I completed my GSoC project in the first week of August. Around the same time, during our summer vacation, we received a mail from the Training and Placement Cell that Google would be visiting our campus to hire Software Engineers. From that day onwards, I was excited because after all, Google is one of the biggest tech giants in the world, and working there is every programmer’s dream.
Like most companies, Google conducted an online assessment consisting of two competitive programming questions to be solved within one hour. This round was scheduled in the third week of August. I managed to solve the first problem, but couldn’t finish the second one within the given time. At that point, I wasn’t sure if I would get a chance to move forward to the interviews.
In the last week of October, I received another mail about the list of shortlisted students for the interviews. Interestingly, I had missed the initial mail because of assignment work, and only found out through a friend! Two days later, we had a virtual meeting with Google recruiters to clarify doubts and understand the interview structure.
Interview Structure: Interviews will only consist of the problem based on the Data structure and Algorithms (DSA). There are 2 types of interview: 45 minutes DSA + 15 minutes Googlyness & Leadership (only if interview duration is 1 hour).
Once I heard that the focus would be on problem-solving, my confidence increased. At the time, I was ranked in the top 1% on LeetCode, which boosted my morale. Still, I revised concepts like binary search on answers, sweep line technique etc.
To stay calm, I played football with friends until 1:00 AM the night before my interview. That helped me release the nervousness and stress of my first interview.
My interviews were scheduled on the 12th November. I was pretty much confident as well as nervous. The timing for the first interview was 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM. On that day, I wake up at 9:00 AM had bath and breakfast and was ready for interview at 10:00. Joined interview link 5 minutes earlier and make sure that mic, internet and camera everything works fine.
The interviewer joined at sharp 10:15 AM. It starts with the greetings and we directly shift to the DSA problem. Firstly she asked me the question based on sweep line technique. I gave her the brute force solution and mentioned the time-space complexity for the same and just like others she asked for the optimal solution and then I came up with the sweep line technique solution.
Now, she asked 2 follow-up questions by modifying original question a little bit. I was able to answer them in the given time and also write code for the same. One of the follow-up question was based on the binary search on answer and another was on kinda greedy sorting.
In the last 15 minutes of interview as I mentioned earlier she asked me some question related to team management, project planning and long/short term future goals. I was able to deliver satisfactory answer based on my previous experience with opensource and GSoC.
On the very next weekend of the interview this questions were asked in the Leetcode weekly contest. These are the question and follow-up asked to me in the first interview: Zero Array Transformation I, Zero Array Transformation II, Zero Array Transformation III
Since the first round went well, I was more confident. To avoid overthinking, I spent some time chatting with friends before my next interview, scheduled for 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
The interviewer joined 2-3 minutes late and starts with the basic introduction and greetings. She gave me problem based on simplifying mathematical expression. This problem wasn't as difficult as previous one but I need to be more careful with the edge cases. So, deal with the edge cases interviewer told me to deal with the expression that only contains one bracket expression but while writing code, I was able to figure out the code for the multi-bracket expressions also. This problem can be considered as the Valid Parentheses problem modification with numbers & symbols inside every parentheses.
I was able to solve question before time and interviewer was quite happy with the time-space complexity of my approach and we move forward with the googlyness & leadership round. And just like previous round I was able to answer perfectly in this round.
While my second interview was still going on, I got a mail scheduling me for a third round from 1:30 PM – 2:15 PM. I again spent the short break with friends before heading back for the final interview.
This round focused solely on problem-solving. The interviewer gave me a problem similar to Number of Islands. Since I had already solved it before, I was able to provide the solution quickly. We then discussed a follow-up variation. I explained the approach, and though time was running short, the interviewer gave me an extra five minutes to complete my code.
Additionally, he emphasized the importance of writing test cases to validate code. I provided 5–6 different edge cases and explained why each line of code was necessary. Afterward, we had a meaningful discussion about testing practices in large-scale systems.
By the end of the third round, I felt I had performed well overall. Still, there was the usual suspense about the results. On the same day some of my other friends also had interview for different companies. So, we waited for them and then go to the canteen for some food and during that time one of my friend received offer from Samsung. We all celebrated that moment but again I was worried about my result a bit.
Again in the evening we played football and while having dinner, I received call from my parents and since I was in the mess so I cut it and saw that I have one mail notification with title final shortlisting for SWE role at Google. My heartbeat suddenly increased and when I saw my name in that list I was unable to speak anything, I simply handed my phone to my friends to show them the result. It was a surreal moment, a dream I had nurtured since my first year of college had finally come true.
I called my parents and seniors who had guided me through the journey, and of course, celebrated with friends who had been with me through all the ups and downs. At that moment, every effort maintaining a 700+ day POTD streak or waking up early for contests felt absolutely worth it.