I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Google (Moskau, ) in Mar 2012
Interview
I was rumbling for a Google SRE team position about a year ago. That was *very* hard and fun experience. I had two phone interviews, and both were real hardcore and impressive. In the first interview, I was rumbling with the guy, who had really good understanding of a hardware issues and distributed architecture. He asked me on a virtual memory planning algorithms, how typical enterprise database disk access is organized, what are pros and cons of a database normalization ( and when we need to denormalize ), e t.c.
I don't belive, that first interview was my fail, because I was interviewed by another guy two days after. He was *very* mathematically inclined, and asked various question on a search metrics ( i.e. what is Bpref, how one could impove it ) and asked me to design various search quality-related metrics, which could easily be calculated ( in Map-reduce paradigm especially ).
I was good at what was related to the search quality ( as it is my strongest skill ), but did worse, than necessary, when we went to the hashing and cryptography-related issues.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe statistical strengths and weaknesses of CRC32 as a hash function?
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Sydney) in Jul 2013
Interview
I submitted my cv online and was contacted two weeks after for an initial 45 min phone interview. The interviewer was very friendly and will guide you and provide hints throughout the process. You will be expected to code on a shared google document,
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How long will it take for an unsigned 64 bit counter to overflow on a xxx ghz machine and another coding problem that requires recursive programming.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Google (San Jose, CA) in Apr 2013
Interview
Phone screen was 100% technical, with coding via Google Docs, and was told I did *VERY* well.
4 one-on-one onsite interviews - coding on a white board, systems design. I thought I did very well.
Was asked to travel back for a final onsite, but declined due to existing offers on the table... and if you can't look at my resume, see my successes and figure me out after 5 interviews, don't expect me to jump through hoops for you... other companies are willing to make quicker, informed decisions.