Google Software Engineering Interview Preparation Guide

Mastering coding and communication skills is essential for acing Google software engineering interviews.

### Mastering Coding Interviews: Strategies for Success at Google
* 💻 To improve coding skills efficiently, understanding **memory allocation and language syntax** is essential, as demonstrated during interviews where **specific code lines are scrutinized**.
* 📚 Reading foundational books like "The C Programming Language" by Dennis Ritchie can significantly **strengthen your grasp of C++**, which is crucial for **technical interviews**.
* 📺 Supplementing book knowledge with online resources such as YouTube videos and blogs can **enhance understanding** of C++ features and object-oriented programming concepts.
* 💬 During coding interviews, communicate clearly with the interviewer, **explaining your thought process** and **asking clarifying questions** to ensure alignment on expectations.
* 🌍 Being proficient in English is vital for effective communication in interviews, so practicing mock interviews can help **bridge any language gaps**.
* 📝 Code quality matters; be prepared to discuss past projects, your roles, and how you handled challenges, ensuring **honesty and authenticity** in your responses.
* 🔍 Focus on writing production-ready code that handles **edge cases**, as interviewers are looking for software development skills rather than competitive programming prowess.
* 📈 Finally, utilize platforms like LeetCode to practice coding problems extensively, as **familiarity with data structures and algorithms** is key to succeeding in Google's interview rounds.

I promise you that this video will get you a job at Google, even if you are a complete amateur. Because after months and months of hiring freeze, Google has decided to buckle up and restart their hiring process in the next five to six months. And when that happens, the vacancies are going to fill up really fast because they're going to hire in bulk. So, it's in the best of your interest to start your preparation right now, the moment you end up watching this video. Because this video, I assure you, is going to be the best guide to crack Google L3 or L4 interviews. So, let's go. Hi, I'm Shaki, and currently I'm working as an SD2 at Amazon. Last year, I received five offers from some of the tech giants, and one of them being Google, for which I even decided to write a tweet around its preparation strategy and all. And I think it received around 3.5 million views because maybe people found it extremely practical and well-structured. And I think that's where my strength lies.

know in helping people prepare for complex coding and design rounds from scratch, and that's why I think I would recommend you to subscribe to my channel, right? So, you're not left behind. Coming to this video, it will be entirely about how to prepare for all the interviews that happen when you apply for Google software engineering roles, L3 or L4. So, let me give you an overview of what we're all going to discuss. Firstly, we'll talk about the interview pattern in detail. Then, we'll dive deep into the technical rounds and basically how to prepare for them. It will include questions like what study material we should use, what topics to prepare, what topics to leave, you know, the difficulty of these rounds, what special strategy to follow for preparation, with what mindset should we, you know, go into the rounds, because that's also very important, what mistakes to avoid, and how to compensate for a mistake that you have done within the round, you know, and stuff like that. And then, we'll hop into the preparation of cultural fit or managerial rounds.

Lastly, I'll share with you some of my bonus tips for which you have to stick till the end. So, let's commence. So, the interview pattern for both SG1, which is L3, and SG2, which is L4, will be exactly the same. A total of five rounds will take place. The first one will be the telephone screening round. The next three will be the on-site or online coding rounds, and the last round will be the googliness round. Each round will be of 45 minutes. Each round's feedback will be one of the following: strong hire, hire, leaning hire, leaning no hire, and no hire. For L3, I would suggest you to get at least one higher feedback in one of the rounds or above. And for L4, I would suggest you to get at least two higher feedbacks or above. In some cases, even if you get a leaning no hire in exactly one round, then they will give you one more chance to prove yourself by taking one Ed coding round of yours. But in that round, you have to make sure that

