Amazing recruiters. The initial call was very friendly. The recruiter asked me to rate my abilities and then gave a "pop quiz" at the end. I got a few wrong, but it was enough to secure a phone interview.

The phone interview lasted 45 minutes and consisted of half programming/scripting and then 4 or 5 Linux questions. I did okay; I didn't think I did excellently. I expected Google to require "excellent" and for the process to end there. However, to my surprise, two days later, they offered to fly me out to Mountain View for an interview.

All accommodations were handled quickly and efficiently: flight, car, food, and an amazing hotel.

There were 5 on-site interviews: 2 management interviews, 1 troubleshooting/Linux/networking, 1 NALSD (non-abstract large scale system design), and 1 programming/scripting. Everyone was extremely friendly and nice. They all seemed like wonderful conversations. There were no "gotcha" questions. Because I was applying as an SE ("System Engineer") and not an SWE ("Software Engineer"), there were no algorithms, sorting, graphs, trees, etc. The programming/scripting was practical, real-world coding.

It took 2 weeks to finalize everything and receive an offer letter.

I can't stress enough how great the recruiters were. I felt like they were my advocates.