Usually, you have to pass phone screens before you can get to an onsite interview. However, I went straight to the onsite without a phone screen because of an experimental hiring program. I had done two phone screens with Google in the past but didn't pass at the time.

Google paid for plane tickets, a stay in a good hotel, and car service to and from the Google campus. The process of making travel arrangements ran smoothly overall.

The interview itself consisted of five one-on-one interviews, with an hour lunch in the middle. The lunch was hosted by another Google engineer but was not evaluated; it was an opportunity to find out more about Google.

My first and last interviews included questions about what I had worked on. The first interview also included a troubleshooting question. The second interview was a system design question. The other interview questions were all algorithm programming questions to be answered on a whiteboard. They were hard enough that it wasn't obvious for me what algorithm to pick. I ran out of time in all of my interviews.

Algorithm questions, system design questions, troubleshooting questions