I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Somerville, MA)
Interview
I had two phone interviews. My understanding is that there is usually only one, and then an in-person interview for the second round. I believe they wanted a second phone interview because the first interview was strangely easy. (I won’t share the question, but it involved simple string lengths, and I could have answered it directly out of my software bootcamp.) The second interview pertained to data structures, and was certainly more challenging. I was prepared for it. However, the interviewer seemed to articulate a different problem than what was copy-pasted from the bank of questions. I won’t share specifics, but he gave me a hypothetical data structure, wouldn’t tell me what specific kind of data structure, said that it was “broken” (nonstandard speak for this kind of structure) and that I had to fix it. I asked questions about duplicate entries, and whether I could, for example, assume it was a BST or a minHeap. He said no, and that it could be any random type of this kind of structure. Then he asked me how I would represent the data structure, at which point I became even more confused. (If I’m given a hypothetical chunk of date, I can assume it’s already represented in *some* way, such as an array, a linked list, etc... So, what exactly was I given?)
After the fact, I attempted to ask for the wording of the original question but was unsuccessful. It’s entirely possible the interviewer was new to interviewing, or that translation issues resulted in poor communication between us. Overall, it was an awful lot of preparation to be undone by poor articulation of the problem.
Aside from the unfortunate circumstances over the phone, the interviewer (and everyone else) was very nice to work with.
is fine. not very long. Ask some java oop, algorithm. For example, inheritance, polymorphsim, abstraction , interface. what is different between interface and abstract class? what is final, finally, finalize.
They portray themselves as an inclusive place which is very far from truth.
I am autistic and struggle sometimes picking the right words to describe my intentions, might have issues with intonation etc. I was open about this with them but also raised I speak several languages fluently and can perform way more than normally engineers can (some people would say IT is my obsession, it's my autistic special interest, I spend roughly 3h every day after hours reading and doing my own projects).
Their recruiters did not want to process my application and kept ignoring and blocking me without answering anything every time I would reach out. Some of the recruiters would block me as soon as they heard I am an autist. No matter how hard I tried they did not want to communicate with me or let me explain anything. They only answered once I requested my application be removed (after half an year of this) but did not delete my data as requested and kept lying to me its deleted. Since I couldn't get the recruiter to communicate normally and at least delete the data I went to one of the science fairs in Zurich and asked them there if they could at least give me contact details to someone to delete my data if they insist on being racist. One of their people there told me quote: "I would like to be the Swiss President, what makes you think an autistic re**rd can be a google engineer" while laughing.. I didn't get any contact details. I don't think I ever felt so humiliated in my life for being born with a neurological disability. If you are on the spectrum and you really want to work there I suggest trying to mask autistic traits, they will discriminate you if you don't. I know it's difficult and makes us appear less competent than we are but that's the only way you are getting in.