Recent Google Interview Questions

Jacob S. - "Cloud computing is like going out to a restaurant instead of cooking dinner at home. When you cook at home, you have to do everything yourself. You need to use your own plates, pots, and pans. You have to know how many people are coming over and buy the right amount of ingredients. If more people join for dinner than you expected, you'll run out of food! But if fewer people show up, then you'll have leftovers that go to waste. And on top of it all, you have to do all the cooking, set up, and cl"See full answer

Catherine Z. - "Clarifying Questions Have we confirmed this was a server side issue and not client side or network related? Interviewer confirms this was a server side issue Do we have additional information on whether this was region specific, user specific? Interviewer says you can make some assumptions Introduction I am going to focus on a few potential factors and describe how they could lead to system downtime: Data Center Power Outage Software Deployment Software Bug P"See full answer

Googlepm 1. - "To scale web applications, one must concentrate on having Shared hosting / Dedicated server CDN (for images servers) Caching techniques Database Sharding Adding/removing webservers on the fly In order to improve the speed of the web applications, certain techniques to look at : Web hosts - Shared hosting / dedicated server CDN Caching techniques Compression techniques Reduced use of plugins, check Java script / CSS files Pre-fetch : If we are aware that th"See full answer

Raymond W. - "Aim of compression is to reduce the file size and bandwidth consumed in transmission in order to preserve the quality of the image or text as experienced by the consumer/user. Text compression typically uses a library to act as a key for words, either words that repeat in the same document or words that are commonly presented in all documents. And maybe even word parts. Key points are that 1. it tends not to be lossy, 2. is simple/fast/consumes relatively little memory, 3. is pretty standard"See full answer

Anonymous Muskox - "Metrics which Youtube Consider before building a recommender system Number of likes on a video by user The watch time of a video by the user The video disklied by the user The video share by a user The video skipped or churn with 20-30 seconds. Depending on this Youtube build a recommender system. The video suggestion feature in youtube works based on the recommender system. It may use a hybrid of batch prediction and online prediction. So depending on the above metrics, the youtube p"See full answer

Aabid S. - "I work at a startup that makes software for Law Enforcement and the FBI. Our product analyzes calls being made by prison inmates and "listens" for predictors of violence and criminal behavior. Our clients are some of the top state prisons in the country. Recently one of the largest states in the country decided to evaluate our product for their prison system. I demo'd the product to the officers and they seemed to like everything. During the presentation they asked us if the product was ADA com"See full answer

Christopher K. - "Background Context I'm a PM at a venture-backed SaaS in the legal tech space. We provide end-to-end contract management experience for our customers with the following features: Upload - Contracts signed in DocuSign, etc. automatically uploaded to our system through API integrations. Data Extraction - Contract terms such as payment terms and key dates are automatically OCRed and extracted using ML. Analytics - Contract terms are searchable, filter, and customize for reporting. Work"See full answer

Googlepm 1. - "Getting things done. Since the job is all about leading without authority, it is important to always have the north star in mind. When all in the team do not agree or see a potential solution: Data based evidence : Provide testing results/ Analysis results/ PoC on showing why a potential solution might be better than others, Bring in a trusted stakeholder : Have a conversation with the trusted stakeholder who first believes in the solution, then vouches for the solution to the team "See full answer

Bipin R. - "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"See full answer

Rustam - "There are number of ways where an app could lose users. I would try and speak with the following teams to figure out the issue. Data Team - I'd ask data team to see if there are any drops in the existing game funnels. There could have been an issue in game design. Potentially players could have gotten stuck on a super hard level and left or flew through a puzzle that was too easy, and also left. Essentially, figuring out the progression curve of the game, which often times can lead to play"See full answer

Katie - "Union−Find -We illustrate our basic approach to developing and analyzing algorithms by considering the dynamic connectivity problem. We introduce the union−find data type and consider several implementations (quick find, quick union, weighted quick union, and weighted quick union with path compression). Finally, we apply the union−find data type to the percolation problem from physical chemistry. Analysis of Algorithms -The basis of our approach for analyzing the performance of algorithms is th"See full answer

