I have a few years of experience in the industry. When approached by a Google recruiter, I mentioned very specific fields and groups that would be interesting for me to work on. Both my experience and interests were completely ignored during the interview process.

The interview itself wasn't difficult. There is a notion, however, that Google is interested in your thought process and how you approach problems. Based on the feedback I received, this is actually not the case. If you haven't seen a similar problem before and need some time to figure out how to solve it, you're unlikely to get great feedback from your interviewer.

Something else that surprised me was the total lack of enthusiasm from the interviewers when asked to describe their work. I'm not sure how to interpret this, but it definitely left a negative impression.

Indeed, it felt like the whole interview process is heavily geared towards fresh CS majors who want a job at Google no matter what. There's nothing wrong with that, but be aware of it if you decide to play this game.

Easy DP, graph problems