I recently completed my Google interviews and wanted to get some opinions from people who have been through the process.

For the coding round, I feel reasonably okay.

The problem was basically a variation of Flood Fill(med-hard). I understood the problem, explained an optimized approach, and completed the full code around 1 to 2 minutes before the interview ended.

The interviewer reviewed it and said something like, "Looks good to me."

My only concern is communication.

The interviewer had a pretty strong accent, and there were a few moments where I had difficulty understanding exactly what he was saying. I asked him to repeat things a couple of times, and I’m worried I may have missed one or two hints or comments.

But I was still able to understand the actual problem, explain my approach, and complete the solution.

So I’m wondering, can this kind of communication gap affect the coding feedback even if the solution was completed correctly?

For the Googleyness round, I’m much more unsure.

The interview finished in around 30 minutes, and the interviewer asked a mix of behavioral and hypothetical scenario questions.

For the real experience-based questions, I tried to answer using STAR.

For the hypothetical questions, I didn’t force a STAR story. I explained what I would do, what factors I would consider, the trade-offs, and how I would try to reach a balanced solution.

So my main questions are:

Is STAR mandatory for every Googleyness question?

For hypothetical questions, is it okay to explain your reasoning and approach without giving a past STAR example?

If the answers are reasonable but not always in perfect STAR format, can that result in Lean Hire or No Hire?

How is the Googleyness round actually evaluated?

Is a Googleyness interview ending in around 30 minutes a bad sign?

And if the coding round went well but the Googleyness round felt more uncertain, can the overall result still be positive?

Would really appreciate thoughts from anyone who has gone through a similar Google interview process or knows how these rounds are evaluated.

Hey everyone, I completed Round 1 for Google Application Engineering Intern – Winter 2027
I followed up with the recruiter, and today I received an email asking me to book a 15-minute call to discuss my application status.
For those who received a similar 15-minute status call after Round 1, was it about moving forward to Round 2, rejection feedback, or a pending decision?
Also anyone cleared r2?

I had an interview with google last week and after i followed up with the recruiter, he told me this "Thanks again for your patience and flexibilty with the logistical issues and rescheduling here. We finally got the feedback submitted. Please let me know when you had some time to discuss and I can give you a call." I got rejection feels from this message.

Is this means a rejection?
Thanks

Hi everyone!

I'm preparing for a Machine Learning Engineer (MLE) interview and would appreciate some advice on which data structures and algorithms topics I should prioritize.

I understand that MLE interviews can vary quite a bit by company, but I'm curious about what people have actually encountered in technical interviews at major tech companies.

A few specific questions:

• Most common topics: Which topics come up most frequently? Arrays/strings, hash maps, trees, graphs, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming, intervals, heaps, etc.?
• Difficulty level: Are interviews typically focused on LeetCode Easy/Medium problems, or should I expect Hard problems as well?
• MLE vs. SWE: Is the coding interview bar generally similar to that for Software Engineers, or do MLE candidates tend to get different types of problems?

I'm particularly interested in the general DSA / problem-solving portion of the interview, rather than ML theory, system design, or ML-specific coding.

I'd love to hear about your actual interview experiences, especially from people who have interviewed for or worked in MLE roles. Thanks!

Hey,

I realized that I m quite good at coming up with the correct Data Structures and Patterns for the right questions, but I usually get stuck with understanding the exact trick. For example, rotate Array or 88. Merge Sorted Array I m usually able to recognized quite fast that it's two pointers and even have a right approach where I try on example cases in my head and my two pointer approaches work to a certain extent but fail on other example cases. The problem usually is that I'm not able to find the right trick.

E.g. for the rotate array question I didn't come up with reversing the whole array. For the Merge sorted array I didnt think about starting from the back instead of typical left to right pointer movements.

People always gotta learn the patterns and use them on unseen questions, but I feel no matter how many questions I solve even if I kind know the patterns i still get stuck on the actual trick of the question...

Any suggestions/help?

Suppose you're solving a graph problem where both DFS and BFS are equally valid, and both have the same time and space complexity. Neither approach has a specific advantage for that problem.

Which one would you instinctively choose IN PYTHON?

