One in-person interviewer openly told me that he hates his job and that he would not recommend anyone work at Google. This was said as he first walked into the room. He didn't even say hello; it was just the first thing he said. Overall, after speaking with 6+ people, only 2 introduced themselves or told me what teams they work on.

My phone interviewer called 1.5 hours early and apologized for being 30 minutes late. He told me to either get to a computer or the interview was off. He never introduced himself. He hung up during the call for 10 minutes while I coded and called back after I was done. He looked at my answer, asked a few questions for 10 minutes, and then just hung up without a goodbye. I never even got his name. Apparently, he was happy with my answer, though, because I got a call back from a recruiter only 20 minutes later.

My onsite timing was very poor. My first interviewer went on for over 1.5 hours. The next interviewer was upset that he had to wait outside for over 45 minutes. He not only didn't introduce himself but was also happy to take his frustration out during the interview. He took his interview over time, leaving me only 15 minutes until the cafeterias closed for lunch. Therefore, we went to a smaller cafeteria which had nothing to drink but water. This would have been fine, except after rushing through a meal and desperately needing caffeine (and a bathroom), I was not in great shape for the next interview.

The first 15 minutes were fine, as I wrote 6 different tree algorithms for pre, post, and in-order traversals in both iterative and recursive forms. The interviewer then asked me if I liked Sudoku, to which I replied that I didn't actually know the rules of how it worked. At that point, he immediately ended the interview, saying he wouldn't have time to explain it before asking his interview question. I was surprised that he didn't want to explain his interview question, but more surprised that he didn't have a backup question either. Since we were over an hour over schedule anyway, the next person was already at the door, and this is likely why he ended after only 15 minutes. I never got his name or team, nor had an opportunity to ask a single question, which was also true for the next interviewer.

He asked me a classical question that is common in universities. I already knew some of the possible answers and was upfront with him about this. He responded by taking the whiteboard markers and saying he would like to discuss possible answers instead of coding them. After an hour of good discussion, we had not written any code at all, and he ended his interview. I assume that for the committee, this probably did not reflect well, since they like to see code.

My system design question was interesting and went on for over 3 hours. The interviewer asked me, "As a team lead, what do you do when an [expletive] PM is trying to make your team death march, saying he will just replace employees as they burn out?" Having been through similar situations at Microsoft, I was very good about handling this sort of thing in a way that is beneficial for all parties involved. I have to say that I was (and am still) surprised by the question though!

By the end of my last interview, the recruiter had left, so I didn't say goodbye to anyone. I was just escorted out.

My NDA prohibits me from sharing these details. However, of the 10 or so questions I was asked, 6 were graphing algorithm related, and 2 were discrete math related.