Google | SWE Intern (Winter)| India | Sep 2022 | Rejected

I had my interview for a SWE Intern position for Winter 2023 at Google, located in Bangalore/Hyderabad, during September 2-4, 2022. I went through two 45-minute technical interviews, both strictly focused on problem-solving with Data Structures and Algorithms.

Technical Interview 1:
This round was considered a MEDIUM level problem. After a warmup question about checking if a target x exists in a series of intervals, the main question was a follow-up. I was given a stream of queries (q), each with a target x, and my task was to return a boolean array indicating if each x exists in one or more given intervals. The interviewer clarified that the intervals were non-overlapping, sorted, and non-negative. The required time complexity was O(log N) and space O(1). We also discussed how to handle overlapping intervals as a final follow-up. The feedback from this round was positive; I successfully explained brute-force, a better approach, and the optimal binary search solution that was expected. The interviewer suggested I practice coding in a time-bounded environment for faster execution. He was quite chill, helpful, offered hints, and prioritized problem-solving approaches over perfect code.

Technical Interview 2:
This interview was a HARD level problem. I was presented with two lists of integers, A and B, representing daily profits for working at CityA and CityB, respectively. As a salesman, I needed to switch between these cities, with travel days (T) yielding zero profit. My goal was to output a schedule (like 'ATBB') that maximized total profit. Key clarifications from the interviewer included: arrays A and B would always have equal length, each index represented a day, travel days resulted in zero profit, I could work in a city for multiple days, but traveling was mandatory (I couldn't work solely in one city), and there would be no zero values in the profit arrays. After considerable effort, I realized it was a recursion-based problem, and the interviewer asked for a memoized dynamic programming solution. Despite my experience with DP problems, this specific type was unfamiliar, and I was stuck. I needed significant hints and, in the final minutes, could only produce a few lines of awfully broken code. The feedback for this round was to focus on solving hard-tagged dynamic programming problems from LeetCode. This interviewer was quite unhelpful, remaining silent while I struggled, and even had difficulty explaining the approach himself in the final moments. I couldn't fully grasp his explanation. While I know I need to improve, I strongly felt that with a little more guidance, I could have solved it. This experience taught me not to assume interviewers will always be helpful and to prepare in a way that minimizes the need for assistance. It was a tough day, but these things happen.

I am requesting the brilliant coders and problem solvers present in the LeetCode community to provide meaningful approaches and/or solutions to the problems I stated. It will be very helpful to me and others. A humble request for Java/Python solutions, as I really struggle with C++ codes. Thanks in advance! Happy LeetCoding!