DFS

BFS

Must comment ur opinion 👇

I have been going through the dsa sheet grind for the last couple months now( not to say I’m great by any means) but this week I had an OA with a big audit/tax consulting firm and it went horribly. Everywhere online it said to prepare for easy- medium focusing on arrays/maps etc but this problem has so many variables to take into account. Looked it up after it was a greedy algorithm problem? That needed simulation + arrays + hashmap + multiple arrays that needed to be sorted and string parsing. Probably easy for a lot of you devs but I just don’t understand how I can do better at these.

My Thought process :

- not enough time spent on leetcode
- not a deep enough understanding of c++
- possibly less time on leetcode more time understanding algorithms from dsa books?

Any suggestions of maybe more intensive way to prepare for these OA’s (other than neetcode) 😅

What does paypal OA include for sde1?

Hi all,

I am trying to purchase leetcode premium. There is no separate version to subscribe without enabling upto 10yrs AutoPay. I thought of proceeding for now and cancelling the Autopay later but, there is no option to Pay with card. Only UPI is available. And also, that is also giving me Unsupported QR error even after enabling international transactions.

Can anyone pls help me out here?

I have solved 500+ leetcode problems over 8 months, still hardly able to solve a medium and sometimes not able to solve at all. Please drop your suggestions.

The problem:
You are given an array people where people[i] is the weight of the ith person, and an infinite number of boats where each boat can carry a maximum weight of limit. Each boat carries at most two people at the same time, provided the sum of the weight of those people is at most limit.
Return the minimum number of boats to carry every given person.
 
My solution:
Sort the array and always combine the two heaviest people such that the combined weight of both people is <= limit.

Actual solution:
Sort the array and take the heaviest person and lightest person in the bunch and combine them such that combined weight <= limit.

My question is we are trying to get the MINIMUM number of boats. So why would we not combine the heaviest people possible so as to minimize boats?

Gang, I have my Google L5 interview in 10 days and I’m looking for a prep buddy for daily 1-hour mock interviews. We’d take turns interviewing each other. It would be ideal if you also have a Google interview coming up soon.

Some background: I interviewed with Google in April 2025 and made it to team matching, but didn’t land a team because of location restrictions.

If you’re interested, comment your linkedin with your time zone and availability.

Edit: SWE role

I recently receive email from NVIDIA for Senior AI and ML Software Engineer role. They just mentioned they would want to have an inperson round in HQ with no other details.

Can someone please help with sharing their interview experience (how many rounds, what do they look for ?/ what to expect in first round etc)

Please help

Hey everyone,

I have an upcoming interview with NVIDIA for the Applied AI Engineer – VLSI Design position.

My background is in Electronics and Semiconductor Engineering and a master's in AI, and I currently work on AI/ML systems, primarily involving LLMs and agentic AI.

I have two 45-minute interviews scheduled. One includes a HackerRank link, and the other is with the hiring manager.

For coding preparation, I’ve been following NeetCode and have covered topics up to graphs (BFS/DFS).

I wanted to ask if anyone has interviewed for this role or a similar Applied AI/ML position at NVIDIA.

• Does the HackerRank interview typically involve LeetCode-style questions, or can it be a mix of coding and technical discussions?
• What difficulty should I expect — Easy, Medium, or Hard?

• Do they focus more on DSA or practical Python coding for Applied AI roles?

• What should I expect in the hiring manager round? Is it primarily a resume/project deep dive, AI/ML system design, or could there be coding as well?

• Given the VLSI focus, how deeply should I prepare electronics and semiconductor design concepts?

Would really appreciate any insights from people who’ve gone through a similar interview process.

Thanks!

If I am interviewing for a specific role and the interviewer will be from the same org, will the system design question be specific to the team?

For example, if I interviewing with the databases org, will my system design be database internals focussed or will it be any generic system like an URL shortener? Any experiences from people who have been through the process would be very helpful. Thank you

Hey folks,

People who have recently given the G interviews, would you mind sharing the questions if not exactly broadly as far as you can remember.

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 54 today. The Dynamic Programming module is officially complete, and I shifted into Graphs.

I feel confident with most DP patterns now, though Partition DP still needs a dedicated revision cycle. My plan for revisiting DP is strictly focused on mastering bottom-up tabulation from memoization so I stop hitting recursion overhead limits, then looking at space optimization where it makes sense.

