Why I Fail Candidates During Google Interviews.

After joining Google in 2022, I got trained to interview candidates. I’ve had a chance to meet candidates and saw how much they struggled. I’m ready to share some of their common mistakes (that I’m legally allowed to share).

Not knowing their data structures is NOT the #1 reason why I fail candidates.

Before we dig in, let’s go through what the interview process looks like today.

#coding #engineering #programming #google #softwareengineer #softwardevelopment #systemdesign #python #java #engineer #developer #programmer #codinginterview #code #dayinthelife

[Teslatainment]

Woah, I didn't know Google gives you a mock interview! Game changer

[DavidDLee]

No worries if you are rejected. About a 1/3 of Googlers will pass this interview.
After working for a few years, you'll forget how to quickly solve some of these silly questions, because in real work is a completely different skill.

[mbnyc]

Over the years and years of my carrier, I’ve never needed to reverse a linked list.

[Infinitely]

If you get to onsites and they assume you can code by that point because of the previous leetcode interviews, and the onsites are about communication and collaboration, why are there more leetcode questions? Why not discussing past work, sharing a personal project and talking about it, walking through some code together with the interviewer and seeing how well the candidate can digest and explain what is going on, discussing open source development, etc. This is precisely a school test, the whole way through. Pretending that it isn't is unfair and just lying. I don't mean to attack you. But everybody, including these companies, know that these many leetcode interviews don't determine someone's competency and certainly aren't an indicator for if they will fit in at the company. It's just an easy shortcut. Communication is a weak point because in order to prepare *just* for the interviews, you have to go through 3-6+ months of studying leetcode. You can't communicate with the interviewer during the test, they aren't allowed to talk much other than vague hints here and there. It's weird to have to juggle thinking about solving the problem and trying to speak every 5 seconds because that's not how thinking works. It's just a weird industry practice and we all know it's a broken system. Everybody knows this, but as an industry we keep pretending. Sorry for the rant, I'm sure you and all of us can understand how insanely frustrating it is. Again, I am not attacking you specifically, just frustrated at the system in general. Needed to vent.

[zim]

Yeah they just know databases, replication, ci/cd, Kubernetes, docker, webpack, vite, bloom, tailwind, html, htmx, css, scss, postcss, GCP, AWS, Azure but they can't revet damn linked list!

[EvgenyGoldin]

It's hilarious to hear from a Google employee about "communication". Of all my interviews, Googlers were always by far the most disrespectful and arrogant.

[nicksophinos]

I never NEEDED to manually reverse a linked list since I was in college 25 years ago. That's because I focus on software that works well in the real world. I would never want to work for Google, Apple, Facebook, or any of those lame companies.

[Falx]

As a truck driver I'd push the linked list onto a stack the pull the stack back onto the list. Nuff said.

[Fernandez]

mock interviews are great. the feedback is the best part. my friend is high up in a tech company and said they can't give feedback in a regular interview because of a possible lawsuit. But that doesn't happen in a mock interview.

[Websitedr]

Now I want a mock Google interview just to say I tried it. Google isn't a dream job anymore either.

[BobrLovr]

Ah yes with all those linked lists I'll be reversing at my job

[DevShorts-czef]

Understanding the intricacies of reversing a linked list is a fundamental skill that I consistently employ in my daily work. 😂

[jordancobb]

It's called "use a library" or a function of the language itself. This isn't a Commodore 64. There's no reason to manually do these things unless you're writing a linked list library.

[scmsean]

Memorizing leetcode doesn't mean you can code. It is a really dumb way to interview. They aren't real world problems, and you aren't going to solve them in the time given without memorizing.

[kirillsukhomlin]

Meanwhile I’m passing all the coding interviews, but always failing „behavioural“ one because I genuinely do not understand what they want from me.

[r.j.dunnill]

Reminds me of the time I bombed out on an SDET interview, and the manager concluded did not have good coding nor good testing skills.

Five years later, we crossed paths again. I was tasked with estimating the effort needed to snapshot a running Unreal game's log, a feature QA really, really wanted. This manager and his colleagues had deemed the log exclusively locked and unreadable.

But, with a little interviewing, followed by some tinkering on a Friday afternoon, I quickly found out what they were doing wrong: they weren't opening the game log file with the correct flags. Open the file with the correct flags and it was instantly readable.

Rather than an estimate, I delivered the feature itself, and saved the group the cost of hiring an Unreal engine developer.

[weiSane]

Why do most start up’s not give a f about leetcode and more interested in what you can do or past projects. Big contrast from FANG companies.

[_real_bruh]

Honest question: if Ive been a developer with multiple years of experience and Im signing up for a normal software dev role, would you still ask me to solve silly leetcode problems? It just seems extremely weird when full-stack devs have literally single-handedly built and deployed dozens of apps for customers, only to not get to the next interview stage because they couldnt memorize a sorting algorithm.
Edit: last time Ive had to reimplement any sort of list/sorting/binary tree algorithm was in academia (Ive got an M.Sc now)

[btmhezu]

There is this one girl in my batch ...she doesn't even know the basics ..not even to reverse the string..I dont' know on what basis google shortlisted she doesn't have good profile nor projects ...how did they even select her for the internship ..its frustrating to see non deserving people getting selected

[paulwilliams]

"How do you reverse a Linked List??" ...hmm... I probably use a library that already does it for me... I question why I need it reversed in the first place and simply request the data provider to provide it to me in the order I desire....

Questions like these do not show how good a programmer you are... they show how you can answer stupid interview questions that you will ONLY see in the interview process... you will never see these things come up in the day-to-day process of your job!!