I was initially contacted by a recruiter who indicated that I had been referred by someone working there. First, he inquired if I was interested, to which I said yes. We briefly discussed a phone chat but quickly moved forward with an on-site interview. Initially, I was to interview at their New York office, but the recruiter felt my chances were better if I interviewed at their headquarters in Mountain View. So, I agreed to a face-to-face interview at their headquarters.

At this point, I was introduced to a second recruiter who helped set up my travel arrangements, discussed what to expect, and answered any additional questions I had. She had also given me a list of topics to study and a couple of websites to visit to help prep. She was the one I met with when I went on-site, and she let me get a drink and use the bathroom before heading to a conference room where I would spend the next few hours. She then left me after giving me a chance to ask any more last-minute questions.

I had a schedule of 3 interviewers, followed by a lunch break, followed by 2 more interviewers to finish the day. The interviewers were nice and accommodating, and happy to answer any questions, but were very mindful of the time, except for my final interviewer who probably spent 2 hours with me. They gave the impression they are passionate about what they're doing and did not dismiss anything I said as foolish or dumb (I mention this as I've read other interview accounts who said their interviewers were snobbish and elitist).

After about a week, I emailed my recruiter asking about a status. She said they were still waiting on the feedback from some of the engineers and that she would find out where they were with this. About another week after that, she called me to inform me they were not continuing with the process. I had tried to find out more about the reason, but she said there was no feedback available and that it's a 'flaw' in their process. She encouraged me to apply again in another year or so, indicating that people often re-apply after their first try.

I had been asked to write a program that would perform a basic regular expression search.