After driving down to Sunnyvale from much more northern California, for over 3 hours (and paying for my own gas, as Google offered zero help with accommodations), I had my five onsite interviews.

While I felt I did well in 4 out of 5, there were two that particularly stood out.

One interview involved a question that could be solved with two separate data structures. I provided a verbal solution using each, and listed their pros and cons. My interviewer stated he preferred I use a graph (one of my suggested options) because he had more follow-up questions for that. During my 'denial' call, my recruiter told me this meant that I 'needed help choosing the right data structure'. Apparently, it's bad to give your interviewer options, despite all the information online that suggests discussing options and pros/cons is something you should absolutely do.

A different interview, my last of the day, had a 'shadow' interviewer. I had been told earlier that these interviewers would remain quiet and simply watch. This shadow did no such thing and, in fact, started asking me questions.

Worse still, the actual interviewer either refused to answer any of my questions (resulting in dead silence) or responded with 'you tell me' when I asked clarifying questions. On top of all this, both my interviewer and the shadow interviewer would periodically giggle to each other as I tried to walk through the problem on my own.

I am absolutely amazed that Google deemed these people qualified interviewers. Overall, this experience left a very bad taste in my mouth about the whole company.

That said, there were a few other interviewers who were VERY good and extremely pleasant to interview with.

I signed an NDA, but general data structure questions and testing were asked.