I greatly anticipated this interview. Many engineers, including me, wants an opportunity to work with the best and the brightest. But the interview went wrong in many ways, and it changed my mind about wanting to work at Google. The on site interview was 3 sessions 45 minutes each.
1) The recruiter was incredibly slow. It took almost three weeks for the on site to be scheduled. He often promised to get back to me tomorrow, then I don't hear from him for 5 days. It was frustrating working with him. But I kind of expected this since my friends who interviewed before had similar experience.
2) The first interviewer had a strong accent. I couldn't understand him so I had to ask him to repeat many times. I felt like I was being rude, but thinking back, his inability to explain the questions was cutting into my time to answer them. Then he asked me to review some C++ code. Wait a minute, I am a Java programmer and the recruiter said the interview will be conducted in Java. The last time I used C++ was 7 years ago. I explained it to him, but he insisted, I gave it my best shot while struggling with syntax.
3) The second interviewer was arrogant and rude! He seemed like he didn't want to be there. Again, asked me to code a problem that is only relevant in C++. I gave it the best answer in Java. He argued with me that it will not work, then I had to explain to him null assignment in Java also deallocates a variable because of GC. He wouldn't admit he was wrong, so he made a degrading comment about how Java programmer knows nothing about memory management. Then he asks a harder question basically requires putting everything in a hashmap then check for a match. He rudely interrupts me while I tried to explain my thoughts. At one point, I literally got a little angry. I happen to be a pretty patient and none confrontational person. I think he had a canned answer in mind, and he didn't want to listen to anything else.
4) The third interviewer was 7 minutes late, but he was nicer. He seemed cocky about working at google. Many things he said started with something like "at google, this is how we do...". The questions he asked was a little confusing. I had to ask many follow up questions to understand it.
If they are looking for someone with C++ skills, then why waste half day of my time. After meeting these interviewers, I recognized that my friends, who work at google, have the same arrogance. The same arrogance a Microsoft recruiter once shown me when I first graduated from college. Look at where they are now. Google is on track to become just like them. If this is what google represents, a prestige driven egotistic cult, then I don't want to be a part of it.
