Software Engineering Prep Doc 

Best of luck in your upcoming interview! Here are some tips to help you prepare. We hope you’ll 
take the time to review the links and tips in this document. Please keep in mind that many of 
these are third party resources and that this advice is not directly endorsed by Google.  
 
1) Plan Ahead​: 
Phone interview: 
For your phone interview you'll need a computer with internet access. Before your interview 
you'll receive the link to the Google Doc that you'll be using in your interview, mainly for the 
coding questions. 
 
Onsite interviews: 
For onsite interviews make sure to give yourself plenty of time to arrive at our office on the 
morning of your interviews. Be ready for a full day of technical interviews, you want to be at your 
best for the last interview, too! 
  
2) What to Expect​: 
The interviewer(s) will be interested in your knowledge of computer science principles (coding 
ability, data structures, algorithms, systems design, big O notation, etc.) and how they can be 
used in your solutions. Be prepared for some open-ended discussion of projects you’ve worked 
on in school, at previous jobs, or in your spare time. 
 
3) Interview Questions​: 
Interview topics may cover: anything on your resume, whiteboard coding questions, building and 
developing complex algorithms and analyzing their performance characteristics, logic problems, 
systems design, and core computer science principles (hash tables, stacks, arrays, etc.). 
Computer Science fundamentals are a prerequisite for all engineering roles at Google, 
regardless of seniority, due to the complexities and global scale of the projects you’ll work on. 
 
To practice for your interview, you may want to visit the website ​www.topcoder.com​. Launch the 
"Arena" widget and then go to the practice rooms. We suggest doing the problems in the 
first/second division to help you warm up for your interviews. 
 
4) How to Succeed​: 
At Google, we believe in collaboration and sharing ideas. You'll likely need more information 
from the interviewer to analyze and answer the question to its fullest extent. 
 
● It’s OK to question your interviewer!  
● If you don't understand, ask for help or clarification. 
 ● If you need to assume something, feel free to ask your interviewer if it’s a correct 
assumption. 
● When asked to provide a solution, first define and frame the problem as you see it. 
● Describe how you would like to tackle solving each part of the question. 
● Let your interviewer know what you’re thinking because he/she will be just as interested 
in your thought process as in your solution.  
● Finally, LISTEN! Engineers are always collaborating here at Google, so it’s important that 
you can listen to your interviewer - especially in the event that he/she is trying to assist 
you. 
 
 
5) What is Google looking for​? 
We are not simply looking for engineers to solve the problems they already know the answers 
to; we are interested in engineers who can work out the answers to questions they had not 
come across before. 
 
Interviewers look at the approach to the question as much as the answer. Some important 
questions are: Does the candidate... 
 
● Listen carefully and comprehend the question? 
● Ask the correct questions before proceeding? 
● Enjoy finding multiple solutions before choosing the best one? 
● Seek new ideas and methods for tackling the problem? 
● Seem flexible and open to thoughts and new ideas? 
● Have the ability to solve even more complex problems? 
 
Google emphasizes really high quality, efficient, and clear code. Because all engineers (at every 
level) collaborate throughout the Google code base, with an efficient code review process, it’s 
essential that every engineer works at the same high standard. 
 
