Software Engineer Interview Experience - Mountain View, California
Process
I received an email from my school's career center about the opportunity. I uploaded my resume on Google's hiring webpage.
Within two days, I received an email from the company's recruiter. The interview questions were not too difficult, although I did miss one out of stress. I had two 45-minute interviews.
The downside was that the interviewers provided no feedback, and I only received a boilerplate email from the recruiter. That was quite disappointing.
Questions
Given a list of points representing the skyline of a city in order (from East to West), find the maximal rectangle contained within this skyline. I was asked to write the code. I managed to find the algorithm, but it was not sufficient.
Find the intersection of two integer arrays in increasing order.
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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
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
Candidates reported having very good feelings for Google's Software Engineer interview process in Mountain View, California.
Google Work Experiences
- 3.0Shocked By Layoff, Severance PaidSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesJanuary 25, 2024Pros: 12 weeks severance plus 1 week per tenure year.Cons: Layoff notification through email during my vacation, with all company access cut immediately. There was no transparency regarding how the decision was made. In my case, my skip, who was promoted to senior director last cycle, was also impacted. This cut was a shock to me since we were told our projects align with the company's AI priority. To be clear, our team worked very hard in the past year, and I am not a "coaster." However, our team and sister team were hit pretty hard; approximately 25% of people were impacted, and many senior leaders were gone.
- 4.0Good Pay, Ai ReorgsSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesJune 6, 2025Pros: Pretty good company, good pay, and benefits.Cons: Company doing rolling layoffs and reorganizations, focusing only on AI.
- 5.0Greatest workplace you can imagineSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesSeptember 27, 2012Pros: Free food, snacks, drinks, and other perks in a great environment. Working with so many smart talents around you. Building products that will impact the lives of millions of people.Cons: - Google has become a big company, so you won't get a startup feeling anymore. - You'll be spoiled while working at Google and will miss perks, etc., if you move somewhere else.
Google Interview Questions
