Weird Google Interview Experience | Bangalore SDE II (L4) | Reject

Was interviewed for L4 loop at Google and since was my first experience I got a Mock interview as well. This was pretty helpful to see how it would look like. Here is the experience: Google Mock Interview

Then I got the first on-site and it began at a bad note. The interviewer joined in and seemed distracted, so I went ahead and introduced myself and they stopped in middle to ask me "I though you're from [FAANG] currently. I clarified that I used to work there and have been at new place for about 2 years now.

The interviewer seemed to believe at the point that I shared the incorrect Resume deliberately which I clarified that I was asked for my Resume and gave latest one, I had no idea how they got such an old Resume (Even recruiter clarified that it was latest).

Following that, intervier did not even introduce themself and just pasted they question and said "Solve this", then went back to do something else and again seemed distracted.

This was the question: Google Onsite

At first I started explaining on how we traverse for finding cycle, and in a similar fashion dfs would help us print the ring and was interuppted to say, "No, its not to find a cycle but to print ring aren't you seeing the question". All subsequest attempt at discussion of my thinking process was met with some berating comment but I still kept my calm and did my best.

Below was the code I did.

  private static List<String> findRing(Map<String, List<String>> graph) {
    String node = graph.keySet().iterator().next();
    List<String> result = dfs(graph, node, null, node);
    return result;
  }
  
   private static List<String> dfs(Map<String, List<String>> graph, String node, String prev, String startingNode) {
     if(node == startingNode && startingNode != prev && prev != null) {
       return new ArrayList<>();
     }
     
     for(String next : graph.get(node)) {
       if(next != prev) {
          List<String> list = dfs(graph, next, node, startingNode);
         // Visit only once
          if(list != null) {
            list.add(node);
             return list;
          }

       }
     }
     return null;
   } 
}

On this part I was told multiple times "Make it look better", "Do something to make it better" and honestly felt I was talking to ChatGPT 🥲

I explained on this part as much as I could, but was told to improve this approach so could not discuss any other approaches (like BFS, which would be even better here)

Then after a few days I got my feedback that I got "Neutral" feedback and interviewer mentioned that I missed a lot of edge cases and did not properly debug the code so don't move forward. This was so disheartening since the code I had even on dry run had no bugs (even confirmed during interview), and I covered all edge cases! To top that, I got a 12-month cool-off.

I explained to recruiter that it might have a little bias since interviewer believed I shared wrong resume intentionally, and the feedback does not seem to what actually happened. We could either get the feedback once again or since it a neutral feedback we could go for atleast 1 more round to decide, apart from that the 12 month was alot for neutral feedback since I already have 5 years experience and was really prepared for interviews (I prepared for Google for over a month). Recruiter said nothing could be done and just share feedback over mail.