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      Software Engineer Interview

      1 Dec 2012
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Mountain View, CA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 8 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Nov 2012

      Interview

      Have interviewed in person with Google several times over the years most recently in Nov 2012. Have never gotten an offer. I will honor my agreement w/Google not to reveal specific interview questions, but they tend to be generic computer science-type questions. As someone who is at mid-career it is disappointing to be asked questions that might be more appropriate for an intern applying for their first summer job. I felt I had a lot to contribute but the interview process doesn't focus on anything besides just basic coding questions. Google contacted me by phone for a conversation with a recruiter. The technical phone screen step was waived and I was invited in for an in person interview a few weeks later. Five technical interviews plus lunch. I felt I did well on the technical questions but the whole atmosphere of the process seemed a bit negative. When I interview I like it to be with people who are clearly inspired by and excited to work for their company. I just didn't get that sense from these people--they had no passion to work for Google. The person who took me to lunch actually made clear to me that he was very unhappy working for Google. A positive interview experience is one where I come away from it inspired to work for the company--and then if I don't get the job, it is a disappointment because I won't be working there. With Google the disappointment is more that I feel I wasted a day of my time there. I ended up thinking that I would use a Google offer--had it been forthcoming--more for leverage in negotiating a slightly sweeter deal with my current employer--where I'm actually mostly happy. When I was thinking in those terms even before hearing Google's negative decision, it seems clear that Google failed in motivating me to want to work for them. Upon reflection, my basic take away was that I didn't really interview for a position at Google. Instead, they conducted a very, very generic tech interview which could just as easily have been an interview for any other tech company, be it another large company or a startup. Absolutely zero information was revealed that would allow me to determine whether this might have been a suitable match for me. Google seems to be counting on their name and reputation to attract good candidates and they seem to feel they don't have to really put anything into the process themselves. It's hard to feel excited about working for a company when their interview process is just a generic imitation of the interview process at many, many other tech companies I've interviewed with in my career. Speaking only for myself, Google's name and reputation will probably always be enough to get me to invest a big chunk of a day with an interview. But Google seems to expect more than that--they seem to expect a significant investment of time in preparing for the interview as well. I'll admit I probably didn't prepare as hard as I might have for this interview and that may have been a factor in the outcome. However, as an experienced professional with limited time, I need a reason to believe that the investment of time in preparation is worthwhile. Google, unfortunately, gave me no reason to be enthusiastic about the process so that I'd put the time in. Again--at least in my case--it will take more than just relying on their good name to get me excited about working for them.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Can't due to NDA signed.
      1 Answer
      1

      Other Software Engineer interview reviews for Google

      Software Engineer Interview

      4 May 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

      18 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Zagreb
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Google (Zagreb)

      Interview

      Hard interview did not pass but its very fair i should study harder and maybe next time i can pass the interview and land a job for the software engineering role

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Tell me about yourself and your experience as a software engineer?
      Answer question

      Software Engineer Interview

      18 Jun 2026
      Anonymous employee
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google

      Interview

      Standard Google algorithmic rigor, heavy focus on scale and edge cases 1 45 mins technical phone screen, followed by a 5-round virtual onsite loop. The onsite had 3 coding rounds (data structures/algorithms), 1 System Design round, and 1 Googleyness & Leadership round. To prep I practiced with standard algorithmic patterns, used Apex Interviewer to simulate the live coding environment, with questions I scraped from gothamloop and 1point3acres.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Given a stream of real-time coordinate data from thousands of concurrent users, design an algorithm to find the top K densest geographic clusters within a dynamic time window.
      Answer question