The interview process contained several parts:

• Phone screening with HR.
• General Linux interview with one of the team members.
• Live coding interview.
• Troubleshooting interview.
• System design interview.

There was an option to choose how to conduct the interviews: two rounds of two-hour interviews or one round of a four-hour interview. I decided on two rounds.

Google provides time to prepare for interviews, averaging two weeks. I took two weeks, however, I now understand that it would have been better to take one month.

The live coding interview question was: find the most repeated words in a text file, list them, sort them, and show the number of repetitions.

The system design question was to design a system for getting reports and saving them. It was my first system design interview, so I didn't ask basic questions: how many users, how much space each file or record would take, how many per hour, and so on.

Find mostly repeated words in the text file, list them, sort, and show the number of repeatings.

You have two servers. One is unreachable. Find out why.