I was contacted by a Google recruiter based on an internal referral from an ex-colleague. Since I already lived in the Bay Area and (apparently) my referrer did a great job talking me up, I was allowed to skip the phone screen stage and proceed directly to the on-site interviews.

I went through 5 interviews (45 minutes each) on site, divided as follows:

• 3 on coding and algorithms
• 1 on object-oriented design
• 1 on high-level system design

I also had lunch (1 hour) with an engineer, where I got to sample their famous free food and talk informally about life at Google.

Like many other folks, I came in expecting very difficult and brain-warping questions. But to my pleasant surprise, none of the questions were particularly hard at all. The whiteboard coding and object-oriented design problems were really straightforward, very similar to the types of questions you'll get asked at most other major Silicon Valley tech firms. The system design question was a bit trickier, but it was ultimately just an open-ended discussion which felt pretty similar to real-life engineering design discussions that I do frequently at work.

I definitely got the feeling that they don't care so much whether you "solve" the problem per se, but rather they focus more about how you analyze and approach the problem and how effectively you engage the interviewer in communicating your ideas. Personally, I really enjoyed all my interactions and felt very engaged and energetic throughout the entire on-site interview day.

After the on-site interviews, I received a call the next day from my recruiter, who told me that the feedback looked good and that I would be moved to the hiring committee stage. Within another three days, I was told the good news that I'd cleared the hiring committee (supposedly with flying colors, although perhaps the recruiter was just trying to flatter me!). They then checked my references and asked for details about my current compensation and competing offers. Finally, it took another week after that to do the team matching and receive the formal offer.

Can't disclose due to NDA. As mentioned above, I had:

• 3 coding interviews
• 1 object-oriented design interview
• 1 high-level system design interview

The coding questions were of average difficulty, no harder than those asked at most other major Silicon Valley tech firms. One of the coding interviews also included knowledge-based questions on Java, which I had identified as my most familiar programming language. This suggests they do verify your claimed expertise.