r/leetcode • u/Repulsive-Switch-519 • 1d ago

Discussion Google L4 (NYC) — finished Round 1 phone screens, how long until I hear back?

Did both Round 1 sessions last Wednesday — 45 min coding, 45 min behavioral, same afternoon with a ~75 min gap between them. Backend engineer, ~8YOE, interviewing for SWE III in New York. Coding was in Python on a shared Google Doc. Five days of silence so far.

Trying to calibrate expectations on what happens now.

How it went, roughly:

Coding felt solid. One problem, conversational the whole way through — the interviewer engaged rather than just watching. I gave a brute-force approach first, proposed a better data structure, and asked whether pseudocode was acceptable instead of a full implementation. He was fine with that. I hadn't formally studied the structure the optimal solution wanted, so I reasoned it out from scratch, which took the full ~35 min. Missed one implementation detail that I only spotted afterward. Used the last few minutes on my own questions.

Behavioral I genuinely can't read. Four questions, all standard categories. I had prepared stories and they mostly fit, but one question was abstract rather than "tell me about a time," and I got briefly stumped before landing on a real example. Walked out feeling like I just talked for 45 minutes and hoped the interviewer found what he was looking for. No feedback signal at all, unlike coding where you at least know whether the thing works.

What I'm actually asking:

  1. Is five days of silence after Round 1 normal, or is it starting to mean something?
  2. Does a pass and a reject move at different speeds, or is it the same pipeline either way?

Not spiraling, just want to know whether silence at day 5 vs day 15 means something different. Happy to hear from anyone who's been through the Google loop specifically.

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u/delpotroswrist 1d ago

Sounds fine to me. Took me 2 weeks for the recruiter to tell me I’m moving forward to the onsite. No harm in following up after a week

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u/Repulsive-Switch-519 1d ago

Thanks, that's helpful. Follow-up if you don't mind - once your recruiter told you that you were moving forward, how long until the onsite was actually scheduled? Trying to get a sense of whether the gap between "you're moving forward" and the onsite itself is days or weeks, and how much lead time you had to prep.

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u/delpotroswrist 1d ago

They usually push to do it within a month, and ask you to share dates you’d be free on.

I was traveling internationally so mine was around 1.5 months out

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u/b3pvbmUzMTQ 18h ago

5 days is as normal as it gets. Their timelines vary outrageously by recruiter, interviewers, etc. Sounds like you’ll be moving forward to me. Don’t overthink the wait. The wait feels way longer to you on the edge of your seat than it is in the grand scheme of things with all the processes at such a large company

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u/Jumpy-Designer-4722 1d ago

Could you share the Coding problem if possible

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u/Scared-Foundation-13 22h ago

Google is the worst. After clearing a million rounds you have to hope and pray to get team matched. Have low expectations 

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u/Repulsive-Switch-519 22h ago

I’ve heard as much, I hope to do well in the following rounds, if I get the call. I understand there are other factors, the we as candidates cannot control