6) Technical Preparation tips 
 
● Algorithm Complexity:  
○ Please review complex algorithms, including big O notation. For more 
information on algorithms, visit the links below and your friendly local algorithms 
textbook. 
■ Online Resources: ​Topcoder - Data Science Tutorials​, ​The Stony Brook 
Algorithm Repository 
■ Book Recommendations: R ​ eview of Basic Algorithms: Introduction to the 
Design and Analysis of Algorithms​ by Anany Levitin​, ​Algorithms ​by S. 
Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani​, A ​ lgorithms​ For 
Interviews by Adnan Aziz and Amit Prakash​, ​Algorithms ​Course Materials 
by Jeff Erickson​, ​Introduction to Algorithms​ by Thomas H. Cormen, 
Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein 
● Sorting:  
○ Know how to sort. Don't do bubble-sort.  
 ○ You should know the details of at least one n*log(n) sorting algorithm, preferably 
two (say, quicksort and merge sort). Merge sort can be highly useful in situations 
where quicksort is impractical, so take a look at it. 
● Hash Tables:  
○ Be prepared to explain how they work, and be able to implement one using only 
arrays in your favorite language, in about the space of one interview. 
● Trees and Graphs:  
○ Study up on trees: tree construction, traversal, and manipulation algorithms. You 
should be familiar with binary trees, n-ary trees, and trie-trees at the very least. 
You should be familiar with at least one flavor of balanced binary tree, whether 
it's a red/black tree, a splay tree or an AVL tree, and you should know how it's 
implemented.  
○ More generally, there are three basic ways to represent a graph in memory 
(objects and pointers, matrix, and adjacency list), and you should familiarize 
yourself with each representation and its pros and cons.  
○ Tree traversal algorithms: BFS and DFS, and know the difference between 
inorder, postorder and preorder traversal (for trees). You should know their 
computational complexity, their tradeoffs, and how to implement them in real 
code.  
○ If you get a chance, study up on fancier algorithms, such as Dijkstra and A* (for 
graphs). 
● Other data structures:  
○ You should study up on as many other data structures and algorithms as 
possible. You should especially know about the most famous classes of 
NP-complete problems, such as traveling salesman and the knapsack problem, 
and be able to recognize them when an interviewer asks you them in disguise.  
● Operating Systems, Systems Programming and Concurrency:  
○ Know about processes, threads, and concurrency issues. Know about locks, 
mutexes, semaphores and monitors, and how they work. Know about deadlock 
and livelock and how to avoid them.  
○ Know what resources a processes needs, a thread needs, how context switching 
works, and how it's initiated by the operating system and underlying hardware.  
○ Know a little about scheduling. The world is rapidly moving towards multi-core, 
so know the fundamentals of "modern" concurrency constructs. 
● Coding:  
○ You should know at least one programming language really well, preferably 
C/C++, Java, Python, Go, or Javascript. (Or C# since it's similar to Java.) 
○ You will be expected to write code in your interviews and you will be expected to 
know a fair amount of detail about your favorite programming language. 
○ Book Recommendation: P ​ rogramming Interviews Exposed; Secrets to landing your 
next job​ by John Monagan and Noah Suojanen (Wiley Computer Publishing) 
● Recursion and Induction:  
○ You should be able to solve a problem recursively, and know how to use and 
repurpose common recursive algorithms to solve new problems.  
○ Conversely, you should be able to take a given algorithm and prove inductively 
that it will do what you claim it will do. 
● Data Structure Analysis and Discrete Math:  
 ○ Some interviewers ask basic discrete math questions. This is more prevalent at 
Google than at other companies because we are surrounded by counting 
problems, probability problems, and other Discrete Math 101 situations.  
○ Spend some time before the interview on the essentials of combinatorics and 
probability. You should be familiar with n-choose-k problems and their ilk – the 
more the better. 
● System Design:  
○ You should be able to take a big problem, decompose it into its basic 
subproblems, and talk about the pros and cons of different approaches to 
solving those subproblems as they relate to the original goal.  
○ Google solves a lot of big problems; here are some explanations of how we 
solved a few to get your wheels turning.  
■ Online Resources: ​Research at Google: Distributed Systems and Parallel 
Computing 
■ Google File System 
■ Google Bigtable 
■ Google MapReduce 
● Development Practices and Open-Ended Discussion​:  
○ Sample topics include validating designs, testing whiteboard code, preventing 
bugs, code maintainability and readability, refactor/review sample code.  
○ Sample topics: biggest challenges faced, best/worst designs seen, performance 
analysis and optimization, testing and ideas for improving existing products. 
 
7) Ask more questions​! 
Make sure you have a decent understanding of Google as a business, beyond Google's main 
products. Find out more about ​what we do here at Google​.  
 
At the end of the interview, most interviewers will ask you if you have any questions about the 
company, work environment, their experience, etc.. It’s a good idea to have some questions 
ready for each interview, but don't worry too much if your mind goes blank. If you have 
questions about the interview process, remuneration, or your performance, please direct these 
to your recruiter. 
 
8​) Other Helpful Links 
Interviewing at Google 
Five Essential Phone Screen Questions by Steve Yegge 
Project Euler 
TopCoder - Data Science Tutorials 
Google Products 
Google Students Blog 
Google+ for Students page 
About Google 
 
If you have any additional questions, please let me know. 
 
GOOD LUCK!!!