I was initially contacted via LinkedIn for a position in Mt. View. When I made it clear that I wouldn't relocate, they referred me to the Seattle office, which turns out to be the third largest Google office after Mt. View and New York. The Seattle recruiter was very friendly and stayed in touch until I was handed off. After the initial phone call, I was set up for the standard tech screen phone interview. I hit it off well with the phone tech interviewer and managed to work through the question. After review by the hiring committee, I was handed off to another recruiter and set up for an onsite interview in the Seattle office. One comment: although I emphasized at every turn that I felt the Kirkland office would be an easier drive for me, I was consistently sent to the Seattle office, which I found a little odd.

I arrived on time for my six-hour interview at the office in Seattle. Apparently, this office is growing rapidly; they are already taking over another building. Parking is a little strange. If you can find their parking garage, I believe they will validate your parking. If you park on the street, you'd better have some cash – I think it was $10 for the day, and I didn't get reimbursed for that. It's an exciting and scenic location right on the water in the Fremont area.

My first interviewer was running late, and he seemed a bit rushed in general. I guess he was in the process of moving to California for a month. I had interviews in three different conference rooms and two different buildings. There were five tech interviews and one friendly interview, where the interviewer told me that he does not report anything, so I could ask him anything I wanted. It's good to be prepared with your off-the-record questions for your lunch companion.

Generally, the interviewers were pretty friendly and diverse in style and personality. They were very open about the process. I found out that decisions are made by a hiring committee, not by the interviewers – very different from Amazon, for example. They have categories of questions that must be covered. Almost everyone asked me a fairly typical coding question. I was also asked questions about how I would design and test larger projects. For example, one question was to design a suggestion list for the Google Search engine.

One nice thing about Google was that they provided me with a Chromebook and I was given the option to write my code on it. I was also given the option to use the whiteboard. I tended to use both: the whiteboard for working out algorithms and drawing diagrams, and the Chromebook for serious coding. This was a little awkward since the big screen didn't seem to be working right, so they had to huddle around me while I was typing.

Overall, I felt good about the onsite interview. I was very curious to see the Google facility, experience their vibe, and meet some actual Googlers, so in that regard, I was very happy. I had mixed feelings about taking the job since it would be a long commute for me, so I wasn't terribly disappointed or surprised when the hiring committee declined to make me an offer. The recruiter did make a point of giving me that news on the phone, and she also went out of her way to say that I had received much positive feedback and the door is always open if I want to try again. She couldn't give me any detailed feedback, unfortunately, as it's against policy, and she did apologize for the lack of transparency in that regard.

Personally, I think Google is probably the best of the big tech companies in terms of how they treat people and interesting projects. They encourage people to move around from project to project, which I like quite a bit, and they provide lots of fun benefits. When compared to my Amazon experience, I have to say that Google wins on every level.

Given a series of words written using a scrambled alphabet, figure out what order the letters of the alphabet are in.