Google Onsite Interview Experience
Interviewing at Google SG for Japan software engineer role
Note: I am willing to give a cheap paid mock interview to anyone who requests it! Please approach me at any social media :D.
Prelude
I previously applied for Google Japan Software Engineering internship and got an offer, but I decided to decline it because I’ve accepted a full-time offer at another company.
I took a long time emailing my recruiter to discuss the possibilities. Trust me, writing those emails was terrifying. I don’t want to be banned from Google as they might see me being fickle and greedy. In the end, everything turned out well. I’m glad that he’s really compassionate and said that my decision to decline the offer was perfectly fine. He even thanked me for my bravery and honesty (trust me, this made me feel so good about myself 😄).
After I had formally sent my final decision, he sent me the following email.
Rangga,
Thanks for kindly sharing your thoughts. I’m pretty sure you have carefully thought about it and made this decision so we will respect.
Just to confirm, you are not even applying to full-time position of Google? If you want to, we can start the process now :)
Thanks,
Seriously, Google is beyond generous. Instead of abandoning me, they actually offered me a full-time position interview 😢. I asked if I can start working in late 2019, and my recruiter responded that I can start anytime as long as it is in 2019. Without hesitation, I agreed to go through the recruitment process.
Steps
Here are the steps for a full-time job at Google.
- Phone Interview (1 interview)
- Onsite Interview (4 interviews on the same day)
- Hiring Committee Review
Preparation
Same preparation described in my previous article. My recruiter actually did not ask for a new resume. He used the resume I had sent for my internship application. And just like my internship emails, this is the provided Google interview preparation link.
Phone Interview
First, I filled a form sent by my recruiter regarding my availability, programming language (C++/Java/Python), and interview language (Japanese/English). One day after I submitted the form, a recruiting coordinator finally reached me. Only this time, she wasn’t from Asia, but from Ireland (doesn’t make any difference at all, just a fun fact).
And once again, sorry, I cannot share the questions as the email has stated:
As a friendly reminder, our interview questions are confidential, so please keep things under wraps.
I thought 10 days were long that I could sharpen my interview skills, but I was so busy finishing school administration for graduation, and also partying, mainly eating at fancy restaurants 🌴. I ended up preparing nothing… Nevertheless, I still picked up the call on the interview date, precisely at 8 am. Surprisingly, this is my first female interviewer! She’s really nice and she’s the only interviewer who actually asked me to introduce myself.
Just like my previous experience, the voice is very, very unclear. Apparently, the situation was the same for her. She could not even hear me saying “sort” that I had to type it. We both ended up using typing for communication. I got 3 algorithms questions. Compared to my previous phone interviews, those questions were actually very easy. I could solve every question with almost no confusion (except for the 2nd question). The interview lasted for 46 minutes, and for the first time as well, the interviewer did not give the chance for me to ask questions (I never have any actually 😆). In my opinion, Google’s questions are not as terrifying as many have imagined. Some might be really easy.
Ten days later (27th July), I finally got an update from my recruiter.
Hi Garmastewira!
Thanks for waiting while we reviewed your interview feedback. We would like to let you know you did well in your first interview and we would like to invite you to four onsite interviews at our Google office if you are currently based in Japan (if you’re not currently in Japan let us know where you are so that we can have you go to the office nearest to your location).
Onsite Interview
FYI, I live in Indonesia. My recruiter asked if I prefer to do the interview via Hangouts or do it on site at Google’s office. I mean, every sane person would go for an onsite interview 😛. Going to a Google’s office might be an only one-time experience.
I really hoped the onsite interview wouldn’t happen at Google Tokyo or other offices that require Visa to enter because my schedule was really tight (vacation in Korea, moving to Singapore). My best guess was that I’d do the interview at Google Singapore as Google Jakarta does not employ software engineers. Three days later (30th July), and email came from another recruiting coordinator, and I was correct. It’s Singapura! 🇸🇬
Just like other companies who request onsite interviews, Google will pay the expenses for the flight and the hotel. Sadly, because Indonesia is very close to Singapore, Google only books one night for the hotel. Still, it’s better than nothing 😃. They actually gave several flights and hotel choices to suit my best preferences. Here are my travel needs that I chose for the interview.
