Interview Questions

Rohit K. - "As the Product Manager for Google Play Store Ads, our goal with the ad ranking algorithm is to create a win-win ecosystem. We want to connect users with relevant and engaging apps they'll find valuable, while simultaneously delivering high-quality installs and engagement for our advertisers, ultimately driving sustainable revenue for Google. To achieve this, our ad ranking algorithm will be guided by the following core principles: Relevance First: We will prioritize ads tha"See full answer

Sukriti C. - "Why is this important? Human capital is the core competitive advantage for technology companies, especially Google. Making the best hire for a given position vs not at scale can mean hours of lost productivity with significant monetary implications. The corollary to a false negative is also a false positive. Assuming that the goal is to hire the best candidate for a given job, the fact that the right person was not hired means the less than the right person for the job was. Impact : Delta"See full answer

Laura S. - "Clarifying questions: is this a brand new product, or are we improving an existing one? (i.e. are we going to have to migrate an existing codebase or are we starting from scratch?). are we resource-strapped (e.g. # engineers, time)? are there any specific priorities for the product, or should i leave it open-ended? Assume: brand new product, well-resourced, no specific priorities. It seems that there are two sides to this question: 1) technical evaluation of different languages, and 2)"See full answer

Rika S. - "Let's start by understanding Google's goals with Search. Google Search is by far the #1 search engine, capturing 70% of the search market. There are probably two reasons why Google would bid to maintain its place as the default search engine on Firefox: the first, Firefox is a popular web browser, with many users, and Google wants to retain the large user base who search on Firefox. Second, Firefox users tend to be more privacy oriented than users of other browsers, therefore Google wants to c"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

Devendra B. - "Narrow scope of mission: As a Product Manager for Google Search, my primary mission would be to enhance the search experience for users, ensuring they find the most relevant information quickly and efficiently. This involves continually improving the quality of search results, enhancing the user interface, and exploring innovative features to meet evolving user needs. Customer segments: Google Search caters to a diverse range of users, including students, professionals, researchers, and"See full answer

Karthik T. - "In our product portfolio there were many teams and we were almost 12 product managers interacting closely to deliver the entire product feature area. Situation was that we were frequently had defects come in which will result in defects pushed back and forth. Goal was to avoid this as SLA of defects was getting impacted immensely there were priority 2 defects which we were sitting for couple of weeks before being looked at. There was a need to establish a triaging process. Along with my leaders"See full answer

Anonymous Moth - "As a Business Analyst, I would employ a cross-functional approach for implementing virtual debit and credit cards by collaborating closely with various departments. Initially, I would work with the market research team to understand customer needs and industry trends. With the IT and security teams, I would focus on designing a robust, user-friendly, and secure virtual card system. Collaboration with the legal department would ensure compliance with financial regulations. Partnering with the mar"See full answer

Anonymous Giraffe - "this is not a helpful interview, she seems so unprepared, confusing, unable to netting it out :("See full answer

Mahesh L. - "Preparing for a significant security compliance change can be overwhelming. The most efficient way to achieve GDPR compliance is through interdepartmental collaboration and the use of technology solutions that automate and validate business needs such as policy compliance, data security and required reporting. As the deadline looms, most organizations should already have started assessing the business impact, devising a company-wide implementation plan and addressing additional resource needs. E"See full answer

David I. - "WITH filtered_posts AS ( SELECT p.user_id, p.issuccessfulpost FROM post p WHERE p.postdate >= '2023-11-01' AND p.postdate < '2023-12-01' ), post_summary AS ( SELECT pu.user_type, COUNT(*) AS post_attempt, SUM(CASE WHEN fp.issuccessfulpost = 1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS post_success FROM filtered_posts fp JOIN postuser pu ON fp.userid = pu.user_id GROUP BY pu.user_type ) SELECT user_type, post_success, post_attempt, CAST(postsuccess AS FLOAT) / postattempt AS postsuccessrate FROM po"See full answer

Aishwarya J. - "Looking into licensing data for users to match with the validity of their plans , to set up reporting okr's and metrics from the ground up and future problem sculpting for future feature additions I developed the metrics from the existing data tables , with uniform interpretation for datasets used across teams, keeping the modifications done in alignment with the requirements of the stakeholders. Hypotheses for licensing metrics was laid out in a defined manner where it was feasible to cherry"See full answer

Aditya G. - "We would like the interviewer to call out bad interviews too. I understand that these guest interviewees are spending their time for Exponent and are probably compensated. Exponent's customers are paying members and they need to know that bad answers are called out as bad answers and why. Telling everyone they are awesome at the end of the PM interview doesn't send the right message to paying subscribers who are spending valuable time training for interviews."See full answer

Nikolas C. - "That's really interesting how in section "Behavioral Interviews for Engineers" there is no single interview for, actually, Engineer. It's EM, SA, CEO, PM etc. So all problems are not relevant for people who are not managing products and not applying for manager's role. Will you consider adding at least couple of them? "See full answer

Glados - "Prompt - annual cost of managing Google photos (note - I believe Google doesn't ask estimation question anymore, not sure who/here/how this was asked) We will go over what Google photos is, its users, how they use photos, what costs are incurred, estimation - base case then scale it out, gut check the answers, and arrive at an estimate Google photos is a photo and video storage service. Its users are Content creators/users Google (hosting) Other service providers that provide value-add"See full answer

Anni P. - "I firstly discuss the brute force approach in O(n^2) time complexity , than i moved to O(nlogn) tine complexity than i discussed the O(n) time complexity and O(n) space complexity . But interviewer want more optimised solution , in O(n) time complexity without using extra space , The solution wants O(1) space complexity i have to do changes in same array without using any space . This method is something like i have to place positive values to its original position by swapping and rest negativ"See full answer

Anonymous Jellyfish - "Thank you for the question! Normally, I would want to ask some clarifying questions to try to better understand the scope of the problem. Below are some of those questions & assumptions I am going to make because I need to submit an answer without getting a response. Question 1: What is Facebook’s north star metric for this exercise? Growth? Engagement? I’m also keeping in mind that because we are talking about building a birthday feature in the earlier stages of Facebook, their north s"See full answer

Scott S. - "As a Software Engineering Manager, one of the biggest mistakes I encountered early in my role involved underestimating the importance of aligning team goals with individual career aspirations and professional growth opportunities. This oversight became evident through a project that initially seemed successful but later revealed deeper issues within the team dynamics and morale. I was leading a software development team on a major project aimed at revamping a critical trading platform. The proj"See full answer

Ramendra S. - "Step 1: Clarifying the Problem Scope We will focus on designing the leaderboard for Dream11 with these assumptions: Registered teams: 100,000 users are actively participating and ranked. Real-time updates: Leaderboard updates frequently as players accumulate points based on live sports events. Multiple leagues: Each user can participate in different leagues, so we will need to maintain a separate leaderboard for each league. Query efficiency: Users frequently"See full answer