The recruiter first conducted some screening by phone, asking a few technical questions and guiding me through Google's "self-evaluation" across about 10 domains (networking, *nix internals, *nix sysadmining, algorithms, and various languages). The recruiter had a good idea of how I should score. I was asked to narrow down where I would like to work. Google then picked an interviewer from one of the potential work sites for a coding interview conducted via phone and a shared document.

After that, I spent a day of interviews at Google's offices. Lunch was not an interview, but I was accompanied by a Googler who allowed me to ask questions about the work, office life, and such. All interviewers offered this, but the interviews rarely left enough time.

I sent feedback back to the recruiter, who called me when the hiring committee declined to make an offer. Unfortunately, the recruiter gave very little feedback when asked, claiming the information was not shared with them.

The on-site interviews featured troubleshooting, coding, large-system design, plus a bonus topic of my choosing (SRE-related) and an extra interview, which I believe was selected based on where I ranked highest.

My least favorite was the troubleshooting. There was no actual terminal prompt, and I was at the mercy of the interviewer deciding how the system was built, how it would manifest symptoms, and their understanding of how my commands would work. That interviewer asked me to pick a small number of things to monitor without defining the purpose of the monitoring.

Aside from early interaction with the recruiter, and the fact that my interviewers had access to my resume, there was very little of the traditional HR approach to recruiting. This process was almost entirely technical, and I was the only one asking questions about the more general fit.

One annoying thing was that, aside from the recruiter, everyone called from numbers that wouldn't answer back. This, plus the distance, made organizing some things painful. It also meant I had to write down anything I might want to ask in advance, because the people calling me were more prepared than I was.

See description of troubleshooting above. This is more of a process than a simple question.