My phone interview went well. The interviewer was very friendly, and the questions were of medium difficulty, involving some string manipulation. I solved them effectively and secured an onsite interview.

The onsite interview experience was quite negative for me. Overall, I felt that the company did not want to hire me. The questions asked were very tough. They were either extremely difficult to implement, with numerous edge cases to consider, making it challenging and time-consuming to finish coding within the allotted time, or they required complex algorithms that were nearly impossible to devise if you hadn't encountered the problem before. I personally believe it's unproductive to ask such questions, as they don't accurately reflect coding skills. Instead, they seem to test how many LeetCode problems one has solved; if you've seen them, you're lucky, otherwise, you're unlikely to get the job.

All four of my interviewers were male and of the same racial background, indicating a lack of diversity that I would not want to be part of. Three of the interviewers were friendly, but one was not. He was unhelpful and repeatedly told me I was wrong, despite my explanations. He focused on aspects he didn't understand and declared them incorrect, which was incredibly annoying and a significant waste of time. I wish I had been able to finish my solution and explain my thought process, and that he would have tried to understand, rather than being so adversarial and solely focused on proving me wrong. I question the purpose of such an approach and wonder how he was hired and how his colleagues tolerate him. Perhaps this is what people refer to as arrogance, stemming from the belief that working at Google makes one the best, which isn't always true. Sometimes, with bad luck, you encounter difficult interview questions.

I felt that this company did not value me or my past work; none of the interviewers inquired about my previous projects or experience. I also felt unwelcome as a woman engineer, an area I hope Google will address in the future. They seemed indifferent to the extent of my preparation, presenting a single difficult problem and expecting perfect code for a flawless solution. I felt like an idiot after the interview, which was very discouraging. It took me some time to recover my confidence and realize that they simply didn't see my true capabilities. My key takeaway from this interview experience is the necessity of extensive LeetCode practice. I completed around 200 problems and read two books, which apparently wasn't enough. One might need to solve closer to 500 problems to secure a job at Google. Whether this is a worthwhile endeavor is subjective, but I personally believe the system is flawed. If your sole career goal is to be an SDE at Google and you're unsure of your path, it might be justifiable; otherwise, I believe dedicating time to projects in your field would be a more beneficial use of your time.

Tree and graph related questions, including DFS and recursion.