← Back to Directory

Google interview notes, page 196 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·Recruiter / HR Screen

Jul 2026
Standard Google SWE screen, basically just one behavioral question about motivation. Not much to report.
  • Why do you want to work at Google?

“Classic opener.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Hiring Manager Screen

Jul 2026
Interviewed at Google for what seemed like an account management or customer success type role. One behavioral question about retention, nothing too wild, but it made me realize I hadn't prepped a clean story for it.
  • Can you walk me through a situation where you kept a customer from leaving?

“I had a story ready but it was kind of messy in the telling.”

View Post

Google·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jul 2026
Google product design question, one prompt, pretty open-ended. The kind of thing that sounds fun until you're actually sitting there trying to figure out where to start.
  • Design a futuristic car wash.

“I spent the first minute just kind of staring at it mentally.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

Jul 2026
Google software engineer interview that was heavier on behavioral depth than I expected. Two rounds of project deep-dives plus a bunch of hypothetical scenarios about ambiguity and tradeoffs. Left feeling like I talked too much without saying enough.
  • Walk me through two projects from your resume where you had real impact. Cover what you were trying to achieve, what you specifically did, the technical decisions you made, and what the outcomes actually were.
  • What did you personally learn from those projects, and what would you do differently?
  • If you were handed a project with vague or incomplete requirements, how would you actually get it done?
  • You're midway through a project and the timeline is slipping. How do you negotiate scope without blowing up relationships?
  • How do you make a significant technical or product decision when you don't have all the data you need?
  • How do you manage risk on a project, and how do you keep stakeholders aligned when things go sideways?
  • How do you define and measure success for a project you're working on?

“This is the one I over-prepared for and still fumbled.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture

Jul 2026
Google engineering manager interview with a single system design question that sounds like a joke until you realize they're completely serious about it.
  • Design a system to upgrade the software on hundreds of thousands of machines located on the Moon.

“My first reaction was to laugh, which was probably not ideal.”

View Post

Google·UX Designer·Onsite - Multi Round

Jul 2026
Went through a surprisingly fast process for a UX Designer role at Google, referral-to-onsite in about two weeks, and now I'm sitting here trying to figure out if the signals I'm reading are real or if I'm just desperate for good news.
  • How do you see the working relationship between a UX Designer and a Product Manager, and where do those boundaries actually sit?

“This came from the Googleyness and Leadership round but it wasn't the usual behavioral stuff.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Jul 2026
Cleared a top-up coding round at Google after a mixed signal from the main onsite loop, and now sitting in team matching for a software engineering role in Zurich or Munich. The full loop included multiple coding sessions and a culture/values interview, with the extra round added specifically to resolve a no-hire on one of the coding slots. Recruiter confirmed the top-up feedback was strong and the results are valid for 18 months.
  • How long is team matching currently taking for engineering roles in Zurich or Munich, and is headcount meaningfully tighter for pure software engineering compared to site reliability engineering?
  • How technical do hiring manager calls during team matching actually get, and how do you pitch yourself without coming across as overqualified for the level you're targeting?
  • Do hiring managers bring up your past interview feedback during team matching calls, especially if your packet had a mixed signal or a top-up round?
  • Once you're already in the candidate pool, what's the most effective way to use internal referrals from senior engineers to accelerate or improve your team matching outcome?

“Still waiting on this one myself.”

View Post

Google·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jul 2026
Google PM interview with a classic estimation question. Not much to say except it felt like a warmup that somehow still tripped me up.
  • How many ping pong balls can fit inside a helicopter?

“I froze for a second because I kept second-guessing whether to estimate the helicopter interior volume or account for rotor housing and seats.”

View Post

Google·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jul 2026
Google SWE interview that came down to a classic scheduling problem. One question, two approaches, and a lot of pressure to articulate tradeoffs clearly.
  • Given a list of meeting time intervals, what is the minimum number of conference rooms needed to schedule all meetings without any overlap?

“I knew this problem but still fumbled the explanation for the heap approach.”

View Post

Google·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

Jul 2026
Google PM interview with a wild hypothetical: design Gmail for the first humans on Mars. Four questions total, all spinning out from that one premise. It was a lot more technical than I expected for a product role.
  • You're the PM for a team building a mobile Gmail app for 24 Google engineers who are the first humans on Mars. How would you build it?
  • What is the greatest hardware challenge for this Mars Gmail app?
  • How would you design the UI for a Gmail app in this Mars scenario?
  • How would you use caching in this app?

“The Mars framing threw me for a bit.”

View Post