Sukriti C. - "Lyft at its core is a marketplace with drivers and cars on the supply side, and passengers on the demand side. I would begin by dividing the goal of the dashboard into two categories : Health of the marketplace Health of the app/ reliability from a technical perspective The second one is more straightforward so I’ll briefly mention some overarching metrics I would look at and come back to it later if time allows. Health or reliability of the app can be further divided into the following -"See full answer

Manish E. - "Clarifying questions: US-based? And All year including holidays? First, what is the goal? Grow user base of Prime? Add revenue? I'd imagine it's to grow Prime base, as it's sticky and I imagine the Lifetime Value is higher as people will shop more if they have Prime. Then, I would look at the users. What are they trying to do? They're purchasing gifts, and looking to gift wrap. Take a look at the number of gift purchases total with gift receipt and no gift wrap. Call this X. Break thi"See full answer

Michelle D. - "I'd tell the interviewer that I'd start off with clarifying the question to make sure I understand it correctly (see 1 below). Then, I'd tell the interviewer my approach to make sure they know what to expect as I talk through. Approach would start with discussing the mission and connecting a north star metric (NSM) to the mission, then discuss key product metrics that are inputs towards NSM. If there's time at the end and if the interviewer wants to go down this path, we should also talk about t"See full answer

Karthik M. - "1. Step 1: clarify Let's establish the mission of Google and Youtube. Google's is to provide and make information more accessible. Youtube's might be to help people get their content, their word and themselves out into the world. I mean so many of Youtube's ads have been about how the diversity of individuals and their content, so that makes sense. Let's establish what is Youtube. Youtube has 3 primary stakeholders - creators, viewers and brands/corporations and within them"See full answer

Anonymous Muskox - "Goal/Vission of company Understanding of Whatsapp -> Whatsapp platform for people where they can connect with people remotely, they can chat with them, they can do a video call, they can send pdf, location, contacts, etc. Basically, clarify your understanding of WhatsApp. Whatsapp Goal -> connecting the people remotely in a hassle-free manner Vission 3-4 years down the line -> More engagement and retention of the users. For this vision what is the user's intended action Define"See full answer

Patrick B. - "Clarify what the business goals of Spotify is Depending on the stage, some companies care more about revenue growth, some about user growth and in rarer cases, about profit margins. In the case of Spotify, the company is still in growth stage so I will make some assumptions that user growth is the most important, followed by monetization. Plus, margin is relatively fixed due to the contracts with recording labels Recently, Spotify has invested heavily in podcast with goa"See full answer

Aruna D. - "Assumption #1: the deal is signed and the customer now will being the process of moving to GCP Assumption #2 : the deal includes Iaas as well as Paas (App Engine) - moving apps from on prem to cloud Objective : Design a product that will help the customer onboard and successfully plan the move to GCP. Customer is using on premise and is new to cloud. Lets assume the tool should include the roadmap planning too ie decisions such as moving all vs some applications etc . As in any onboarding to"See full answer

Talles S. - "Me: First, let's design our product and then we will calculate the estimated amount of units sold. Before we begin, is there anything specific about this refrigerator, is this a 'smart refrigerator'? Interviewer: Yes, you can consider this is a smart refrigerator but the overall design is up to you. Me: Thank you, one more question, do we have a specific user in mind? Younger people? Retirees? Interviewer: No, you can select the user base based on your prioritization, but theoretically it cou"See full answer

Umang S. - "Before diving into answering this, I would like to ask some clarifying questions - High Level - What is the mission, goal, target for this year for WhatsApp? Assumption answer - 10X growth in users Do we have any road map where we can see it with more details? Yes we wish, it is kind of all over the place Do you know how far we have come from the start of the year to achieve that target? Yeah we have done some progress but not much Which quarter are we in? 1"See full answer