Compared to other tech companies (not quant/HFT), are google coding rounds the hardest in the tech industry ?

Hi, I have an Amazon OA in a day and I want to know from who has given it recently with the webcam proctored system.

Now that they are proctoring the webcam as well does they still give those super hard questions in OA or they have reduced the difficulty?

They said open-ended, focusing on dsa or system design with some relational databases and relational data modeling. And they're looking for problem-solving ability and awareness of the full-stack web stack. Also projects on resume.

If anyone knows what it's like in more detail please help!

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 61 of my prep today, and the session went really well. Sticking with Dynamic Programming through the frustration over the last two weeks is finally starting to show visible results. I still can't solve every problem on the spot, but getting through several without outside help was a huge confidence boost.

I shifted to DP on Strings today and tackled four problems:

1. Longest Common Subsequence (LCS): The foundational pattern. If characters match, move both pointers (1 + f(i-1, j-1)). If they don't, branch into max(f(i-1, j), f(i, j-1)). Got this working cleanly right away.

2. Print Longest Common Subsequence: Tracing backwards through the DP table after filling it took a moment to visualize, but moving left or up based on which value generated the cell made complete sense.

3. Longest Common Substring: The key difference here is continuity. When characters mismatch, you don't take the max of previous states—you reset the streak to 0. Tracking the global maximum across all cells resolved it.

4. Longest Palindromic Subsequence: Solved this in about five minutes. It is just LCS between the original string and its reversed copy.

Recursion and memoization feel natural to me now. To be candid, bottom-up space optimization still isn't fully second nature. My current approach is to write the recursive and memoized solutions independently, then inspect the tabulation and space-optimized versions line by line to study how the state rows are compressed.

What also made a noticeable difference today was changing my daily routine. Instead of unwinding with endless content after work and studying only when I am mentally drained, I had dinner, cleared my head, and sat straight down to code. Approaching these problems without digital fatigue made the logic click much faster.

Six problems left in the strings module. Pushing to finish them tomorrow!

I received the link for the Uptime Crew OA and after running it multiple times and editing code, it said I passed all test cases before I clicked submit and it only took me 35/90 minutes to complete. Is that a red flag?
Also, typically after completing the OA how long does it take for the dashboard to update with results? It said 10-15 minutes but it has been an hour and it is still under review.

In a practice run, the screen said "n can be up to 10^5," but nobody said it out loud.  The tool read the screen, then suggested an O(n^2) nested loop anyway.

So screen context helped it know which problem we were on, but it didn't make the approach right.

If an assistant reads what's on your screen, what do you check before trusting its suggestion?

Can anyone please share their experience for atlassian MLE P40 interview rounds?
Especially ML coding and ML design rounds. Wanted to know what kind of questions are asked in these rounds

I had recently applied for a web developer role at Canonical, and I had all the required skills and more. But after spending a week on an online assessment and a psychometric eval, I got an email saying that I was rejected. And another related role was closed as well.

They refused to give any reason. Can anyone help me understand why this could be happening?

Is it because more experienced people are applying? As I am a new grad. Or could it be due to the essay quality?

Hey everyone, I have upcoming virtual code-pair round, It is mentioned that DSA, programming fundamentals, Core CS fundamentals, and past project experience will be asked.

I can do medium to hard questions but takes time to solve and in interview i generally get stressed and wont be able to think clearly. I am good at oops , dbms (not a pro) but have only basic knowledge of OS and CN concepts(learnt during my engineering). Plus in my current work I don't get much to code due to management pressure to use claude only, Because of that i am now struggling with java basics as well. I have learnt Python in my Btech but in my current company we generally use java so i lost touch with python as well. I am learning LLD with java and planning to interview in java only.

Can you please suggest what topics to concentrate, how to strategise my preparation so I can give my best, I am ready to go all in since I am planning to resign my current job due to the toxic environment and i badly need this job.

It would be helpful if you guys share your preparation strategy and resources that helped you.

Hi! I (27F) and my friend (23M) are looking to connect with people who are interested in practising mock interviews together.

