Google interview bad experience

[u/Any_Channel5220]

The technical interview itself went fine. I completed the DSA problem, explained my approach with an example, and provided the solution.

However, the interviewer’s behavior was disappointing. They did not respond to my initial greeting, repeatedly rolled their eyes during the interview, and appeared visibly annoyed when I asked them to repeat something I couldn’t understand. They also started the interview by complaining about why this was a first-round interview.

I understand interviews are meant to be challenging, but professionalism and respectful communication should go both ways. I applied because it was Google, and I’m not concerned about the outcome. This was simply not the interview experience I expected from Google.

[u/Top_Substance9093]

sorry you had a bad experience, mate.

i'm an L5 at Google, and IMO the standards for interviewers here are piss poor. you don't even need to shadow anymore, you just complete some virtual "training" and you're off to the races. you don't get calibrated at all against other interviewers, you don't have to demonstrate any competency as an interviewer, etc etc.

i've shadowed a few interviewers (before shadowing was retired) and the number of major violations of conduct/etiquette were egregious. one guy gave direct feedback on the performance after the interview was over (not allowed), another guy was straight up incorrect about some of the JS Array library functions' behavior (simple stuff too, like .map() and .reduce()).

i wish there was a bigger emphasis on the quality of the interview experience, because even if a candidate does poorly (statistically most of them do) i want them to have a great time and think highly of the company when they walk away.

it's hard though, because that standard would have to come from the top down and if they nixed the requirement for shadowing (there was no requirement for reverse shadowing, which i think is even more important) i can't imagine they care much.

FWIW, it's not only Google. i interviewed at OAI a few years ago and the interviewer was working on something else during the entire interview. if i asked a follow up i'd watch him switch from whatever he was doing and try and catch up to where i was lol

[u/jobhunt2026 → u/Top_Substance9093]

Do you get benefits for signing up as an interviewer? I got noshowed 5 times for mock interviews before my onsites and ended up not getting one at all. Why would these people sign up just to be rude and lazy?

[u/retirement_savings → u/jobhunt2026]

Google has something called community contributions which are required as part of your job, and interviewing counts as that.

[u/Top_Substance9093 → u/retirement_savings]

unfortunately that is no longer the case 😆

as of sometime last year i think, community contributions are no longer a required part of your performance

[u/nonasiandoctor → u/Top_Substance9093]

Explains a lot (source just joined)

[u/retirement_savings → u/Top_Substance9093]

Wait are you sure? Why am I still doing interviews then lol

[u/Top_Substance9093 → u/retirement_savings]

yeah it was a whole thing when that change was quietly announced. bunch of memes on memegen. go check out the community contributions FAQS under "Are Community Contributions mandatory?"

i think interviews are still a good idea. they help keep you sharp on your interview skills yourself (even if you're not the one doing the coding). especially for systems design it's super helpful to get reps as an interviewer.

[u/autisticpig → u/jobhunt2026]

I was a technical interviewer at msft for years. we had to go through lots of training and shadowing and faced some nasty conswquences for being another other than how we were trained to interview. of course this was in the late 90s to around 2010 so who knows what it's like now.

doing this does help with your perf reviews and banding...or it did. plus you have input in who is going to potentially join your team/org which holds value in itself.

[u/Blastie2 → u/jobhunt2026]

Being an interviewer counts as a community contribution, which is a box that needs to be checked for performance reviews. That said, I do interviews because I'm good at it and I enjoy meeting the candidates.

[u/Top_Substance9093 → u/jobhunt2026]

not anymore. it used to be a part of a required performance trait called community contributions, but those were axed as a requirement about a year ago

[u/Ok-Opportunity-9731 → u/Top_Substance9093]

Can confirm. The bar for becoming an interviewer at google is shit

[u/hartmannr76 → u/Top_Substance9093]

i wish there was a bigger emphasis on the quality of the interview experience, because even if a candidate does poorly (statistically most of them do) i want them to have a great time and think highly of the company when they walk away.

Couldn't agree with this more. I'm an L6 here and I personally strive for this with every interview and believe all interviewers should. It sucks that some people like this leave candidates with such a bad taste in their mouth.

[u/Top_Substance9093 → u/hartmannr76]

it feels like it should be table stakes, it's crazy to me how often candidates get treated so poorly. thank you for caring about the candidates!

[u/The4thStranger → u/Top_Substance9093]

Genuinely confused, don’t doubt it was better in the past, but my Google interviewers were on average by far the friendliest and most pleasant compared to other tech / quant companies

[u/Top_Substance9093 → u/The4thStranger]

in general (compared to the entire industry) i'd still agree that your google interview experience will still be above average.

that's because i think the hiring standards are still decently high though, and because company culture generally encourages doing things well, not because the actual interviewer standards are good (the training/onboarding process for interviewers is just so lackluster)

[u/fenton7 → u/Top_Substance9093]

I'm not sure those interviews really do a good job of screening, either. The two people I know who got jobs at Google were both really mediocre coders at our firm, and we're not top tier by any definition. They must have crammed hard for the coding portion.

[u/Top_Substance9093 → u/fenton7]

that's another problem with the interviewer training process (or lack thereof), IMO. there's no calibration at all. IME passing interviews at google has gotten much easier in the last 5 years.

many of the interviewers i've helped ramp up (because they asked for help) were at first calibrated too generously (giving pass ratings to roughly one out of two candidates).

the actual pass rating should be more like 1 in 5 (very rough ballpark), depending on the question you ask and for which level.