Google Interview Experience
Read an interesting story of some guy on Quora, this is all about his journey to get selected in Google
The journey:
The journey:
- Summer 2013: Started to revise the course Data Structures and Algorithms, which I undertook in 2nd year. Started coding my own implementations of trees, binary trees, binary search trees, stacks, queues.
- Realized competitive programming was about much more. Wrote my 1st BFS and DFS, submitted on SPOJ and became elated. Then some easiest problems on codechef. The green tick was orgasmic.
- Got acquainted with the vast world of Dynamic programming. Started to learn DP, read topcoder tutorial on DP, searched for easy DP problems - Tried them, could do only 2/10. Demotivated. Thought DP was not my cup of tea. Gave up on DP.
- Learnt about segment trees from a codechef editorial. Read a tutorial on segment trees. Implemented my own version (took about 3-4 days of debugging). Submitted on SPOJ. - 8 wrong submissions. Thought of coming back to segment trees after a while.
- Started to learn DP, read DP chapter in CLRS, read topcoder tutorials, searched for easy DP problems - Tried them, could do only 5/10. Tried some DP problems on SPOJ. Couldn't do a single one. Thought of coming back some other time.
- Back to segment trees. This time got accepted on SPOJ and segment tree became my favorite data structure.
- Qualified for ACM-ICPC Amritapuri regionals.
- Picked up DP again. 8 days of intense DP. Did about 8-9 DP problems on SPOJ.
- Participated in ICPC regionals. Performed poorly. Team ranked #224.
- Following that a little bit of Topcoder/Codeforces/Codechef/SPOJ. Greatly inspired by #-Link-Snipped-# my senior, who gave up his summer intern to work on competitive programming.
- As expected, companies like Amazon and Microsoft that visited campus for internships didn't open up for my branch. No remorse/regret/care in this world because I was enjoying what I was doing. Didn't really know or care if competitive programming would get me a job.
- Finally, got a work from home internship at a Start-up based in San Francisco in the summer of 2014; all thanks to #-Link-Snipped-#. It required me to work on algorithms and data structures. Learnt a lot and more importantly understood the code quality difference between competitive programming and production level code. Realized that more often than not, I would not be working with fancy algorithms and Data Structures at a full time job - i.e. that the world of competitive programming is very different from actual software engineering jobs. Embraced the fact.
- Fourth year: Placement preparations specifically.
Geeksforgeeks/leetcode/cracking the coding interview etc. Didn't enjoy much of this phase though, because I wasn't able to give time to real competitive programming. Realized I was starting to become comfortable with DP. - Google APAC, August Round: Rank 221. Not called.
- Google APAC, September Round: Rank 122. Called for personal interviews.
- Google Gurgaon office, October 28:
Google Interview experience in short.
4 Interviews with 2 questions each. Each round ranging from 45 min. to 1 hour 15 min.- Interview 1:
Question 1: Dynamic Programming ( A Day at Gaushala Maidan 😛 )
Question 2: AdHoc - Strings - Interview 2:
Question 1: Dynamic Programming
Question 2: Dynamic Programming - Shortlisted for round 3.
- Interview 3:
Question 1: Breadth-First Search
Question 2: Open-ended/Design Question (I used heaps) - Shortlisted for round 4.
- Interview 4:
Question 1: Trees (IITJ Shutterbugs - rings a bell?)
Question 2: AdHoc - I used Heaps/HashMaps
- Interview 1:
- November 4: Google HR calls me to ask about my branch, location preferences and transcripts.
- November 7, 12:30 hrs: HR calls me to congratulate me on acceptance of my application. Tells me I will be joining Google India. E-Mail follows. Can't stop shaking.
- Night of November 7: Party straight for 7 hours. People in the adjacent building said that they couldn't sleep because of the noise.
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