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Software Development Engineer Interview Experience

September 17, 2013
Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Submit my resume online.

In the first phone interview, the Google staff asked me about my projects and a programming problem about picking up a sample of 1000 keywords from a huge amount of search requests. Of course, it is impossible to save all the requests.

The solution can be found in Cracking the Coding Interview. But then they asked me to explain why that works. I failed. Then I was asked to propose a way to check if the algorithm works.

Fifteen minutes later, I got my second phone interview. Problems included an Augmented Tree (from the book Introduction to Algorithms) and a question using a greedy algorithm.

I did not finish the second problem, but I proposed the right algorithm. It took me a long time to fix the bugs in my programs.

Recruiters were very nice and guided me to debug. I passed the interview and got to team match, but no team leader contacted me. Maybe I do not have my own unique skills or project experience.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 111 interview experiences for the Google Software Development Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

10%
Pass Rate

Google's interview process for their Software Development Engineer roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive57%
Neutral35%
Negative8%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Google's Software Development Engineer interview process in United States.

Google Work Experiences