was upfront with him about this. He responded by taking the white board markers and saying he would like to discuss possible answers instead of coding them. After an hour of good discussion we had not written any code at all and he ended his interview. I assume that for the committee this probably did not reflect well since they like to see code. My system design question was interesting and went on for over 3 hours. The interviewer asked me "As a team lead- what do you do when an [expletive] pm is trying to make your team death march, saying he will just replace employees as they burn out." Having been through similar situations at Microsoft I was very good about handling this sort of thing in a way that is beneficial for all parties involved. I have to say that I was (and am still) surprised by the question though! By the end of my last interview the recruiter had left so I didn't say good bye to anyone. I was just escorted out.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      NDA prohibits me from sharing these, but of the 10 or so questions I was asked 6 of them were graphing algorithm related, and 2 of them were discrete math related.
      Answer question
      3

      Other Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Google

      Software Engineer Interview

      May 4, 2014
      Anonymous employee
      Auburndale, FL
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Google (Auburndale, FL) in Apr 2014

      Interview

      Direct onsite because I interviewed in the past and did well that time. From the time I sent my resume to interview day: 2 weeks. From interview day to offer over the phone: 2 weeks. The syllabus for the interviews is very clear and simple: 1) Dynamic Programming 2) Super recursion (permutation, combination,...2^n, m^n, n!...etc. type of program. (NP hard, NP programs) 3) Probability related programs 4) Graphs: BFS/DFS are usually enough 5) All basic data structures from Arrays/Lists to circular queues, BSTs, Hash tables, B-Trees, and Red-Black trees, and all basic algorithms like sorting, binary search, median,... 6) Problem solving ability at a level similar to TopCoder Division 1, 250 points. If you can consistently solve these, then you are almost sure to get in with 2-weeks brush up. 7) Review all old interview questions in Glassdoor to get a feel. If you can solve 95% of them at home (including coding them up quickly and testing them out in a debugger + editor setup), you are in good shape. 8) Practice coding--write often and write a lot. If you can think of a solution, you should be able to code it easily...without much thought. 9) Very good to have for design interview: distributed systems knowledge and practical experience. 10) Good understanding of basic discrete math, computer architecture, basic math. 11) Coursera courses and assignments give a lot of what you need to know. 12) Note that all the above except the first 2 are useful in "real life" programming too! Interview 1: Graph related question and super recursion Interview 2: Design discussion involving a distributed system with writes/reads going on at different sites in parallel. Interview 3: Array and Tree related questions Interview 4: Designing a simple class to do something. Not hard, but not easy either. You need to know basic data structures very well to consider different designs and trade-offs. Interview 5: Dynamic programming, Computer architecture and low level perf. enhancement question which requires knowledge of Trees, binary search, etc. At the end, I wasn't tired and rather enjoyed the discussions. I think the key was long term preparation and time spent doing topcoder for several years (on and off as I enjoy solving the problems). Conclusion: "It's not the best who win the race; it's the best prepared who win it."
      2501

      Software Engineer Interview

      Jun 23, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      2 rounds of interviews with the first round being a technical and a behaverial. The second round being two technicals. The format was straight forward and the interviewer was professional.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Talk about how you resolve a conflict.
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      Jun 24, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      There was a technical screen within their coding platform, followed by a first-round technical interview, followed by a first-round behavioral interview, followed by second-round interviews, both technical and behavioral interviews.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      What was your role on a technical project you've worked on?
      Answer question