Taro Logo

Software Engineer Interview Experience

December 1, 2019
Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

The interview process was pretty typical: a phone interview followed by an onsite interview. The onsite consisted of 5 rounds, plus lunch with an engineer.

Why I had a negative experience:

  • I found it very difficult to get time with my recruiter, as her calendar was pretty much booked solid.
  • It took two weeks to schedule or reschedule anything. I've interviewed with several medium-to-large companies, and Google's process was the slowest by far.
  • I was told I would have 4 coding interviews and 1 behavioral interview for my onsite. I ended up having 5 coding rounds, which threw me off a bit when I walked into my last interview expecting behavioral questions and got another whiteboard round. I have since spoken with several other people who interviewed with Google and learned this is not uncommon. Apparently, they recently added behavioral to the mix, but not all interviewers have received the memo yet.
  • One of my interviewers was dead silent for almost the entire interview, which was awkward and uncomfortable. I'm not sure if this is intentional or if I was just unlucky. The rest of my interviewers were very nice.
  • For the phone round, they make you code on Google Docs, which is not ideal. I understand it's your product, but can't you just use CoderPad like everyone else?

Questions

The usual LeetCode stuff, lots of graphs and trees.

Was this helpful?

Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 3,728 interview experiences for the Google Software Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

12%
Pass Rate

Google's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive59%
Neutral29%
Negative12%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Google's Software Engineer interview process in United States.

Google Work Experiences