It was quite good and they ask for medium leetcode questions. Practice leetcode for this role as it helps a lot. Do practice graph, trees and dynamic programming. I was rejected as I was not able to give the optimal approach.
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Google (Bangalore Rural) in Aug 2024
Interview
Google came oncampus. We had an online coding round where we have to solve two coding questions within 1hr, the difficulty I would say was hard. Then after few days I got a mail that selected for the interview.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Given a sequence S of N digits, find a subsequence of K digits such that the number formed by these K digits (in order) is the largest.
Given an integer array of size N, there will be Q operations given containing a range [L, R] both inclusive such that L and R are valid indices and L <= R. For each query, you have to choose 1 subset
of indices in range [L, R] and subtract 1 from array values at selected indices in subset.
An array is called Zero Array if A[i] = 0 for all 0 <= i <= N-1 after Q operations. Implement a function to check whether it is possible to make the given array a Zero Array after performing given Q operations.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Cambridge, MA) in Feb 2022
Interview
The interview was tricky. The interviewer was engaging and helpful but the question was hard to even understand, let alone solve. I had been expecting something akin to a leetcode problem, but the given problem was more of a general logic/knowledge/comprehension exercise, which threw me off. Apparently this is very typical with Google, the questions will be deliberately vague and open-ended so that the interviewer can can focus more on your raw reasoning process than how much leetcode you have practiced.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Question was about finding the index in a buffer of an element "after the system crashes". Not really an algorithmic question as far as I could tell, more of a "A has 2 apples, B has 3 apples, calculate the mass of the sun" type question.