Today was all about resetting graph fundamentals from scratch:

1. Representations & Traversal Basics: Revised adjacency lists, matrix representations, queue-based BFS, and recursive DFS.
2. Number of Provinces: Standard connected components problem using a visited array and running DFS/BFS from every unvisited node.
3. Number of Islands: Connected component traversal on a 2D grid, marking visited land cells using standard 4/8-direction exploratory DFS/BFS.

When I briefly touched graphs back in July, I leaned heavily on Disjoint Set Union (DSU) as a shortcut. Starting with core BFS and DFS this time around makes the fundamental traversals feel much more grounded.

I also noticed a clear pattern in my routine: having days off actually hurts my productivity because the lack of structure makes it easy to procrastinate, whereas workdays force me into a tight schedule. Building discipline on unstructured days is uncomfortable, but consistency is the only way forward.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 53!

Recently interviewed at Microsoft and it went like this

Round 1: A hard LC problem that I had not encountered before. But was able to talk through and with few hints arrived at an approach

But made a blunder mistake in executing DFS instead of BFS. This was clearly execution mistake under pressure. But, later course corrected with hints and provided solution.

It was not perfect but arrived at one

Round 2: A standard system design problem. Had prepped for it and I believe I did well. Answered follow-ups and reasoned decisions. Interview was over 10 mins early.

Again clueless if it is positive or negative

Round 3: A coding round but interviewer said this will be more of OOD and we had a good discussion. This one went over time but I was confident that this one was positive

Behavioral questions across the rounds went well. Had stories and was able to answer follow-ups.

Got a rejection in 2 days. Is it due to that 1st round performance?Is the standard at this level is to write clean code with minimal hints? Recruiter is unreachable so left with no feedback.

Just wanting to know opinion from the group here and any suggestions for upcoming interviews.

What’s one frustrating problem you face while working on a project that you wish a tool could solve?

It could be a repetitive task, a broken workflow, or something that unnecessarily wastes your time.

I'm looking to build an open-source AI tool that solves a real problem, not just another AI wrapper.

Reply with your biggest frustration. I'd love to build something genuinely useful around it.

Received Salesforce smts offer . Any inputs on hows the culture , stability, wlb.
Deciding if its good to jump ship for $80k usd tc increase from a stable job .
Current tc: 240k
Offer: 320k

I have a pagerduty SRE interview coming up. This will be first my SRE interview and I am nervous. Does anyone have any insight into the technical rounds? Thanks!

Hello! I'm an incoming freshman (Spring Start) at a CSRankings T20 school and was wondering if anyone had any advice on what I should be doing before my freshman year to best set me up to one day land a job in tech (optimistically FAANG but I bet everyone says that). My only experience in CS is AP Computer Science A, which I scored a 5 on, but I have no projects or out of school experience. During my time before college, should I focus on leetcode, neetcode, cs50x, projects, or something else? Any advice is greatly appreciated, I know I have a pretty weak CS background so far, but I really want to pursue a SWE career and am willing to put time and effort into whatever it is I have to do.

A year ago, I shared my journey after being laid off and my dream of someday working abroad.

Today, I'm happy to share that I finally made it.

A couple of months ago, I moved to London and joined a Finance company as a Senior Software Engineer. It's been around two months here, and sometimes it still feels surreal.

A few months before the move, I decided to update my resume because my Meta team-matching deadline was approaching. Since I was already updating it, I thought, why not apply to a few companies in London as well?

Meta was still in a hiring freeze, so nothing really moved there. But one of the companies I applied to got back to me.

Did the Phone Screen -> Smashed it -> Did the Onsites -> Smashed them -> My recruiter came back saying the feedback was really positive, but there might be a headcount issue -> Got the offer call a few days later (I remember smiling the whole time during that call lol).

It felt like an enormous weight had finally been lifted off my shoulders.

For the past three years, there was barely a day when I didn't check Levels.fyi for newly submitted compensation offers or scroll through Blind looking for posts about international relocations.

It felt like I had an obligation to see a very specific thing through.

I was finally free.

Before I end, I want to share something NiKo said after winning in Cologne that really stuck with me:

I think I am a prime example to never give up, okay? Never give up on your dreams, never give up on your life, okay? Keep believing, okay? You're going to achieve the things. It's going to be hard, it's going to be painful. But you will get it. You will f**king get it.