← Back to Directory

Google interview notes, page 137 of 215

FAANG / Big Tech

Most of these Google write-ups come from Software Engineers (1,167), then Product Managers (686) and Data Scientists (125). The most reported rounds are the product sense round (667), the technical phone screen (660), the behavioral / leadership round (252) and the onsite coding round (214).

2146 interview notes · updated Oct 2026

Google·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026
Google SWE coding round, one problem the whole time, heap-based room scheduling. Not a bad experience but I definitely underestimated how much they'd want to talk through complexity after the code was done.
  • You have n rooms (indexed 0 to n-1) and a list of meetings with start and end times. Meetings are processed in order of start time. Each meeting goes to the lowest-index free room; if none are free, it waits until the earliest room opens up and runs for its original duration. Return the room index that hosted the most meetings, with ties broken by lowest index. Walk through your implementation and complexity.

“I knew pretty quickly it was a two-heap problem.”

View Post

Google·Data Scientist·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026
A data science interview at Google that threw a curveball: a quasi-experimental design question built around Google Meet, where you couldn't just run an A/B test. Felt more like a stats seminar than a typical DS screen, which I wasn't fully expecting.
  • A new version of Google Meet was released with the goal of reducing call drops, but no A/B test was run. What analytical approaches would you use to evaluate whether the new version actually worked?

“This one exposed some gaps for me.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jun 2026
Google business strategy question, pretty classic case-style thing but it covers a lot of ground if you actually dig into it.
  • How does Google make money, why has it chosen that business model, and what are the biggest risks to that model going forward?

“This looks easy and that's the problem.”

View Post

Google·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jun 2026
PM interview at Google with a classic diagnostic question framed around Facebook. Pretty standard product sense round but the cross-platform framing threw me off a bit.
  • You're the PM for Facebook. There's been a notable drop in user engagement over the last 10 days. How would you diagnose the cause and what would you do about it?

“I went straight into segmentation mode: platform, region, user cohort, feature area.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

Jun 2026
Google SWE behavioral round, just one question about mentoring a junior engineer. Pretty standard stuff but it took me a second to find a good example that actually showed something real.
  • Tell me about a time a junior teammate got stuck on something. How did you help them work through it?

“I had a decent story but fumbled the delivery a bit.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture

Jun 2026
Interviewed at Google, got asked a system design question about how Google Docs works under the hood. Not much else to say, it was a single question and I'm not sure how I did.
  • How does Google Docs work? Walk through the system design.

“This one is deceptively broad.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jun 2026
Google data analyst interview with a product scenario question that felt more like a PM case than anything analytical. Pretty short but the question itself had some teeth to it.
  • A key product feature breaks on launch day during a live conference with customers present. The engineering team says it can't go out. As a PM, do you cancel the event or what do you do?

“This one tripped me up because my first instinct was to just say cancel and regroup, which felt safe but probably too conservative.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

Jun 2026
Google behavioral round for a software engineering role. Long session, way more questions than I expected, and the follow-ups were relentless. They really wanted to pull apart every answer you gave.
  • What is the most unique and rewarding project you have worked on?
  • Tell me about a time you worked under a tight deadline. How did you decide what to prioritize and what to cut?
  • As an individual contributor without formal authority, how have you improved your team's culture?

“This one sounds easy until you're actually sitting there trying to pick.”

View Post

Google·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jun 2026
Google PM interview with a classic estimation question about campus internet bandwidth. Pretty standard fermi-style problem but I underestimated how much structure they wanted around the assumptions.
  • Estimate the total internet bandwidth needed to support a campus of 1000 graduate students.

“I jumped straight into numbers without setting up my assumptions clearly, which I think hurt me.”

View Post

Google·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jun 2026
Interviewed for a PM role at Google and got hit with the classic MVP scoping question. Nothing too wild but it made me think harder than I expected.
  • How would you decide which features belong in an MVP?

“I went straight to user value vs.”

View Post