you get at least a higher or above; otherwise, you know it will result in your downgrading from L4 to L3 or even no selection at all. Now coming on to the first four rounds that will be entirely technical. They may have different names, but they all test your coding skills. The tone screening round will be exactly similar to the on-site coding round, so don't worry. In these rounds, you will be given either a single DSA question that will have multiple levels with increasing difficulty, or you will be given two questions that will be entirely independent of each other, or all of which you have to solve under 45 minutes. And these questions, you know, they mostly feel like all the other questions that we have prepared in various platforms like Lead Code, Geeks for Geeks, etc. But sometimes, they might even ask you a question, you know, which is based on a real-life problem, okay, that you need to solve by creating a custom data structure and use an algorithm to implement. Regardless of whatever question they ask, one thing is

for sure that the problems' difficulty won't be more than easy, medium, or at worst case medium. You know, it's not going to be a very tough problem because, I mean, go other days, you know, when Google's problems were the toughest in the market, and only a few handful of competitive programmers were able to solve it. Now, it's very much doable within 45 minutes. And also, one thing, you know, we have to prepare no matter what. We have to prepare in a holistic manner because, you know, we have to be ready for even the toughest of problems because in the worst case, we don't know what happens in a Google interview because it is Google. It's not a joke. Firstly, I'll recommend you to, you know, practice the programming language in which you are going to code within the round. For me, it was C++. I think I revised all the concepts related to C++, such as what pointers, what is the difference between pass by value, pass by reference, what are the meaning of structs, classes, virtual functions, you know, and all the important stuff like

that even memory allocation basics. I also read somewhere, believe me, proper knowledge of the coding language is a must. I remember one instance where the interviewer literally tried to trap me within a particular line of code that I wrote. I was trying to free up a memory allocated to a set. Had I not, you know, cleared my concepts of C++ and all the syntax-related concepts, I would have really fumbled. For strengthening my C++, I read the C programming language book by Dennis Ritchie, who also happens to be the creator of this language. It is a 200-page book and the best book on C language as of now. You can read it entirely in a week, and it's worth giving time to. Post that, for C++ key features and STLs, I watched multiple YouTube videos and read many blogs online. I also practiced OOPs concepts of your desired language as the question of the second type where you have to, you know, basically implement a custom data structure for solving that problem. They really want you to, you know, implement.

that by using proper, you know, OOPs language, for example, writing proper classes and child functions, and private methods, or public methods, and all that stuff. I've pasted links for all the resources in the description, so do check them out. Now, I would suggest you to go through all of these algorithms, as well as the data structures that may be needed to implement them. Pick these one by one and watch multiple Theory videos on YouTube for each of these algorithms to understand it really accurately. Just deeply go through their Theory and do a couple of standard problems for each of it. I assure you, nothing will come from outside of these topics. These topics are the must, and these are the official ones from which Google asks questions. And for all the cury-related videos, as well as the standard problems, I have attached it in the description. Now, once that is done, I would suggest you to solve all the questions from this interview bit platform form till level seven. You will find epic problems of varying difficulty levels here. The problems are well-structured topic-wise, and you can Master

topics one by one. All of these problems are popular and epic. They cover basic complexities of all the algorithms and build a solid foundation for you. And whenever you get stuck on a problem, now take 30 minutes to think of it, and eventually, you can look into the editorial for the solution. Once this all is done and you have invested one and a half to two months in it, I would suggest you to do a one-time investment, buy a LeetCode premium subscription for a couple of months. It will cost you around $30 to $60 per month, and you may find a coding partner who is also preparing for the interviews, with whom you can share the expenses. I know it may be too much for many, but believe me, with the right kind of strategy that I'm going to show you, if you execute it properly, it's going to be worth your time and money. Now, on LeetCode premium, open the Google problem set that they have provided. Sort the problems based on the frequency with which they were passed.

