Applied for a Software Engineer position. I was contacted by a recruiter for some general questions and background information. I was then instructed that I'd be receiving a call the following week from another software engineer for a technical screening. The engineer called me and went over a few technical questions regarding mainly javascript and running time (big O). I was then asked to provide 2 algorithms in code within an hour after the call. Overall the interview seemed to go well....as so I thought.
I wasn't contacted until the following week of the results. I was turned down but they cannot give you any information of why you didn't meet their standards. They won't tell you if your code is wrong, where you went wrong or where you could improve as a developer. Just a standard "your skills don't meet our needs at this time" response. Kind of disappointing given that you prepare for hours upon hours of your time and energy and receive 0 feedback.
How can you prepare? Well, I went over all of my old CS 101 notes, hash tables, data structures, and all the theory behind it. It can be a bit overwhelming if you haven't visited that information for over a decade. My advice is to brush up on your theory and write some practical examples along those lines, like sorting an array using Merge sort in your favorite language. Don't worry about trying to get better in your languages...you either know it now or don't know it.
It's nearly impossible to prepare for everything for this position given that they don't hire a Javascript developer or C++ developer. They just hire developers in general and only the top 1% developers in the world, as they indicated. Don't bother asking about the position because you could be working on any number of projects and they will not give you any specifics.
Overall, I rate the experience a 2.5 out of 5. The interview questions I got weren't terribly difficult, but I don't know where I went wrong or how I could improve since no feedback is given. That's where Google's policy needs to be revamped. The people I talked to were nice but don't expect any personality. It's very dry and straightforward and I'm not really sure if that's indicative of how people are there. The youtube video on working at Google seems like it's such a great place to work, but can't really say for sure at this time given my experience thus far with how they approach engineers.
