CANDIDATE INTERVIEW STORY

Google L3 Phone Screen + Googlyness

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google
· Software Engineer L3· India
October 10, 2026 · 5 reads

Summary

I completed the Google L3 phone screen and Googlyness round, solving a shift‑timeline coding problem and answering behavioral questions.

Full Experience

I recently had my L3 phone screen (India) as well as Googlyness round. Timeline: Recruiter reached out on linkedin around early Aug. GHA (simple agree / disagree ques): 2 days after reaching out OA (2 simple DSA Ques, do not remember exactly, I was able to solve both) : Got invitation 3 days after GHA and gave it almost a week later. Recruiter Reached out for phone screen around 10 days after OA. Phone Screen : 3 weeks after Recruiter Reached out.

1st round (Phone Screen, Virtual): (used AI to write this) You're given a list of employee shifts, each as [name, startTime, endTime]. Build the merged shift timeline: break the full time range into non-overlapping segments, where each segment lists every employee who is on shift during that exact window. Example: roster = [ ["Mary", 10, 40], ["John", 30, 50], ["Peter", 50, 80], ["Crystal", 100, 150], ["Jane", 120, 180] ] I fumbled a bit and moved to coding directly without clarifying approach, recruiter was verr nice and supportive, was able to code it up under time, had a bug which recruiter gave me example / hint to catch, caught and fixed.

2nd Round (Googlyness, Virtual) : 3-4 basic ques, describe me a situation when project requireements changed midway and how you handled it, when you had a conflict with manager, when you failed and what did you do, it was a pretty good round.

Interview Questions (1)

1.

Merge Employee Shift Timeline

Data Structures & Algorithms

Given a list of employee shifts, each represented as [name, startTime, endTime], build a merged timeline that breaks the overall time range into non‑overlapping segments. Each segment should list every employee who is on shift during that exact window.

Example input:

roster = [
    ["Mary", 10, 40],
    ["John", 30, 50],
    ["Peter", 50, 80],
    ["Crystal", 100, 150],
    ["Jane", 120, 180]
]

The expected output would be a series of time intervals with the corresponding employees working in each interval.

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