Google L4 Experience

Note: I will not be giving the questions, if that is your objective of reading the post.

Objective of writing the Post : My 2 cents on what to prepare and what not to prepare.

Background:
Tier 1 College (Non-CSE)
3 YoE
Investment Bank (25 base)

Process

Getting the invite : Recruiter reached out via linkedin, and asked me to apply through a career portal link.
Recruiter 1-1 : 30 minute call about the role and the different rounds, location etc.
The next day I got a mail from the scheduling team, and 2 DSA Rounds were scheduled after 2 weeks.

**Round 1: DSA -> 2 medium level questions in 45 minutes. **

My performance: Since it was google's round, thus upon seeing the problems I didnt approach them for what they were, but instead I was under the impression that they must be some very hard and tricky problem and thus discussed a lot with the interviewer to convince myself for what the ask is. Once cleared, I was able to code both the solutions properly.

Result : Leaning Hire, since interviewer had to give me hints to make the problem clear.

Round 2 : DSA -> 1 medium level question which I could not solve, thus wasnt asked the 2nd question

The solution that I gave was very sub-optimal, if it would have ran in an IDE in the first place.

Result : No Hire

Advice : Do not overcomplicate your preparation -> no matter how big the name is, if you are comfortable with solving grind 75 and neetcode 150 then most of the interview problems would be manageable for you.

My Mistakes: In the 2 weeks that I got to prepare instead of brushing up the medium problems that I already had a decent command over, I focused more on the hard google tagged problems, expecting that one of them or something similar might show up in the interview. Instead, if I had practiced the above mentioned lists, I would have fared a lot better.

Focus more on quality than quantity -> you must be able to tell the time and space complexity of your code.

Instead of jumping from one problem to another and trying to solve hundreds of problems and get dopamine from the numbers, try to focus on understanding and solving a limited set properly, trust me you will bless yourself for this.