I applied online and received an email inviting me to take an online C/C++ quiz. The quiz was fine, although some of the questions were a bit nebulous as to what the answer could have been. I set up a call with a recruiter for the next week. The first time, she forgot about the call, and the second time... she forgot about the call again. Nonetheless, we eventually connected. This call was an hour, where she asked some general questions and a few technical questions related to multithreaded programming.

After this interview, another interview was set up with a Senior Software Engineer. This call was a little over an hour. We chatted about previous work experience, and then he asked me a series of technical questions that were apparently 'blanket' for all candidates. Being a C guy (and not a C++ guy), I struggled with some of the questions pertaining to C++. Unfortunately, I goofed on some pretty simple questions because I felt a bit "on the spot".

Had I made it past this part of the interview, the next step would have been a 6-hour coding problem in C, followed by an onsite visit and a presentation that I would have to give to the team. That would be followed by 1:1s with the team.

Overall, a challenging interview but a good experience for someone interested in getting into a company like Google.

Why use a reference over a pointer?