On-site interview after passing the phone screen phase.

Interviewed by five people.

First Interviewer:

Asked me to solve a graph/search problem. She/He said the following phrase/expression several times: "We are not evaluating your solution, but the way you think..."

In the end, she/he looked at my solution on the board with a little bit of arrogance, pronounced, "It's the way you think," and went out of the room.

Second Interviewer:

Asked a similar graph search type of problem. This time, I quickly jumped into coding my solution. I selected Java as my language of choice. Since we all know that Java is not suited for recursion, I used a separate stack to implement a DFS routine.

In the end, this time, I had the time to run tests against my code. The interviewer looked at them and said, "Well, I thought this won't work, but it does..." She/he also said, "I thought about coding a recursive solution."

I thought he was, again, kind of arrogant. If the interview was in Python or Scala, I would have probably tried recursion, but since I am a seasoned Java developer, I thought it would not be an acceptable approach. I explained it to him/her, which seemed to convince him/her somehow, and I also calculated the complexity of my algorithm (linear time solution). In the end, she/he gave me a compliment, telling me that I had coded the best solution.

Third Interview:

This time, the interviewer approached me saying things like, "Your job is much more difficult than mine. Congratulations." And in the end, he/she said that I had coded the right solution. (So fake, plastic, and unnecessary!)

Fourth Interview:

Same as the third. He/she approached and gave me the same compliment as the previous interviewer. Does someone tell them to treat people like this?

Again, so fake, plastic, and VERY UNNECESSARY.

Fifth Interview:

I was exhausted. I did badly and have nothing to complain about.

Conclusion:

The recruiter called me the next day, telling me that my feedback was too negative and that they would not continue with the recruitment process.

When I asked him/her about reapplying, he/she said that with such negative feedback, I would have to wait at least 18 months.

I was devastated.

The phone screen interviewer (an American) was polite and respectful (and I am not saying this because I was approved in that phase).

Regarding the on-site team at Google Belo Horizonte, I simply don’t understand why they treated me this way.

Google, this is really bad. I have years of experience and worked very hard preparing myself for this interview. You don’t need to treat me with that kind of fake, plastic sympathy just to give me harsh feedback in the end. It was disrespectful and unnecessary.

Questions are confidential.

They are somewhat similar to medium/hard HackerRank algorithms/data structures problems.