I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Google (Austin, TX) in Oct 2024
Interview
Contacted by a recruiter. It took a long time for the interview to materialize (a couple of months). First step was a technical interview in C, which was not my preferred language, but the interviewer was quite flexible and kind. Interview went well even if language-specific details/syntax was way off.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
It was related to setting up certain configuration bits and retrieve data from provided memory addresses. Pretty standard low level stuff for someone with experience in either embedded systems or low level programming.
My first round was a screening round. I was asked a coding question and some leadership/management questions. This was followed by 2 leadership/management interview rounds and 2 system design rounds. In the end, I was again asked to go through a system design round, presumably because the some feedback was borderline.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A hypothetical question about leadership. Your company needs to layoff your entire team due to unavoidable circumstances. How will you communicate this and handle the situation.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Dec 2024
Interview
Applied online and had a phone screening in about 3 weeks. Then, a technical screening with focus on data structures and algorithms. Was given a problem statement to generate a code and optimize it. Guess they intentionally miss the edge cases within the problem statement to see if you could bring that up and work - nothing too hard but be well prepared in your approach. Next is onsite, which was a day long 1 code review, 1 sys design, 1 team leadership, 1 behavioral/Googlyness, and 1 project management. Code review and sys design were medium to hard and expect more follow up questions, in-depth discussions, etc. Team leadership and behavioral is standard but it depends on what you reveal. In my case I had the interviewer talked through for 30 long mins just on one of my past projects. Googleyness and behavioral is also something they weigh up high it seems. Need a good understanding of the culture and expectations if it's L6 and up. I learnt this somewhere on reddit and then did a mock with a Google EM coach on Prepfully who did share the same and also helped me guide on sys design questions. Accepted the offer since they did live upto my TC expectations or I negotiated well I guess lol.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you design a system that counts the number of clicks on YouTube shorts?