Google Interview Prep

Google’s SWE loop for L4+ includes 1 system design round alongside 2-3 coding rounds and a behavioral round. System design at Google emphasizes scalability, correctness, and your ability to break ambiguous problems into concrete components. They value simplicity — overengineering is penalized. Expect follow-ups on failure modes, data consistency, and cost.

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HLD Problems Asked at Google

#	Problem	Difficulty	Link
1	Key-Value Store	Beginner	Read →
2	Google Docs (Collaborative Editing)	Advanced	Read →
3	YouTube / Netflix (Video Streaming)	Advanced	Read →
4	Rate Limiter	Beginner	Read →
5	URL Shortener	Beginner	Read →
6	Notification System	Intermediate	Read →

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DSA Problems Frequently Asked at Google

#	Problem	Pattern	Link
1	LRU Cache	HashMap + Doubly Linked List	LeetCode →
2	Word Ladder	BFS	LeetCode →
3	Median of Two Sorted Arrays	Binary Search	LeetCode →
4	Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree	Tree + BFS/DFS	LeetCode →
5	Longest Increasing Subsequence	DP + Binary Search	LeetCode →
6	Alien Dictionary	Topological Sort	LeetCode →
7	Minimum Window Substring	Sliding Window	LeetCode →
8	Number of Islands	BFS/DFS Grid	LeetCode →
9	Design HashMap	Design	LeetCode →
10	Text Justification	Greedy	LeetCode →

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Tips for Google Interviews

1. Coding bar is high. Google’s DSA rounds are harder than most companies — expect medium-hard to hard problems with optimal solutions required. Brute force won’t pass.
2. Simplicity wins in design. Google penalizes overengineering. If you can solve it with one service and a database, don’t add Kafka and 5 microservices. Justify every component.
3. Think about cost and efficiency. Google runs at massive scale internally — interviewers appreciate candidates who think about compute cost, storage efficiency, and operational overhead.
4. The hiring committee matters. Your interviewer writes feedback, but a separate committee decides. Be consistent across all rounds — one great round doesn’t compensate for a bad one.

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Other Company Prep

• Amazon Interview Prep →
• Microsoft Interview Prep →
• Flipkart Interview Prep →
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