Interview Questions

Harshita G. - "Is the "idea" I'm trying to sell something new or built off an existing service/product we offer? Interviewer: Let's assume new. Assuming it's a proper sit-down meeting with senior management to go over the proposal, here is what the slide deck would contain. Introduction/Description of the problem I'm trying to solve: Before proposing a solution, it is important to first identify the problem we're trying to solve. This section would contain the description of the problem/pain poi"See full answer

Praful B. - "The company culture is very supportive and collaborative. Googlers are encouraged to be creative and innovative, and there is a lot of freedom to explore new ideas. The work is challenging and rewarding. Googlers have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects that have a real impact on the world. The company is committed to diversity and inclusion. Google is a great place to work for people from all backgrounds and with all different perspectives. I am confident that I would b"See full answer

Javed S. - "One good reason for using the doubly linked list is that to remove an accessed item in the list from its existing position say in the middle of the list and move it to the head, you need to update the previous node's next pointer and the next node's previous pointer. A singly linked list only has next pointers, so removing from the middle would require traversing from the head to find the previous node which requires O(n) time. A doubly linked list allows O(1) removal from any position because w"See full answer

Priyansh J. - "By increasing the number of paid users, I assume we mean that we want to increase the % of DAUs who pay for YT Music. First, we need to understand the Youtube Music play here. Youtube Music was carved out of Youtube because Spotify and Apple Music were getting popular. Users were listening to music on Spotify instead of on Youtube, threatening ad revenue for Youtube. Therefore, Youtube Music was born as a standalone app, where users could listen to the music ad free from anywhere anytime. In"See full answer

Scott S. - " Last year, we were in the midst of a critical project to develop a new machine learning-driven risk analytics platform. This platform was intended to provide real-time risk assessments and predictive insights to enhance our trading strategies. However, midway through the project, our project lead unexpectedly had to take an extended leave of absence due to a personal emergency. This left the team without clear leadership during a crucial phase of the project. Stepping into the Leadership R"See full answer

Ankit M. - "Interviewer: Design a Meta Product for space travel. Me: I would first likely ask a few clarifying questions. Can we discuss more about what do we mean by a product for space travel? Is it like a physical product or a software product? Any existing suite of products that we want to integrate this into? Interviewer: It can be a digital platform – a combination of software and services, integrated in a single ecosystem. It's not a physical product like a spacecraft, but rather a pla"See full answer

Aymen D. - "It would have been more interesting to focus on the system design rather than the Trie DS, Interviewee could have just mentioned the Trie and passed to things more important. Interviewee should have focused on the factors on which he wants to scale the API servers, popularity of the query parts ? region may be ? A hash of many factors ? Caches should have definitely be discussed, Cache eviction policies, Cache invalidation managements... Interviewee should have mentioned which kind of API pro"See full answer

Anonymous Sparrow - "Clarifying question: why would Google consider sunsetting Gmail? Is there an opportunity to make a case against sunsetting or has the executive decision already been made and we're truly looking for a flawless sunset? If decision has already been made - why? Is this a global decision or country-specific? If the answer from interviewer is that the decision is open to debate, pivot case toward identifying the problem that causes leadership to even consider sunset. Then analyze and propose ways to"See full answer

Pathworks P. - "To answer this, I will focus my efforts on explaining the most common type of API used in most modern software development applications - the REST API. For the purpose of simplicity, I will also keep the topics of Authorization and Authentication out of the mix. In essence, an API is a group of logic that takes in a specific set of inputs and responds with a specific set of outputs. This is analogous to going to a drive-thru and placing an order for a meal. When you give an API a bunch of"See full answer

Shubham K. - "For larger audience of the platform, Flipkart is an e-commerce website like Amazon in India. Gather more information 15% decline in comparison to last week, last month, last quarter or last year or across a particular sale duration that runs at a fixed frequency like Big Billion Days (similar to Great Indian Festival which Amazon puts up) Across a particular item, category, brand or overall. From which flow like Wishlist to cart, Product detail page to cart, Product comparison to c"See full answer

Ayush R. - "Clarifying Qs: Uber PM Business goals - revenue, user engagement Known customer needs Any trigger or prompt - post covid, things are getting back to normal. Observing demand for kids to travel alone within the city from point A to B Geo - US Uber mission -- Create opportunity through movement Uber strengths - Brand value Mobile tech GPC tracking Real-time traffic and routing algos Fleet of drivers Why we need this app for kids: Why would kids want to trav"See full answer

Indranil G. - "So we need to only consider Delhi within city limits? Yes And will we consider the big trees and not bushes? Yes Now inside Delhi total size is 1484 sq km means 2000000 sq km In this, there are 2% area which is lake or water so remove that will be (2000000-( 2000000 km*2%) )= 1960000 sq km In this area in Delhi, we have 20 % area where it is a park that means ( 1960000- (1960000*20%)) = 1568000 km area nonpark and 392000 km is a park area Obviously, in the park area, the density will b"See full answer

Imju B. - "Wondering what is the difference between OKR based and Roadmap based. I feel it is based on the time horizon."See full answer

Palak A. - "Designing a system to deny services to requests from banned IPs involves integrating real-time IP checking with your service architecture. Here’s a detailed outline of how you can design such a system: System Design Overview The goal is to ensure that your service can efficiently check incoming requests against a list of banned IPs and deny access when necessary. The system will leverage an external API, security.gov.x, to determine if an IP address is blocked or allowed. **Key Compone"See full answer

FuzzyLogic - "Context Photo app || Click images, videos via mobile app (android, ios) + editing + share + upload Who are we? || Startup who wants to build accessibility apps for the disabled people Why do we want to build this app? || Current apps are not usable by visually impaired, we can bring difference & gain market share. Constraints || To launch in next 12 months Is this app exclusively targeted for blind? || Yes but regular people may also use it but not our main target group **Goa"See full answer

Praveen - "First, I would like to discuss and align what is meaningful social interaction. Given facebook's mission to empower users to build communities and get people closer, it is important that users have "meaningful social interaction" The goal of defining this metric is to use this as a north star or success metric around any efforts to increase engagement. It can also help with ads targeting/monetization by showing ads only during deeper interactions and hence might get better yield. Given faceb"See full answer

Fahad K. - "Alright, let's think through this change of moving the 'like' button to a menu under three dots on photos I'll start by aligning this change with Facebook's mission, analyze key insights, define the product mission for this update, Identify the eco-system (n-sided marketplace) Look at the effects on the eco-systems, Effects on their needs and pain points. Identify the most important actors and most important actions Come up with some metrics that we may be using to"See full answer

Elisa L. - "Being a marketplace, there are two users that Uber wants to satisfy: the rider and the driver. I think the ultimate success metric is related to how well riders and drivers get matched. The ultimate goal for the rider is to get to their destination as efficiently as possible. Some concerns for the rider may be Matching with drivers Minimizing waiting time waiting to be matched and waiting for the driver to arrive Ease of pick-up and drop-off (ie. Driver coming from the opposite side of t"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

Sahil A. - "Clarifying questions: Open metrics - Number of times users open the google document on a given day 10% decline - is it a gradual decline or steep decline? (since when) Do we witness decline from a specific geography? Decline for consumers or enterprise customers? Decline from web or mobile app? Review logs or bug reports to check if there are customer issues reports Internal Determine if a particular release is causing the issue Review other metrics to check if fewer do"See full answer