Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience - Mountain View, California
Process
The phone interview was nice, with one simple question about hashing and one tricky math question.
The on-site interview involved five robot-like engineers conducting pre-programmed interview sessions assigned by HR/their manager. I felt they were acting merely as input/output ports for the hiring manager.
In two of the interviews, the interviewer showed a basic lack of understanding regarding the questions they asked. In one case, the interviewer didn't really understand what the pivot is in quick select. In another, they didn't know how to find the complexity of a recursive algorithm using a recurrence relation for T(n).
I think I had very good interviews in four sessions, though I missed a few opportunities to fully impress them. I feel I should have been more aggressive in taking over the interview flow to better demonstrate my thinking skills. They generally pull you down to a low-level problem-solving task, potentially causing you to miss the real objective, which is to prove your skills through your approach. Who cares how many golf balls you can fit inside a bus or how good you are at estimating the bus's size?
One interview I botched, and I guess that's what caused me to fail. Friends told me you must get all the interviewers' votes.
Questions
What's wrong with the following code?
cpp
template
for (int i = 0; i < in.size(); ++i) {
total = total + in[i];
}
return total;
}
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 38 interview experiences for the Google Senior Software Engineer role in Mountain View, California.
Success Rate
Google's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in Mountain View, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having good feelings for Google's Senior Software Engineer interview process in Mountain View, California.
Google Work Experiences
- 5.0Good Balance, Lacking InnovationSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesNovember 8, 2022Pros: It is a work-life balance company.Cons: I think the products lack innovation.
- 4.0Good Pay, Tough DeadlinesSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesDecember 17, 2021Pros: Friendly coworkers, good perks & compensation.Cons: Rapid deadlines, poor work-life balance
- 5.0A great place to be an engineer!Senior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesJanuary 25, 2010Pros: Great, engineer-driven company. Groups are all very autonomous, so individual engineers have a lot of control over the direction of the group and responsibility for the success of the team. The company assumes you are going to be thinking about more than getting to your current milestone, and expects you to think big and aim for large goals. I've found the other engineers sharper and more accomplished than anywhere else; everyone has shipped great things before, and they are eager to do it again. It's not surprising to be working with a 24-year-old who sold a company, two senior engineers who were VPs at startups, and a well-known researcher in a particular area.Cons: It's a cross between grad school and a hundred little startups. I haven't always gotten guidance from management about what's important or how the teams need to work together. Like grad school, there are times where it does feel all your responsibility. Marketing and bigger vision sometimes come from the product managers, but it always feels like individual advice rather than a single clear vision of where we should go. Individual teams have a lot of control over libraries and code they use, so lots of infrastructure projects grow as research projects that succeed only if adopted by significant numbers of other teams. Although there is a big vision for the company, it isn't as focused or controlled as in other companies; there's really an assumption that the right stuff will bubble up. It's not a place with razor-focused direction. Initial titles/ranks and promotions are determined by committees of other engineers. This is great because you're recognized for your engineering work, but bad if you aren't churning out enough code or if you're not having enough impact on the rest of the company. Initial titles get assigned 6-12 months in, when you're put in the same pool as existing Googlers who are up for promotion. If you don't match up to them, you go down a slot – no difference in salary, bonuses based on new level, and any mental scars from being judged unworthy. It doesn't really matter, but if you're at Google, you're probably not used to failing. Everyone's driven to succeed. There may not be a lot of external pressure from management to pull long hours, but folks tend to do it anyway because they want to accomplish something great. It's an easy place to feel you're below average, even when you've been tops everywhere else.
Google Interview Questions
