Taro Logo

Software Engineer Interview Experience - Mountain View, California

December 1, 2012
Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

First, I applied for a summer internship. I had two phone interviews, and due to mixed feedback, they asked for a third one. I didn't receive any offer.

I emailed the recruiter after six months regarding a full-time position. They arranged another phone screen, and then I was invited for an on-site interview.

There were five interviews, plus a conversation with someone during lunch (which was not an interview). The people were friendly and nice, and the questions were not difficult or tricky. You only need to be comfortable with limited time and coding.

As I have signed an NDA, I cannot reveal the questions, but they covered:

  • One BST tree question
  • One recursive function question
  • One design question
  • One open discussion about mutual exclusion on a linked list
  • The last interview focused on my PhD thesis.

All interviews, except the third one (which was a very simple BST question), went great. However, I didn't receive any offers.

Questions

None of the questions were hard or unexpected. Really.

Was this helpful?

Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 748 interview experiences for the Google Software Engineer role in Mountain View, California.

Success Rate

20%
Pass Rate

Google's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in Mountain View, California is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive64%
Neutral23%
Negative14%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Google's Software Engineer interview process in Mountain View, California.

Google Work Experiences