- Flight: Singapore Airlines, BDO-SIN (Bandung-Singapore). Departing on 26th June in the morning.
By default, you should order a return flight too. I didn’t book one because I’d stay in Singapore (rent an apartment and start working). - Hotel: Grand Hyatt Hotel Singapore (Room Type: Google Recruit Room).
This would be my second time staying in a 5-star hotel 😅. Also, it’s intriguing to know what a “Google Recruit Room” would actually look like.
Google also provide reimbursements for travel and food, but you need to pay for yourself first and keep all the receipts. There are details on how you can receive your money based on your residence and bank account. Funnily, they offer car rental and Google strongly prefers this compared to reimbursing taxi rides. I’m not sure if you need an international driving license as I chose not to book one.
1. Trip to Singapore
After an exhausting yet incredibly fun trip to Korea, I finally moved to Singapore!
I actually brought my mom as well. She will help me moving to Singapore. We brought two giant suitcases; both should weigh at least 45 kg 🌓. I actually wanted to order a GrabTaxi, but we are very unsure about where the taxi should pick us. So we used the Airport’s taxi service to go to the hotel. In the end, the airport’s taxi is only $2 more expensive than the price Grab listed.
We arrived at the hotel at around 3 PM. We directly went to the check-in staff. Weirdly, she has a very smooth American accent. I guess this is the norm for a hotel staff? 🤣 We were then escorted to this so-called “Google Recruit” room, but it was basically a “King Bed Deluxe” room. What I found very cool was there was this welcome message on the TV upon my arrival. On a side note, I found out that I didn’t get a breakfast. If I wanted to, I needed to pay an additional $60 💸.
I think it was around 4 PM that my mom and I were freshened up again. We only visited Far East Plaza to eat “Ayam Penyet Ria” and ION mall to eat dinner later. I spent some time to review some of my notes before going to sleep. Within 20 minutes, I got sleepy already (reading textbook is the fastest way to get to sleep for me). I just hoped that everything would go well the next day…
2. First and Second Interview
I used the taxi service in front of the hotel to take me to Google’s office. I arrived super early, 40 minutes before the interview begins. Anyone who arrives there can see the “Google x Welcome” sign clearly, but I was personally quite confused on finding the office’s entrance. I waited for some time at the reception. Fortunately, my interviewer also came early 15 minutes before the interview, so I actually got a much more time for the first interview.
I did my interview in a dedicated meeting room (I think it might fit 10 people in the room). We first introduced ourselves. He asked several questions about my opinion about Singapore. I said the climate is much better than Jakarta, but he argued that Singapore is way much more humid than Jakarta (which I finally agree now). FYI, he’s Canadian. This office is definitely so diverse.
I was given a laptop to type the code. I used a code-sharing application, similar to Google Docs, but dedicated for coding as I can choose what programming language highlighting I want to use. I think it is built by Google itself for the purpose of interviewing. The interviewer needed to do something similar like logging in on my laptop first (I think), and the code document was synced on his laptop and mine. Time to code!
The question is quite simple. I answered and gave the complexity analysis smoothly. I notice that he actually typed what I was saying. When I talked to fast, he said “hold on, so you said XXX right? Slower please, I need to type your thought process for the feedback”. After that, he asked many follow-up questions (no need to code), and I think I managed to answer them well. There’s this one follow-up question coding question before the time ran out (10 minutes or so), but I failed to answer 🤢.
Time’s out, and the second interviewer was already in front of the door. I had a hard time to say his name properly as he has a Chinese name (I can pronounce Pinyin correctly now, though 😛). Unlike the first interview, he actually offered me if I want to use the whiteboard. The whiteboard is actually the entire wall of the room 🤣. I do prefer the whiteboard, so I chose it. This was my best interview attempt out of all the four interviews. I only did the design and pseudo-code on the whiteboard. I wrote the code on the laptop just like the first interview. I feel very good with what I did on this interview.
