Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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110 stories

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GoogleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Apr 2026

Water-Flow Paths and Good Numbers at Onsite

Software Engineer II, Early Career - United States 03/31: Applied 04/01: OA 05/14: Virtual interview R1 — behavioral questions + coding (I don't remember the question) 06/08: Got an email about next steps and scheduled a recruiter meeting 06/15: Talked with the recruiter, got the onsite details 07/14: Onsite interview R2 — coding + coding The R2 onsite questions were: Question 1: Longest Water-Fl…

Onsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Failed Onsite Coding on a No-Feedback Maze That Needed BFS Over Belief States

The final feedback was that my coding wasn't good enough. It was a BFS problem, and I didn't think of that at first. You're given a maze: # is a wall, . is an open path, E is the exit. The only commands are up / down / left / right, and each one moves you one cell. Key rules: If you hit a wall you stay where you are (that's not a failure, you just stay in place). Execution gives no feedback at al…

RejectedOnsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Periodic Table Word Puzzle Phone Screen, Two Onsite DSA Rounds

Phone Interview Given all the element symbols from the periodic table and a target word, return the total number of possible ways to compose that word using the element symbols. For example, "Physics" can be composed in the following ways: P - H - Y - Si - C - S P - H - Y - Si - Cs P - H - Y - S - I - C - S P - H - Y - S - I - Cs Onsite Round 1 (DSA) Given n players (numbered 0 to n - 1) and a se…

Onsite0
GoogleSoftware EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Easy Coding Question, Confusing Rename Follow-up, Rejected

Coding: convert snake_case to camelCase (e.g. foo_bar -> fooBar). The input is guaranteed to be valid snake_case (no leading underscore, no trailing underscore, no double underscore). The coding part was easy, I banged it out in under twenty lines within a few minutes, though I did spend a bit of time clarifying what counted as valid snake_case input since I wasn't totally sure what the interview…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Dijkstra, Car Rental Scheduling, a Sharded Login-Logs Curveball, and a CNN/ML Systems Round

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OfferOnsiteXP0
GoogleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Apr 2026

Two Onsite Rounds, a Cross-Country Flight, and a Wait for Team Match

My R1 report is here. On Friday I finally did the R1 BQ that had gotten postponed earlier, and then HR reached out on Monday to schedule R2. I flew in from the Midwest to Mountain View, and after finishing R2, flew straight back — I was exhausted. Interview 1 Given an array representing a gold chain, where each number is the weight of one link. You need to remove one link, reconnect the chain, an…

In progressOnsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

A Stuck-Keyboard String Matching Question With Three Follow-Ups

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Technical ScreenXP0
GoogleSoftware EngineerSenior+
Reported Mar 2026

Two Coding Rounds, Two System Designs and a Month Waiting for Team Match

Interview Process: A friend referred me in October, and in the middle of November a Google recruiter phoned me. That first call is what started the whole thing. Two virtual rounds came next, a Googliness interview with a hiring manager and my first system design round, both held in the second week of December. Once I passed them, the onsite was set for the first week of January. Google is back to…

OfferOnsite0
GoogleSoftware EngineerIntern
Mar 2026

All-English First Round, No Behavioral Questions

I'm based in the US, so they set me up with an interviewer for this one, all in English. No behavioral questions, no self-introduction, straight into problems. Given a string input, return true if every subsequence of length ≥ 3 is a valid English word. I used a recursive approach and walked through the time and space complexity. Given a string input, return true if every subsequence of length ≥…

No responseTechnical Screen0
GoogleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Mar 2026

BQ, ML Domain, and a Mahjong-Winning-Hand Coding Question

Timeline: 2025/12/23: HR reached out and asked me to send my latest transcript. 2026/01/05: Another HR emailed to set up a brief chat. 2026/01/14: HR chat — mainly asked about my research area and explained the interview format. They said it's basically one BQ round plus three coding rounds, or one BQ round plus one ML domain round plus two coding rounds, split into two big loops. I chose one BQ…

In progressOnsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Reported Mar 2026

L3 Offer on the First Attempt, DSA Rounds Only

Right now I lead tech at a small maritime startup. Google gave me an L3 offer, toward the upper end of the band, and it was my first and only try. Real system design was always my weakest area, even though I've always been decent at generalizing from specifics. Studying it properly left me calm and self-assured when the conversation turned to: how to scale reads or writes, and what each approach…

OfferOther0
GoogleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Mar 2026

Timeline From OA to Team Matching

Sharing a timeline and prep experience, hoping team matching goes well for me. Timeline 9/30 - role opened, submitted with a referral that same day 11/16 - received the OA, finished it 11/19, 11/26 next step: submit transcript 1/6 - R1 coding + BQ 1/8 - notified R1 passed, submit transcript + updated resume 1/15 - visa call (asked about status, whether I'd applied for EAD before, etc.) 2/4 - Bay…

In progressOnsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Three Technical Rounds and Googleyness

First round: Technical interview Question: Add and search for words in a Trie. Because I had limited preparation time, I mainly reviewed common topics such as graph theory and dynamic programming, but I did not cover Tries. The problem was roughly about adding and searching for words. A Trie supports fast word lookup because of its tree structure, and the return behavior needed attention. I told…

Technical Screen0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Tough Phone Screen With LC 560 and a City-Grid Islands Twist

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Technical ScreenXP0
GoogleSoftware EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

Picked Google Over Databricks, Waymo, and TikTok Offers

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OfferTechnical ScreenXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Passed R1, Failed R2 on a Roof-Patching Puzzle

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A 180-Degree OCR Twist in the Onsite Loop

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OfferOnsiteXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Smooth First Onsite, Easier Than Expected

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OnsiteXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

A Friendly BQ Round That Kept Digging Into Conflict and Ownership

The interviewer for this BQ round was very nice and friendly, and took notes the whole time. Overall it didn't feel like an interrogation, more like a logical conversation — they kept circling back around the same competency and probing deeper. Disagree / Conflict First asked: have you ever disagreed with someone. After I gave an example, they followed up asking how I generally deal with conflict…

HR Screen0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Inside the Hiring Assessment's Judgment Section

The assessment has two parts. The first part is the same as what earlier posts already described, so I won't repeat it here. For the second part, since earlier posts only mentioned it briefly, let me say a bit more. This section gives you a scenario and asks you to pick the action you'd be most likely and least likely to take. Here's what I got: You had a good idea about YouTube's design that you…

Online Assessment0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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