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      Software Engineer Interview

      Aug 11, 2012
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Boulder, CO
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 8 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Boulder, CO) in Jul 2012

      Interview

      Contacted by Google recruiter in June, submitted my resume, 45-minute phone interview with one Boulder engineer, then got first on-site interview in mid-July. Four 45 minute 1-1 sessions with their engineers, all programming on whiteboard. Then a week later was called by the recruiter to schedule the second on-site interview for the end of July. This time just two 45 minute sessions, same format. For the first on-site interview they gave me the wrong time so I arrived one hour too early, at least it's better than arriving one hour too late. The recruiter told me over the phone that based on my experience the interviewers will ask me to program in language A, however three out of the six interviewers gave questions in language B. Don't know if they were trying to trick me or just mis-communication on their side; had I known I would have been much better prepared. None of the on-site interviewer mentioned anything on my resume, don't know if any of them looked at it or not. Most programming questions were not too difficult, and did not require real-world working experience. My hand-writing is slow and ugly though, which was a disadvantage when writing code on whiteboard. The Google office in Boulder has nice kitchen and food, however the workspace seems crowded, unergonomic and not too impressive. In the end over a week later I was told they will not give me an offer, no reason, and the recruiter told me this decision was made before the second on-site interview result was in, which sounded strange since it had been over two weeks between the first and second on-site interview. Overall the Google hiring process does not feel very professional.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Nothing unexpected, all about algorithms and data structure.
      Answer question

      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 12, 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Declined offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      3 rounds of coding + 1 behavior Questions from leetcode google question bank, mostly medium level questions, ask about complexity. Interviewers are generally nice, there are no test cases but need to write ur own tests and think of the edge cases.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      For behavior describe a project u have worked on
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      Jun 9, 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      First call with recruiter. Mainly resume questions nothing too technical. Then methods round, was a tagged question from leetcode. Interviewer pushed back on first design and steered me to the optimal solution.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Why are you leaving your current role.
      Answer question

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