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Google | L5 | Bangalore | Apr 2024 [Passed]

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Hello,

Status: Bachelors from Tier 3 College
Position: SSE at Product Based MNC
Location: Bangalore, India
Date: April, 2024

I applied through a LinkedIn job posting. I got a recruiter email to have a call then they scheduled a phone screening interview.

Phone screening: DSA
Graph based problem medium level. It can be solved by BFS and DFS. They asked about which approach was better and why.

  • It went well and proceeded to onsite interviews.

Onsite interviews were 5 interviews 45 minutes each (all questions aren't on LC but similar ideas):

Round 1: DSA
Heap based problem hard level. It needed filtering some data then use heap (PQ) to get the highest k elements.

  • I made one mistake but it wasn't big so it went slightly positive. (Lean Hire)

Round 2: DSA
Trie based problem hard level. It was required to build a trie then verify some strings if they are valid based on rules given.

  • I did very well, the interviewer was happy with my approach and solution. It went positive. (Hire)

Round 3: DSA
Stack based problem hard level. It was required to use stack to solve some mathematical equations.

  • I did well but interviewer asked 3 follow-up questions, didn't have enough time to solve the 3rd one. But it went positive. (Hire)

Round 4: Googleyness
Interviewer was nice. Standard past experience, managerial and behavioral questions.

  • Interviewer didn't have any comments but looked happy with the interview. It went very positive (Strong Hire)

Round 5: System design
I was asked to design Google sheets. It was a very interesting and fun discussion, interviewer was very cooperative and made it look like a teammate conversation.

  • Interviewer had a lot of follow-up questions but all of them to clarify why I chose my approach. It went very positive (Strong Hire)

Verdict : Accepted
Got to know from the the recruiter that I have been accepted and moving to team matching after 2 weeks.

Preparation guide:

DSA:

  • Solved 800+ LC questions over 2 years.
  • Solved top Google marked questions for the last 6 months
  • Solved Blind 75 LC questions
  • Practiced on NeetCode for specific algorithms questions
  • Most importantly to understand every algorithm and data structure well, know its use cases, what are the alternatives for it and the pros and cons of it.

System design:

  • Know the most asked system design questions and try to solve them yourself.
  • Grokking the System Design Interview book or course.
  • Gaurav Sen YouTube system design videos.
  • Chakde System Design YouTube videos, mostly focusing on frontend but still good overall
  • Read LC previous asked system design questions for FAANG and suggested solutions (You can find on discuss -> system design questions)

Googleyness:

  • STAR method.
  • Jeff H Sipe preparation videos on YouTube.
  • Read about Google culture.
  • Prepare answers for the most asked questions for managerial and behavioral questions.
  • Be ready to answer questions about your past experience.

Compensation: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5278359/google-l5-bangalore-offer

Hope this can help you and best of luck in your upcoming interviews :)

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