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Software Engineer Interview Experience - Mountain View, California

February 12, 2015
Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Two round phone interviews were conducted. The second one was quite odd. I could not hear the engineer clearly, and he had a heavy accent. Additionally, he called much later than the scheduled time.

The two questions were not about data structures or algorithms. If you knew the answer, you got it; if not, you were "screwed," which basically meant there was no progress toward a solution.

I spent 30 minutes trying to understand the first question. I asked him to clarify it repeatedly, but he just said that was all the information I had. I didn't know what I should do or write. Consequently, after 30 minutes, we skipped the first question.

Overall, the interviewer was not very proficient in English and remained silent for most of the interview, which was not very helpful.

Questions

I had to implement a function using two existing functions, but in the end, I still didn't know what I knew about these functions or what I should add.

The second one was more like a brain teaser. The questions were not about any hard algorithms or data structures, so I ranked them as easy; they were just tricky.

Personally, I think the questions are not suitable for a software engineer position.

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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.

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