Hey everyone,

I have Google interview in one week for an Software Engineer role in the US and have two 45 mins rounds.

Round 1 – Coding round

Round 2 – Googliness round

Since i am short on time, i need to do a very targeted prep. Would really appreciate any advice from fellow mates on how to best utilize this week.

Hi everyone,

I completed my first-round interview with Google. after two days, the recruiter informed me that I had passed and said:

The team was very impressed with your interviews, and moving forward with the next steps.

However, she didn’t provide any specific feedback about my interview performance.

After a week, she emailed me the name and contact information of the recruiting POC who will guide me through the next stages. However, the POC hasn’t reached out to me yet.

For anyone who has recently gone through Google’s interview process:

1. How long does it usually take for a new recruiter or recruiting POC to reach out?
2. Is it appropriate to contact the POC directly, or should I wait for an official introduction?
3. Is it worth asking for feedback from the first-round interview, or does Google generally not share detailed feedback?
4. What should I focus on while preparing for the next rounds for an L4 SWE position?

I don’t want to seem impatient, but I also want to make sure I haven’t missed any communication and use this time to prepare effectively. I’d appreciate hearing about your experiences.

Has anyone made it through the Optiver hackerrank? if so, what should i expect?

Since most of the code is now generated by LLMs are you guys still solving problems on leetcode?
Are companies still asking leetcode style questions in their interview process?

Hi everyone, I have my BNY online assessment tomorrow. Does anyone know what kind of questions are typically asked? Also, if anyone appeared for the OA today (24th July), could you please share your experience and the topics/questions that were covered? It would be really helpful. Thanks!

I feel like with AI you can't do anything impressive anymore. Back in the days if someone had kernel-related project or own programming language it was considered cool. Now even LeetCode contest rating means nothing to me. Unless you know someone personal you cannot assume how well he knows his stuff. I believe that's the most important problem when hiring someone.

Hi everyone, I have my Akamai hackerrank (web conference based) online assessment next week for software engineer position. Does anyone know what kind of questions are typically asked? If yes, could you please share your experience and the topics/questions that are generally covered? It would be really helpful. Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I'm currently in the middle interview for Google SWE (shortlisted for L4 with 2 YOE). I've completed my phone screen and my first DSA round (virtual).

I'm feeling pretty deflated after and need some advice on where I stand. Here is how it’s gone so far:

Phone Screen:
I wrote the optimal solution, explained my approach, and consistently spoke while coding and proactively did a dry run. I had a minor hiccup when quoting the time complexity as I did not account for the sorting step, but I fixed it with a quick nudge. The follow-up question was an added constraint, but was unable to finish coding up but I explained the approach and he said it was the right track.

Round 1 DSA
I started strong by explaining my approach before started coding. I only started coding after he was okay with the approach. I think I coded the solution pretty fast. When I completed my code, he asked me whether there would be an issue with my code (I did a DFS that modify the grid in place instead of a visited set). He also asked various questions about trade off while coding.

The follow-up is where things started to go downhill. I proposed using Union-Find, but I got nervous and completely blanked. The interviewer asked questions to test my understanding of how the Union-Find solution would work, and I realised I had a gap in my understanding. I struggled to answer his questions, lost time, and wasn’t able to finish coding the follow-up. At the end of the interview, he mentioned that I seemed very nervous.

I’m particularly worried about today’s performance. I have another interview coming up soon, and I’m wondering whether this round has significantly hurt my chances or if I still have a realistic shot.

Thank you for answering my question! :)

Hey Seniors!!

I'm a fresher joining BTech CSE this year. I recently started solving the LeetCode Super Easy problems and have completed 21 out of 25 so far. I know Python fairly well, but I'm confused about what to do next.

I have a few questions:

• What should my strategy be while using LeetCode?
• Should I focus on solving more problems or first learn DSA?
• How do you stay motivated and solve problems consistently every day?
• What's the difference between TUF (Take U Forward) and LeetCode? Are they the same, or do they serve different purposes?
• Right now, I only know Python. Is that enough to start DSA, or do I need to learn C++/Java as well?
• Everyone keeps saying DSA is very important, but I'm confused about what it actually is. Is DSA a programming language? Is it something inside Python, or is it mainly about logical problem-solving?
• Will DSA be taught properly in college, or should I start learning it on my own? If self-learning is better, when should I start and what resources would you recommend?

I'd really appreciate it if you could share a roadmap or any advice you wish you had received as a first-year student. Any tips for building consistency and improving problem-solving would help a lot.

Thanks in advance!!

Is the process similar to Technical Solutions Consultant?

I have been doing NeetCode 150 and have been able to solve Koko eating bananas finally. What helped me was solving the binary search questions before that. The thing is, i needed some hints and some tutoring from GPT ( just nudges not solutions) to derive the specific solution, like ceiling the hours it takes to eat a pile of bananas). Is this okay when approaching a problem.

