I was contacted by a Google recruiter in June and submitted my resume. This was followed by a 45-minute phone interview with an engineer in Boulder. The first on-site interview took place in mid-July.

This consisted of four 45-minute one-on-one sessions with engineers, all involving programming on a whiteboard.

A week later, the recruiter contacted me to schedule the second on-site interview for the end of July. This interview involved two 45-minute sessions, using the same format.

For the first on-site interview, I was given the wrong time and arrived an hour early. The recruiter had informed me over the phone that, based on my experience, the interviewers would ask me to program in language A. However, three out of the six interviewers presented questions in language B. I am unsure if this was an attempt to trick me or a miscommunication on their part; had I known, I would have been much better prepared. None of the on-site interviewers mentioned anything from my resume, so I cannot say if they reviewed it. Most programming questions were not overly difficult and did not require real-world working experience. My handwriting is slow and untidy, which was a disadvantage when writing code on the whiteboard.

The Google office in Boulder has a nice kitchen and food, but the workspace appeared crowded, unergonomic, and unimpressive.

In the end, over a week later, I was informed that I would not receive an offer. No reason was given. The recruiter stated that this decision was made before the results of the second on-site interview were considered, which seemed strange given that more than two weeks had passed between the first and second on-site interviews.

Overall, the Google hiring process did not feel very professional.

Nothing unexpected.

All about algorithms and data structures.