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Software Engineer Interview Experience

November 6, 2014
Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

One HR interview, introducing the basic interview process. You just need to answer some simple questions about your resume. After that, they will send you an email describing all the things you need to master before the tech interview, including the site, type of questions, and so on.

Two Tech interview. Solve algorithm problems:

  1. Traverse a binary search tree and find the sum of the tree.
  2. Return all subsets of size k whose sum is n.

Be sure to use Topcoder; it's a wonderful site with great tutorials. Even better, it provides a practice room where you can test your code and observe its performance.

However, my suggestion is that you start with Google Docs, because that's how you will really use it in an interview. Only after you have finished coding in your Google Doc should you copy and paste your answer into your Topcoder practice room system to test it. You should also do this within a time limit, which is not 45 minutes, because the real interview will leave some time for questions and initial chat.

Therefore, it would be appropriate if you could solve the problem within 30 minutes. The problem will not be too hard, but it definitely requires strong preparation.

Questions

second question, because that requires a lot of performance consideration.

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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.

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