This is a much-delayed writeup. I applied in early November 2025, got the OA two days later, and finished it that same night — they told me I passed right away and scheduled R1.
A week later they gave me the specific R1 time. Coding and BQ were both on the same day.
R1 tech was basically the exact LeetCode 295 (Find Median from Data Stream, two heaps). After I finished, we did a dry run plus complexity analysis. The first follow-up was: what if the range of the data is very small (we discussed the approach and pseudocode). The second follow-up was: what if you need the kth smallest instead of the median — we only got through discussing the approach before time ran out. I actually went a bit over, so I didn't really get to ask anything back.
R1 BQ didn't touch my resume at all. It was mostly having me describe a scenario myself (how do you handle shifting priorities) and describe my own behavioral traits (what role I play on a team). During the Q&A part, the interviewer switched to Chinese and chatted with me for a few minutes on their own.
A week later they scheduled R2, which turned out to be an onsite in New York in mid-December. When I got to the building, the front desk had me write my name on a piece of paper, then I sat by the door waiting for the interviewer to come get me. They walked me around the office a bit, grabbed some sparkling water, then found a small room for the interview.
R2 was two rounds of tech.
The first interviewer spent about fifteen minutes on my resume, asked some technical follow-ups, then gave me Two Sum, followed by Three Sum — I wrote both out completely with analysis. For my question back, I asked about Google's free learning time.
The second interviewer skipped the resume entirely and gave me Number of Islands. I solved it with BFS, then the follow-up was land being continuously added. I couldn't adapt my original algorithm well enough, so he had me rewrite it with union-find. I ran out of time before finishing, so he had me ask my questions, then walked me out of the building.
At the end of December I got an HR visa check. When I asked HR for a status update, they said they were still collecting interviewer feedback. I got the rejection in mid-January.
One more thing — Google can also book your flights and hotel for you; I had them book mine. For food and rideshares, just hold onto the receipts, then upload them to the reimbursement site they give you afterward. It wasn't complicated at all, and the reimbursement went through smoothly.
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