The typical interview process includes an HR screen, a technical screen, a virtual onsite, and a recruiter call to extend the offer. It wasn't a terrible process; I thought it was fine.

People have described the coding problems. The one about buying and selling was a bit different for me. It was basically a directed graph problem where your goal was to find the longest weighted path. Surprisingly, I knew how to solve it from the start with the right intuition, but the interviewer docked me points anyway. What the heck?

Other than that, there was a question about implementing a game involving tokens that you drop into different slots. There were no algorithms involved; it was mostly about OOP design. The system design question – I can't even recall it – but it wasn't hard.

The big issue was that many of the interviewers were painfully awkward. Some couldn't say a single negative thing about their employer. Others couldn't say anything at all to carry a conversation. I'd say the people I engaged with were generally somewhere on a spectrum. For me, this was really disappointing. Many were ex-FAANG types who literally knew nothing but competitive programming and League of Legends.

I turned down the offer due to low compensation. I wasn't going to be starting until after the IPO, and they have an unusual pricing structure for stock valuation. This company also sends downlevel offers, so be aware. It's not just Google that's cheaping out. I think this company is trying to hire former FAANG engineers exclusively at this point; I didn't have FAANG on my resume, so there you go.

It wasn't a terrible process – better than many – but still, the people... I was expecting more engagement.

Program a game that plays itself – mostly about OOP.

Given an origin, find the longest path to another part of a weighted directed graph.

Probably something about YouTube video views or a topic you've already researched – who knows.

It wasn't a hard system design question.