Google inc interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

Software Engineer

Google inc
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4 rounds | 4 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 8 Months
Topics: Graph, Dynamic Programming, Trees, Priority Queue, Operating System, OOPs Concepts
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Make a plan, follow any roadmap.
Tip 2 : Don't waste time on algos that are very less asked, interview experience of others can help.
Tip 3 : Prepare well, take a deep dive in so that you are prepared to manage surprises.

Application process
Where: Other
Eligibility: No
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : One liner resume with all your achievements, online programming contest ranks adds a lot. 
Tip 2 : Project should be self made and prepare well.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration45 Minutes
Interview date23 Jun 2022
Coding problem1

As I am a working professional, I took late night slots, so first round was on 23rd June, 2022 at 2000 hours.
It was held by a member of google working in USA.
The interview went well but the problem I faced was of accent. Even the easiest words were hard to understand for me due to pronunciation differences.

1. Check If Path Exists

Easy
10m average time
90% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonGrofersArcesium

You are given a directed and unweighted graph of 'V' vertices and 'E' edges. All edges are given in a 2-dimensional array ‘Edges’ in which ‘Edges[i][0]’ and ‘Edges[i][1]’ contain an edge. Your task is to check if there exists a path from the vertex 'source' to 'destination'.

For Example:
Consider the number of vertices is 4 and number of edges is 3, and the array of edges is:
[ [0, 1]
  [1, 2] 
  [2, 3] ]
there exists one path between 0 and 2, which is 0 -> 1 -> 2. Hence, the answer is 'true'.
Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Online Coding Test
Duration45 Minutes
Interview date23 Jun 2022
Coding problem1

It was just after the first round at 2115 hours on 23rd June, 2022.
The interview went well. Again a person from USA took the interview. It was on a easy side.

1. DFS Traversal

Moderate
35m average time
65% success
0/80
Asked in companies
SamsungIntuitGoldman Sachs

Given an undirected and disconnected graph G(V, E), containing 'V' vertices and 'E' edges, the information about edges is given using 'GRAPH' matrix, where i-th edge is between GRAPH[i][0] and GRAPH[i][1]. print its DFS traversal.

V is the number of vertices present in graph G and vertices are numbered from 0 to V-1. 

E is the number of edges present in graph G.
Note :
The Graph may not be connected i.e there may exist multiple components in a graph.
Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration45 Minutes
Interview date24 Jun 2022
Coding problem1

It was taken from around 1600 hours by an Indian. There was no right wrong in this round. It was focused to check managerial capabilities of a candidate.

1. Basic HR Questions

1. Introduction 

2. Previous Job and Role description. 

3. Explain a scenario when there was a tight deadline and delivery seems to be impossible. What did you do to keep track of time and how did it go. 

4. What will you do if your team comes up with an idea that you know will fail but team has put massive efforts and how will you provide feedback. 

5. Assume you are migrated to a project which is new to you, how will you proceed in such scenarios.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Always describe what has actually happened, false statements in such rounds can be easily detected.
Tip 2 : Have confidence, always try to see positive side of a problem.

04
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration45 minutes
Interview date24 Jun 2022
Coding problem1

This was Low Level Design Round.

1. System Design Question

You need to design a Keyboard that has QWERTY setup. So basically, this problem can be reduced to making a function which takes two arguments (co-ordinates) and return the key which was present on the keyboard.
The problem is of medium level. 
I tried approaching it by using a map of tuple->character (map, char>).Then the problem was extended. Now the keyboard has keys which are a square shapped so suppose if it is of side 5 and one of its vertex is on (0,0) and its sides parallel to axes, then both (1,1) and (2,2) should point to same key. This can be reduced to find if a point is inside a sqaure or not. Then I provided corner test cases like space bar is a bit longer key so has to be taken care and also the data to relative position of keys has to be provided manually.
The interviewer seemed to be impressed.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Prepare design patterns for this round to ease your interview.
Tip 2 : Practice some common scenarios beforehand so that you may not feel difficulty. The problems are daily life revolving and have pretty intuitive solutions. Also can be checked using your own laptop.
Tip 3 : Always try to approach such questions in an object oriented way so that any upcoming changes can be managed easily.

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

How do you remove whitespace from the start of a string?

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