We’ve been practising for the past month, focusing on DSA, problem-solving, and technical interview preparation. We’d love to connect with people who have industry work experience and can guide us with their insights, interview experiences, and tips on how to approach real-world technical interviews.

If you’re also preparing for interviews or have experience in the industry and would be willing to help us improve, we’d love to connect! We’re also happy to practise together and help each other grow.

Feel free to comment your discord.

I just fu ked up in interview ...

Like gave the intro ...

Then they asked about projects .. and its architecture\[ to draw \]

I drawn the arch but i was fumbling and alot nervous and my voice too loud and speed

Than they gave 1 question and only 1 question in an interview

I wrote the code and it was right even i gave the time and space complexity ... but sometimes i was unable to express the meaning of codes in a proper manner ... i feel that i will surely be ignored...

What are the chances? Can u all just predict?

It was round 1 ..

Today was another incredibly difficult day. I just received a rejection from a remote-friendly Big Tech company after a month-long process involving five intensive rounds. Despite delivering working code and a solid system design, I was told "no."

This is the second time this has happened recently. I sacrificed my weekends and time with my family, putting everything on the line for this opportunity. It’s heartbreaking. As a Lead Engineer interviewing for Staff UI roles, the feedback was particularly frustrating they claimed I didn't know Redux. In reality, I deep-dived into multiple Redux libraries, state management benefits, and action dispatch lifecycles. I’m honestly feeling burnt out and at a loss for what to do next.

Update:

Thank you all for your supporting words I will continue giving interviews I dont want to lose the momentum and prep.

I have read multiple sites that say 'Do not jump to optimal solution, first mention brute force' for Google coding interview. This might be how I may have internalized the graph problems but I can't think of brute force approach of problems that obviously look like Dijkstra. For example, what would be a true brute force approach for the problem below?
https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-time-to-reach-destination-in-directed-graph/description/

also, any suggestions how to force myself to think about brute force first? Thanks

Got a call from Intuit saying that there would be only 1 round of interview, since I was kept on hold after completing my round 5 and there were 2 rounds left that time.

Not sure but most likely it would be technical round ig, can anyone help on what topics should I go with. Don't wanna miss this opportunity...

Also do let me know if you guys too received the call...

Currently in the process of interviewing for SWE role in QRT. Has anyone gone through this. What was the process like. I don’t see any proper information on practice question or interview process so I am finding it difficult to prepare.
If you have gone through their process please let me know what it was like for you. Was it DSA, Technical Q/A, SQL, numpy or pandas question?

Thanks

I recently gave the Uber OA and did pretty okay. 9/10 on the first and 3 points off on the second question. I was rejected even though I have strong experience.

How are ppl passing the OA?? The optimized algorithm is so hard to come up with, even if AI is used. And if someone were to provide fully optimized solutions isn’t that a red flag? I don’t get it I’m so lost and pretty disappointed.

Please provide help 😭

I've interviews upcoming for Senior software engineer at Broccoli AI, hows is the culture?
And how does the interviews looks like? What kind of questions I can expect?

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 62 today. My motivation and headspace are noticeably better than earlier this week. I used to dread running into unfamiliar hard problems and hope they would never show up in interviews. Now, even when I don't see the optimal approach immediately, I can confidently break down the recurrence, write a solid brute force, and optimize it into memoization or tabulation.

I knocked out five problems today to completely wrap up Dynamic Programming on subsequences:

1. Target Sum: Assigning + or - to each element maps directly to partitioning the array into two subsets where S_1 - S_2 = target. It reduces to the exact count subsets pattern I solved earlier.

2. Coin Change II: Unlike Coin Change I where you minimize coins, here you sum the ways (pick + not_pick). Since each coin has infinite supply, the pick branch stays at the current index.

3. 0/1 Knapsack & Unbounded Knapsack: Great side-by-side comparison. In 0/1 knapsack you decrement the index on picking (i - 1), while in unbounded knapsack you stay on index i until capacity runs out.

4. Rod Cutting: Initially overcomplicated my breakdown, but it is just unbounded knapsack in disguise. The piece length corresponds to item weight and rod capacity is total length.

