Google Software Engineer Internship

My First Big Company Intern Interview Experience:

Status : Student, MS CS
Date : May 22, 2019
Type : Technical phone screen (Back to Back): 50 mins + 10 mins break + 50 mins

Interview 1:

  • Tell me about yourself and courses you’ve selected. (Intro)
  • Asked complexities of insert, delete, update operations in ArrayList
    Algorithmic Question : Given an array of size n, randomly output all the elements one by one.

For example,

 Input: int[] nums = {1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 1}
 Output: [2,1,1,4,3,2] is one of the outputs. 
 
 Note: duplicates numbers are allowed in input array. 
 
 Expectation: Space 0(1) and Time 0(n).

Comment: Interviewer was very tight and didn’t offer any kind of help.

Interview 2:

  • A quick introduction about me
  • Directly stepped into the problem
    Algorithmic Question: Given a grid of size m * n, find the maximum sum rectangle from the grid.

For example,

 Input: int[] nums = 
 {{1, 2, -1, 4},
 {-8,-3,  4, 2},
 {3, 8, 10, 1},
 {-4, -1, 1, 7}}
 
 Output: 29 
(i.e)
 {{-3, 4, 2},
 {8, 10, 1},
 {-1, 1, 7}}

Comment: I struggled to come up with a solution for 2D grid. He suggested me to calculate for a 1D array and convert the same logic to 2D. I could only explain my logic but not through code. This person was a great motivator, he tried to pull me out to get the code logic. He is a perfect interviewer for anyone I would say.

My thoughts: I was not well prepared but a community like this would really be helpful in anyway. I love these interviews and they want only the best. For that, we have to prepare ourselves strong and best. I believe that there will be no fruitfulness in success, if we dont have failures. I continue my journey here as before always. Love Coding! Cheers!