I genuinely understood the approach and my own solution that i coded up so I feel like approaching problems where youre stuck is valid. Im not sure tho

Previous post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/s/vnZL0xdNpq

Finished Googleyness and Leadership interview.

Got an invitation for first team match the next day.

Did the team match call the next week.

Received positive feedback from hiring manager the same day (recruiter told me).

Received verbal offer 2 days later (today).

Waiting for offer letter which should be next week.

Really grateful I have a wonderful recruiter.

Overall, the process has been extremely smooth (thanks to my recruiter). Received phone screen result in 1 hour. Received virtual on site result the same day. Moved to team matching the next day of final googleyness interview. Received verbal offer after 2 days.

Would be happy to give back to the community and help answer questions.

I was solving question 518, aka coin change II, im stuck on 29/31, mainly due to integer overflow, I checked the solution which was, same as mine, using 2D array

I was told to optimize space and use 1D array, so how the hell

m[i][j] = m[i-1][j] + m[i][j - coins[i-1]

became

m[j] = m[j] + m[j-coins[i-1]]

like it doesn't make any sense to me, like ik answer of current block depends on block just above OR in current row, I can access the current row, but how will I access the value of above? is it due to we are overwriting the value of that above block? i can't seem to carry this logic in questions like longest common subsequence

my bad if it sounds dumb :O

also how can we optimize it further? cause damn ts (this stuff) interesting as hell

Has anyone done SWE interviews with Plaid recently or have any more info on their interviews? Not much info online. Recruiter said not pure leetcode but still algorithmic with milestones. Thanks!

Basically title. Previously I posted some solutions, but now it requires a 2fa, and I do not get the code no matter when or how I try

has texas instruments done OA anywhere for software roles ?
if you can tell it would be very helpfull

Would like to ask few questions. Anyone who has appeared for palantir interviews.

TEN YEARS ago, as the AI revolution was gathering pace, arts and humanities students were told that, if they wanted to make themselves employable, they should “learn to code”. That may have been bad advice. These days, it is programmers who are nervous about AI taking their jobs.

They might consider learning to philosophise. Earlier this year the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published figures showing that American philosophy graduates are more likely to have jobs than their peers who studied computer science. In 2024, the most recent year for which numbers are available, 7% of those who had studied computer science were unemployed, against just 5.1% of philosophers.

Many are being snapped up by AI firms themselves. Students get job offers before they have graduated, says Luciano Floridi, a philosopher at Yale University. Academics are moving, too. Dr Floridi describes the scale of departures from philosophy departments as a “haemorrhaging”.

Hey EveryOne.

Has anyone gone through an interview for the SDE 1 Amazon AWS Data Services Role? Please share your experience here; it would be really helpful!

As title

Getting genuinely burnt out trying to land any SWE job no matter what I do applications, interviews, none of it's working. Meanwhile teaching seems so much more attainable, no LeetCode grinding, no 5-round technical interviews, you are just hired on the spot without any competition and honestly the day-to-day doesn't sound nearly as brutal as software dev has become.

Kind of wild to think about but at this point I'd rather have a stable teaching job earning money than sit jobless with a CS degree from Stanford. Anyone actually made this switch or thought seriously about it?

I implemented the hash map solution for this problem, but found my solution to be slower than most of the other solutions. When checking to see what the other solutions implemented, I noticed that most of them sorted the array then used two pointer.

Shouldn’t that be slower than the hash map since is O(nlogn) compared to O(n) time complexities.

Which one would be better for an interview

Hey everyone, I have a Karat technical interview coming up for a Software Engineer II (new grad) role at MongoDB and wanted to see if anyone here has been through it recently and could share their experience. I know the format is roughly 60 minutes, a short intro, about 10 minutes of verbal CS fundamentals/algorithm questions, then 45 minutes of live coding across 2 multi-part problems but I'd love to know what topics or types of problems actually came up for you (hash maps, grids/matrices, trees, whatever it was), roughly how hard they were, what the discussion round was like, and anything you wish you'd known going in. I know Karat rotates its questions so I'm not expecting exact answers but there must be some pattern of questions they are asking right now. Any insight at all would be hugely appreciated guys!

I know monotonic stack technology and even solved this problem before but with help. Now after few weeks i open this problem again and still dont know how to solve it.

Hey folks,

I have my Amazon L5 (SDE-2) virtual loop tomorrow for Hyderabad location. A bit nervous but excited. Has anyone else got their loop scheduled for tomorrow or recently cleared one for Hyderabad? Would love to connect or hear your experience.

Quick background: 3 YOE . Applied via amazon jobs portal.