Google Summer Intern 2024 Interview Experience
Summary
I shared my interview experience for the Google Summer Internship role. The process involved a phone screen focusing on projects and background, two technical rounds with specific coding problems, and a Googliness round covering behavioral aspects. I found the overall experience intense but fair, with supportive interviewers who valued my approach and reasoning.
Full Experience
📞 Round 0: Phone Screen (Resume + Project Discussion)
This round was mainly focused on understanding my background and technical exposure.
What they asked: [30 mins discussion]
- Deep dive into my projects → HLD, tech stack, challenges, scalability, and impact
- My coding profile ratings (LeetCode/Codeforces, etc.)
- Approx. number of problems solved
- Preferred programming language
- How I approach problem-solving
- College, and yes, CG.
Round 1: Technical Interview [45 mins]
Problem Statement: You are given coordinates one by one. After each insertion, you need to check whether any four points seen so far can form a square. A square can be formed using any subset of 4 points.
Approach: For each new coordinate, I stored all points in a list and used a hash set to track visited points. Whenever a new point was added, I checked all possible combinations of four points involving the new point. For each set, I computed all pairwise squared distances and verified whether they formed exactly two distinct values corresponding to sides and diagonals of a square.
I was expected to: Explain the logic, Write clean code, Do a dry run, Debug if needed, Discuss edge cases, Optimize the solution
Till the end of discussion, I was able to come up with a logic, code, dry ran & address edge cases. Due to time constraints, we couldn’t go into follow-up questions. Interviewer ended with:
“Okay, see you in the next round.”
Which felt positive. 🙂
Round 2: Technical Interview [45 mins]
Problem Statement: Given an array, find the sum of all subarrays that are in Arithmetic Progression (AP) with: Common difference = 0 or 1 Every single element is also considered an AP
I explained the brute force (generate subarray & check), reasoned about the nature of AP to come up with an optimisation, however, time was running out.
The interviewer moved to the Googliness Round:
- How you learn new technologies?
- A challenging project & my approach.
Overall Experience:
What Google Focuses On:
✔️ Strong fundamentals ✔️ Clear thinking/ Problem Solving ✔️ Communication ✔️ Optimization skills ✔️ Culture fit
The interview process was intense but fair. Interviewers were supportive and encouraged discussion.
Even when I didn’t get the most optimal solution, they valued my approach and reasoning.
Interview Questions (2)
Check if Four Points Form a Square After Each Insertion
You are given coordinates one by one. After each insertion, you need to check whether any four points seen so far can form a square. A square can be formed using any subset of 4 points.
Sum of AP Subarrays with Common Difference 0 or 1
Given an array, find the sum of all subarrays that are in Arithmetic Progression (AP) with: Common difference = 0 or 1 Every single element is also considered an AP