In the past 6 months, that too in decreasing order, and startups solving. I'm not asking you to solve all the problems, but at least these popular ones. The rest of the problem statements you can read, and if you're able to come up with their solution in your mind and are confident about it, then no need to practice implementing it. Being consistent in solving these problems for at least one to one and a half months will do magic for you. So, I think this much is sufficient for the preparation of the coding problems. You now have done enough coding problems and understand the concepts related to programming languages as well as the algorithms very accurately. While your skill of solving a problem in the interviews of Google is of utmost importance, the way you explain it to the interviewer with the proper choice of words matters a lot too. You have to communicate effectively. Don't try to rush a lot while you speak; instead, try to listen to the interviewer, what they are saying. Be calm and polite. Interviewers sometimes leave the problem statement vague so that you can clear

your doubts first and clarify the question further while you write the code. Keep explaining them at regular intervals about what you're doing actually. You may even ask them like whether they want you to first implement the code and then explain it to them, or you explain them while you're implementing the code. Also note that the primary mode of communication in this interview will be English, so be ready. And if you're not familiar with English, then you know you try to give a lot of mock interviews so that you get used to it. You can even give your interviews at your own time zone so that the interviewers of your country are allotted to you, because this plays a huge factor. As for some people, American or British accent is very tough to understand, and even in some cases, like if you have a very strong accent, then even they might find it very tough to understand you. So always remember that you know communication gap can lead to improper discussion, which results in improper results. The other important thing is code quality. Try to write a

production-ready code that covers all the practical edge cases. For example, if you're writing a method, it would look better if you, you know, wrap it around a proper solution class, make proper private/public methods, and modularize it. Always remember they're not hiring you for solving some competitive programming problem; it is a software developer role. And when they give you a question, you have to solve it just like a software developer does and code it in their way only. Let us look at this code for reference here. The solution is wrapped in a solution class where the method, which is public, is the one that will be called by the user for a particular set of inputs, and the private method is called internally. So that regardless of anyone having context around what this class does, nobody will be able to access the private method directly. Not to forget, no matter how modularized or well-structured your code looks, it will still be untidy and complex if your code is not verbose. So, name your methods and variables properly. It shouldn't be too short or too long, just precise variable.

names should be such that they clearly specify what they do. For example, the prefix of a method mostly should start with a verb. If the method validates an input, its name should be something like validate_un_core_input, or if it calculates the factorial of an input, it should be like calculate_underscore_factorial, and so on. Or also, whether you have to use proper camel case or snake case annotations depends a lot on the programming language you're using. For example, in Python, class variables and methods are named using camel case annotations, and the external independent variables are named using snake case. I have added a link in the description from where you can learn all about code verbosity. So, these are all of the things that must be taken care of at any cost. Failing to do it might even lead to your downgrading from L4 to L3, even if you solve the problems correctly within the given time frame. Now coming on to the last round, which is also important, the googliness round. It is a hybrid of both cultural fit and managerial rounds. Don't take it lightly, even though it's a

non-technical round, and it is kind of light in most cases, but still here the check how receptive you are to your own mistakes, basically how humble you are, your leadership skills, your critical thinking, etc. For Googling this round, I would suggest you to, you know, memorize a couple of your projects by heart, in which you should know like what were the managerial as well as the technical aspects that were under your control. You may tell about like what initiatives you took on your own, what could have been improved in that project, and what feedback you got from the manager, how did you tackle any miscommunication between you and any team member that was involved in that particular project, how did you respond to a negative feedback by the manager, if you fail to deliver it on time or something like that, and any other questions like this. So you should have all these answers ready. Also, don't try to fake scenarios in order to show yourself as very brave or something that you are really not, because more than that, what the interviewer actually you

know wants to know about you is how humble you are and how many times you have done mistakes and learned from it. Know that is the most important aspect. Be real in the interview but also at the same time you should portray yourself as someone who is always eager to learn from their mistakes and grow as a better individual. Also, most importantly, answer all the real and hypothetical scenarios that the interviewer throws at you using the STAR framework. You can read it from the link I've provided in the description for it. It is a must. It easily leaves a lasting impression on the interviewer that you have come well prepared. Now coming on to the last section which is the bonus tips section and here are some of the bonus tips that I want to give you. Tip number one: practice LeetCode and dynamic programming questions comprehensively. Most of the questions that are asked in the rounds now they revolve around these topics only. Tip number two: during the coding round always ask the interviewer whether they want you to directly jump onto the most optimal solution or iteratively.

