Google Coding Interview With A High School Student

In this video, I conduct a mock Google coding interview with a high school student, William Lin, who's also a competitive programmer. As a Google Software Engineer, I interviewed dozens of candidates. This is exactly the type of coding interview that you would get at Google or any other big tech company.

[abhisekmukherjee]

That guy knows Kosaraju's algorithm, and he is in high school. When I was in high school, I once shaved my entire eyebrows to see how I look

[francistran]

Imagine you have to present your project in class just after this guy ....

[Cuberates]

Everyone as a kid: “A for Apple, B for Bird, ...”
WilliamLin as a kid: “A for Abstract Datatypes, B for Breadth-first Search, ...”

[Meridian-lkfo]

I've been learning to code for about a year now. Every couple months I use this video as a mile marker to see how much more I understand than I did the last time I watched it.

[KannanH]

“that’s the entire problem?” Sounded pretty confident and cool

[pierrenilsson]

1 minute after hearing the problem, I'd be like: - "Ok, guess I won't be working here then, thank you and bye."

[TarekBelfaid]

I used his code and it brought back my dead cat to life.

[citiesinruin]

Youtube is getting real comfortable with these double no skip ads

[SurajSingh-pbbs]

How he managed to explain such a complex topic/code so easily under pressure is amazing, great video!

[harlekin]

He does a very good job at visualizing and properly explaining his thought process. Very impressive. His explanation is also well structured and he seems very confident in his knowledge. He is definitely gonna make it.

[dines]

William has the code in his head after 5-10 minutes but talking about it and finding the right words was not so simple.
Impressive work.

[adityamantri]

Clement: I'm going to take your interview now.
William: Well first, let me give you a lesson on graphs.

[onelvisdelarosa]

"There's always an Asian better than you, even if you're Asian."

[nothingiseverperfect]

You know he explained it very well from the fact I didn’t know ANYTHING about directed graphs and strongly connected components but his explanation made sense LOL

[bixby]

Me: I wanna learn how to code, let’s watch some interviews!
Me after this video: Time to apply for a job at McDonald’s

[anewsnetwork]

if I'm being interviewed I say "Well first off LGA is a terrible airport"

[fkmyoutube]

Others programmers: "Hello World"

Me, as a noob programmer: "Goodbye World"

[RadkeMaiden]

What struck me about this interview is that the question is an extremely basic graph theory question, and most of the discussion is just about implementing very basic ideas from graph theory. With that being said, I know that I would fail this interview, because I definitely couldn't implement all these steps under pressure. This makes me realize that to work at a company like this, the skill you need is not to be a genius problem solver, but rather to be familiar with the already existing basic techniques, be able to explain them clearly to a layperson, and code them cleanly on the spot.

[jiakai]

I like his problem-solving process. Drawing out the problem, simplifying it, planning the steps. It's so methodical.
I also like how he checks with clement if he understands up to that point, that shows that he is really thinking clearly.

[akashp]

Few years later...
Clement : Google coding interview for a baby who is about to be born in 3, 2, 1. Now!!!