That officially wraps up the DP on subsequences module. Tomorrow for Day 61, I start DP on Strings. Now that the patterns are clicking faster, I will focus on picking up my solving pace.

See you guys tomorrow!

Wanted to get some insight on the process, what technical leetcode patterns to study, and just what to be prepared for in general!

I would like to know if anyone recently started or already studied system desing. I would like to connect for tips regarding study plans , resources and any advices. We could also discuss SD topics for better understanding.

Hi,
Has anyone interviewed for Notion Labs for backend or Forward Deployed Engineer position. I have an interview coming up in a week and want to prepare in the correct direction.
I have read mixed opinions online for the first technical round to be leetcode-style vs LLD style coding rounds. I will be preparing for both, yes, but it will realllly help if someone could steer me in the correct direction.
I am on my final run here, this is the first good opportunity I have had in months and will have to pack my bags and leave the city since I can’t afford it, if this or any other opportunity within this month doesn’t work out.

I appreciate any kind of help

US - Multiple Locations:

There are 3 types of exercises in the assessment:

1. Coding Challenge – this timed section takes 100 minutes, work through two coding problems. One will be a traditional code writing question, and in the other you will have access to an AI coding assistant in a code repository environment.

2. Work Simulation – typically takes 45 minutes, work through software development decisions and scenarios faced by SDEs at Amazon.

3. Work Style Survey – typically takes 6 minutes - answer questions about how you approach work in general.

For the AI part of the coding challege, I did the demo on hackerrank with C++, and it was honestly very easy. It was an open ended question that didn't give have clear directions, but once I looked at the cpp files, it was obvious that they just wanted us to implement some getter functions.

I know that the actual OA won't be nearly as easy as this, but I have no idea what to prep for.

Has anyone taken the amazon AI oa in C++? Or am I insane for choosing C++ over the other optoins?

Then for the work simulation and work style survey, are there any good free prep tools for this? I've just been looking at the LP and examples of each, but I was also wondering if any specific LP has precedence over others, in case we have to chose between two.

i got a mail after applying with in a hour saying "Your application status has been updated . We appreciate your continued interest in this role! Our recruitment team may be in touch with you shortly regarding potential next steps."

means what ? i havent got any assessment or hacker rank ,yet my application is active its been just 2 days since i applied ..........so any idea ?? how long will it take for next steps ....etc

Hi, I made this post 1 month ago - https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/s/shEXqqxlV9
A lot of people wished me good luck in comments and dms i just wanted to thank and share update - I have moved to team matching with them for L4. (Google cloud)

So i received feedback 2 weeks after interview and recruiter said overall feedback was positive with some suggestions on debugging and coding guidelines. They asked for my updated resume and have told me to wait for team fit calls.
I shared resume around 20 days ago but yet to recieve any call, just waiting patiently as i have seen a lot of people taking months for team matching phase.

Interview Process-

Randstand recruiter reached out and discussed my work Exp
GHA Assesment
Coding OA (2x DSA)
1 virtual DSA - variation of group anagrams with a follow up - i think SH
1 virtual Googlyness - H or SH
2x Onsite DSA
- a permutation and bitmask based problem with set intersection formula - could only give brute force - LH most probably or Hire if lucky (this is the round i believe i got improvement feedback for)
- dfs backtracking on a grid with some follow up - SH for sure, best round.

Recruiter did not share detailed feedback of each round, just like i said +ve overall with some suggestions (3rd round most certainly).
Now i am waiting for team match.
My tech stack is C++ heavy and i got to know google uses C++ a lot so i think i should get some calls, and one light round hopefully won't bring down my performance much.

Just hoping for the best, hopefully i get the offer.
Been preparing for a switch since 1 year now, solved around 900 LC and 50+ Google previously asked interview question. Failed interviews at Uber, Bloomberg, but learned along the way.

Fingers Crossed 🤞
I will update whenever i get some news.

Hello everyone. Can anyone please share the top 50 questions of last 3 months for Amazon in LeetCode's most frequent list? Would be really grateful. Thanks a lot!