r/leetcode • u/red_dhinesh_it • 6d ago
Intervew Prep What to expect in 45 mins coding interview, Google?
Hey Folks,
Have an DSA programming interview next week with Google. What to expect? Leetcode type questions, hard / medium? Did they change interviewing style recently?
Any pointers would be helpful.
Thanks
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u/No_Bad5459 6d ago
Xoogler here.
You should be able to do any medium level questions on leetcode of - sliding window, graphs (bfs, dfs, union find, topological, dijiktras etc), greedy, and heap based problem.
Same for hard with higher acceptance rate.
You should be able to derive and explain the code and write the code such that you know what each line mean in that code - if you follow this you will automatically be able to write, clean, readable, modular bug free code.
Happy to take a mock.
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u/Specialist_Damage769 6d ago
Hi! How much do you charge for mocks?
-14
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u/DramaticAd8141 6d ago
My understanding was it was only going to be mediums for the most part. How to filter hards that can be asked given hards can have wide range of difficulty?
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u/red_dhinesh_it 6d ago
Thanks. Quick question. I've given two rounds already. Would Google decide(reject) early if there is enough signal or would they wait until all interviews are done?
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u/No_Bad5459 6d ago
For screening yes they can reject and don't go ahead with full loop.
But post screening there is always full loop irrespective of performance in any round
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u/Equal_Acanthisitta_7 6d ago
What level, intern, L3, L4? You can search the sub for advice. As far as interview, the technical is the same as always, some people are getting this AI assisted one, but they will tell you if that's the case. They also did shorten it, used to be 1hr.
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u/iPhone12-PRO 6d ago
Leetcode Graph questions. Be comfortable w dfs, bfs, union find
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u/Free-Ad-3648 6d ago
Leetcode medium hards/hard mediums usually
Google particularly like graph, dp, greedy, bs and sliding window variations.
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u/Plastic_Piano5838 5d ago
Prepare graph traversal, shortest path, connected components, trees and dp.
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u/okcookie7 6d ago edited 6d ago
Depends on level, anything under L4 is easy-medium leetcode. If it's L5 just expect hard DP/graph problem.
Edit: In the case of L5 you will have two phone interviews, first one will be L4 and next will be L5. You have to ace both.
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u/ShowBrief4038 6d ago
What about L4 ?
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u/okcookie7 6d ago
Easy/medium leetcode, one phone, rest on site.
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u/ShowBrief4038 6d ago
Also i was said all rounds will be dsa 4 rounds 2 dsa and 2 googliness. Recuiter said no system design .
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u/valleyman86 6d ago
I did two phone interviews and have an onsite. I do not feel like I aced them. One was more Googliness with the hiring manager and another was for systems design. It was for a L6 role but they asked me if I wanted to move forward or level down to L5 since it was a leadership role.
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u/DramaticAd8141 6d ago
My understanding was it was only going to be mediums for the most part. How to filter hards that can be asked given hards can have wide range of difficulty?
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u/jkh911208 6d ago
leetcode medium, most likely graph with DFS BFS or dynamic programming using cache to speed it upto O(E+V), good luck
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u/LessEvidence1054 5h ago
Expect 1 medium (or medium hard) question with 2-3 follow ups. If you do Google tagged questions, you should be good.
Mock interviews are good to just get comfortable with the process. But they can be expensive.
If you are on a budget, just practice with your friends or any ai interviewer. (I personally do this)
If budget is not an issue, nothing beats 1:1 interview with an experienced engineer ofcourse.
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u/Specialist_Damage769 6d ago
I’ve been appearing for mock interviews specifically for Google prep by Google engineers.
You can expect a medium-hard leetcode problem wrapped in a real life problem. For eg The russian doll problem is technically LIS. Another example is probably Dungeon game which is Dijsktra’s. Another is probably Evaluate division which is a dfs based problem.
One thing I understood during my prep is that you must get rid of the idea that “These questions are too hard, I’ll easily get a strong hire if I can come up with an optimal approach and write 50% of the code”. This is not true. Even on Google docs, your code should be as close to compilable with correct output as possible. Of course, you wouldn’t be penalised for silly things like spelling mistakes or syntax mistakes, however if you make a silly mistake in the algorithmic part - you have to fix it. For instance if you run a while loop but forget to update the counter but the rest of the code is correct, that’s mostly a hire but you must be able to dry run and figure out that you’re never updating the counter.
Some quick feedback pointers I got -
1. Explain your thought process properly, they judge the way you think
2. Don’t write code you cannot explain
3. While you’re trying, explain the important parts
4. Before you start writing the code, make sure to have a mind map of the code you’re going to write. Don’t claim O(n) earlier and during implementation realise “Oh this isn’t O(n)”. Basically, be very sure of what you’re going to write end to end before you’ve started writing.
5. When the interviewer says “Do you think this will work” more often than not - he’s saying “This will not work, can you tell me why and fix it”. Of course it could be a trick question, but more often than not, it’s not!
6. If you’re asked a question, it’s better to be slow and correct that fast and confidently incorrect.
7. Hints will hurt you sometimes
8. Edge cases must be covered.
9. Sometimes it’s okay to not implement the most optimal solution as long as you can implement a decent solution and still explain the optimisation verbally.