Google L4 interview USA prep
Google L4 Interview USA Prep
Reposting again from LC discussions.
Interview Experience
I recently shared my journey through the interview process for a Google L4 position in the USA. You can find my detailed interview experience here.
Currently, I am an SDE2 at Amazon and applied to Google via a referral. I successfully passed the Hiring Committee (HC) and Technical Manager (TM) rounds and am now awaiting my offer and compensation discussions.
Preparation Journey
LeetCode played a pivotal role in my preparation, so I’d like to share what strategies worked for me.
My interviews were conducted in the last week of April, with my TM completed by the first week of May, and I cleared the HC just three days later. Interestingly, my recruiter informed me that I didn’t have to undergo a Phone Screen (PS) and went straight into four technical rounds.
It’s worth noting that I hadn’t practiced on LeetCode for two years prior to this. Once my interviews were scheduled, I shifted my focus to practicing LeetCode questions specifically tagged for Google.
Rebuilding the Basics
In the initial days, I concentrated on solving easy and medium-level questions to refresh my coding fundamentals. After regaining confidence in my coding abilities, I began to dive deeper into specialized topics like Graphs and Dynamic Programming (DP). I utilized the LeetCode Graph and DP study plans extensively.
For DP, I recommend starting with the backtracking approach without memorization, then integrating memoization, and finally transitioning to a top-down dynamic programming solution. As for Graphs, ensure you practice Breadth-First Search (BFS), Depth-First Search (DFS), and Union-Find problems to solidify your understanding.
Whenever I encountered solutions I couldn’t quite grasp, I turned to ChatGPT for clarification. This proved to be a game changer.
Tackling Hard Problems
Once I felt comfortable with Graphs and DP, I began tackling the hard problems tagged for Google. I managed to solve some but struggled with many others. With only a week remaining before my onsite interview, I felt a growing sense of urgency. I realized that simply completing the tagged problems wouldn’t significantly boost my performance at this stage, especially with the exponential learning required for hard problems.
Fortunately, I stumbled upon a discussion on LeetCode where someone mentioned revisiting interview experiences from 2022. Intrigued, I decided to explore this approach. Many users on LeetCode had compiled relevant questions, making it easier for me to review them.
As I went through these interviews, I noticed a remarkable trend: most questions (except for a few exceedingly difficult ones) were recurring in multiple interviews. While the wording might vary, the core algorithms and solutions were often the same. This realization sparked hope, prompting me to request additional time to prepare these problems.
At this point, I was already comfortable coding solutions once I grasped the underlying concepts. Instead of solving the new problems, I read through them, checked discussions for correctness, and often found that the smart folks in the LeetCode community had already provided thorough explanations. I also utilized ChatGPT to convert some solutions into Java and clarify any lingering doubts.
In total, I went through approximately 150 discussions and 400 to 500 interview questions. I observed that a few questions were asked repeatedly, with about 16 to 17 questions appearing in 40 to 50 different interviews.
Mock Interviews
To further enhance my interview skills, I invested around $400 to $500 in mock interviews through MeetAPro. This investment was invaluable, as it helped me learn how to articulate my thought process clearly and maintain a proper pacing throughout the interview.
During my actual interviews, every question posed was either something I had already encountered or a clever variation of a familiar problem. Despite this, I still stumbled over some edge cases. 😅
I often wonder if I would have been able to solve those questions without prior exposure, but I’m grateful that I didn’t have to find out.
Key Observations
- Level Comparisons: L3 questions tend to be slightly easier than L4, and L4 questions are generally easier than L5. Additionally, interviews in Europe tend to be slightly easier overall.
- Regional Trends: Some Indian interviewers may ask questions from competitive programming platforms like Codeforces.
- Focus on Googliness: Unlike Amazon, where behavioral questions are crucial, Google appears to place less emphasis on “Googliness.” I used ChatGPT to draft my behavioral stories, and they sufficed.
Insights from TM and HC
- You typically need only 2 out of 3 technical rounds to receive a positive evaluation for TM.
- For the HC, the feedback requirements will vary based on the level you are interviewing for
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