jump from a brute-force solution to the most optimal solution because it saves a hell of a lot of time for both you and the interviewer. The interview is just 45 minutes long, and if you try to follow an iterative approach without asking the interviewer, then in most cases, they won't stop you midway. They will think that even you are trying to figure out the most optimal solution as you code, and once you literally come up to the most optimal solution and code it, a lot of time might have elapsed. That same interviewer who was looking to ask one more coding problem from you might end the interview because of lack of time. So, even if you give the most perfect presentation of your single solution to a single problem that was asked in the interview, you might not get a strong high because the interviewer's intention was to ask a couple of problems, and he thought that you yourself was trying to figure out how to jump to the most optimal solution of the first coding problem, and that's why you lost so much time in that. Hence,

this is a point that needs to be taken care of by you. On the other hand, if you solve all the coding problems that were asked from you in the interview and you have still some 5-10 minutes left, then you might give them alternative approaches towards the same problems that were asked to you, you know, just for icing on the cake. You may also discuss about the various data structures and algorithms that can be used to solve the same problems that you coded using some different data structure and algorithm and can have a wholesome discussion around the trade-offs between them. So, I hope you all liked this video. I'm coming up with more such content on interview preparation and how to improve your coding skills and coding knowledge. You may comment below and tell me about what all other topics you want me to make a video on. Also, don't forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel so that it motivates me to make more videos and be consistent. I'll be sharing a lot of tips and tricks on how

to improve your coding skills efficiently, and also how to master system design and low-level design. Till then, stay tuned.

How To Clear All Google SWE Interviews: A Complete Roadmap | 100% Success Guaranteed

Shakti Tripathi

Preparing for Google Software Engineering Interviews

The video focuses on preparing for Google software engineering interviews for L3 and L4 roles, covering the interview pattern and technical rounds in detail.

It discusses the types of coding questions, the importance of production-ready code, and the need for a proper class structure and method accessibility.

Additionally, it emphasizes the significance of clear and precise naming for methods and variables to maintain code readability.

Preparing for Google Interviews: A Step-by-Step Guide

Using proper OOP principles is essential for coding preparation.

It's crucial to master algorithms and data structures, with a focus on standard problems and theory videos.

Consistent practice on the Interview Bit platform and effective communication during the interview are key to success.

Naming Conventions and Interview Preparation Tips

Method names should start with a verb and follow the appropriate case conventions based on the programming language.

The googliness round of interviews focuses on cultural fit and humility, with the STAR framework being essential for answering scenarios.

Bonus tips include practicing LeetCode, asking the interviewer about the problem-solving approach, and considering a LeetCode premium subscription for targeted preparation.

The non-technical round focuses on humility, leadership skills, and critical thinking.

Candidates should be ready to discuss their projects, initiatives, and how they handled feedback and miscommunication.

The interview process consists of five rounds, with feedback categories ranging from strong hire to no hire, and candidates may get an additional chance to prove themselves after a leaning no hire.

Maximizing Efficiency in Coding Interviews

Jumping directly to the most optimal solution is crucial in a 45-minute coding interview, as taking an iterative approach can waste valuable time.

Interviewers may misinterpret your struggle to find the optimal solution as a lack of preparation, potentially leading to a shorter interview.

It's important to prepare holistically for a range of problem difficulties and to practice the programming language you'll be using during the interview.

Proper knowledge of the coding language is essential, as interviewers may try to trap candidates with specific lines of code.

Strengthening C++ skills can be achieved by reading Dennis Ritchie's book and watching online tutorials.

Effective communication during interviews is crucial, and practicing mock interviews can help candidates get accustomed to different accents and improve their communication skills.