3. Lunch
After finishing my second interview, I was escorted by another Google employee. I thought he would be my third interviewer, but he actually wasn’t. He was just simply a lunch escort 😂. He guided me to the cafeteria. The way to the cafeteria was quite confusing. There are simply too many (fancy) stairs at this office. I think I cannot go back from the cafe to the interview room without guidance…
And here is the cafeteria!
Google’s cafeteria is simply H-U-G-E. As my lunch company said, “you can eat very healthily or the opposite here”. It feels like the food stalls that you will find at a huge wedding. There are salad, Indian food, grilled lamb chop (you can watch the chef burns the lamb live), and of course, my all-time favourite, dim-sum!
While eating, I ask a lot of questions about him working at Google. The person who escorted me was from Portugal and moved from Google Switzerland. He said at Google, it is quite easy to move from one office to another one. I asked a lot about what he has done, Google projects, each office’s differences, etc. Conversely, he also asked me questions, but more about my coding language preference, what open source projects I like, etc. I directly ask him whether there will be an assessment of my answers and attitude at this lunch break; he said “absolutely no” 😂. He actually did once give a negative lunch break feedback that might impact the candidate’s interview results because the person was extremely impolite.
After lunch, he asked me whether I want a tour of the office or just getting a coffee. The office was confusing enough for me, so I chose to just chill waiting for the third interview ☕️. I thought we will go to a coffee self-serving machine, but Google actually has a dedicated coffee barista. This office’s level of awesomeness is beyond words…
4. Third and Fourth Interview
After a fun lunch and office tour, it’s time to get back to the interviews!
These last two interviews didn’t end up well though. It’s pretty much the same as how the first two interviews have gone. I solved the question on the third interview, although I took a long time to think, thus resulting only in one question. Then, my last interviewer is a woman (again!). I wouldn’t say her questions were hard, but I totally bombed (in a bad way) the interview 😢. I could feel she was not impressed with what I did. I just realized the question was actually easy after the interview is done (a very common case of doing interview…).
Finally, all the interviews were done. She escorted me to the office’s entrance. I took the lift going down and gave my thanks. Then, I ordered a GrabTaxi back to my hotel, and that was it.
Results
At first, I didn’t hope too much, but the idea of getting accepted would be really cool. I waited for the results for 3 weeks, and no answers were given yet. So I decided to ping my recruiter, and in one hour, he sent me this email reply.
Hi Garmastewira,
Thank you so much for waiting through the process while we discussed. Today I’m reaching out to you to share the result after your interviews.
Through the careful consideration and discussion with interviewers, unfortunately we have decided not to move forward with your application for the Software Engineering role at Google Japan.
Please understand that we committed and carefully reviewed your profile and reached the conclusion that you are not ready to join Google at this moment. That said, this is not the end of our interaction and we were not simply matched as of now.
I’m really hoping to see you to apply Google near future again.
My heart sank really deep. Apparently, I still didn’t well enough.
I felt stupid for turning down the internship offer. I blamed myself for declining it. I mean, putting Google on my resume would be super cool, even only as an intern. Nevertheless, maybe I just need to try harder next time. I should be grateful already that I was given the opportunity to do the interview onsite. Besides, the company that I will work for is extremely cool and generous already.
I heard that I can try to interview again at least 1 year after the last attempt. Maybe I’ll try again next year 😄.
To Conclude
I believe that interviews are quite a luck-or-no-luck matter. You know you are well prepared. But sometimes, the questions are surprisingly too hard that you never face such cases. Sometimes, the questions are easy, but your brain is not ready at the time. Sometimes, the interviewer is just too harsh. Who knows?
The best thing that you can do is to prepare well. And pray hard. 🙏 No matter what happens, failure is always a good thing as it will motivate you to do better the next time.
Thank you for reading this story, I hope it helps and inspires some readers. Good luck to everyone who will/is doing the interview!
