🏆 From Aspirations to Achievements: My Noogler Story at Google 🎉Hello People

4 min readJun 17, 2024

I hope you’re doing well! Today, I’m excited to share my story about my journey through the Google interview process and how I ultimately received an offer to join Google.

Let me start with a bit of background: I come from a small town in Haryana. I went on to gain admission to NSIT and began my career at Helpshift in Pune. It was an incredible experience to kickstart my journey with a good company after much struggle. Climbing the career ladder, I eventually landed a position at Uber, where I spent 3.5 years, including one year in the USA. After being laid off, I returned to India.

Continuing to Improve After Each Setback

I began interviewing with Google in 2020 shortly after joining Uber. Despite several attempts over the next 2–3 years, I couldn’t get past the final stages, often reaching the Google Lead (GL) level but not beyond. In 2022, I progressed to team matching and felt optimistic, but then global layoffs and a hiring freeze hit. Although I didn’t make it that time, I remained determined to try again.

Fast Forward to 2024: How It All Started

A recruiter reached out to me on Linkedin about a Software Engineer opportunity with Google Cloud in Bangalore, India. I had been preparing intermittently, so I requested to schedule the first round as soon as possible. Recruiters at Google have access to your previous feedback, which is crucial in securing interview calls.

From my past experiences, I knew that Google interviews often focus heavily on Graphs.

Yes this kind of graphs ☔️

I practiced various graph-related questions and data structures and algorithms (DSA) problems on LeetCode, including union-find algorithms, topological sorting, minimum spanning tree, and shortest path algorithms like Dijkstra’s.

To give you an overview, the Google interview process typically consists of one screening round (an elimination round), three DSA onsite interviews, and one Googliness round. If you’re interviewing for an L5 position, there’s an additional system design interview. While I can’t share exact questions due to the NDA, I can provide similar examples for context.

My first round, the screening round, was scheduled within two weeks. The question was graph-related, similar to the “largest island” problem but with some variations. I solved it within the time limit.

First thought in mind after seeing the question

Effective communication is key during these interviews — clarify assumptions, constraints, input, and expected output with your interviewer. Start with a basic solution, even if it’s brute force, then optimize it gradually. Once coded, dry run it with your own test cases and consider edge cases.

I cleared the screening round with good feedback and quickly moved on to the onsite interviews. These were scheduled back-to-back within the same week. The onsite rounds included a mix of DSA and problem-solving with JavaScript.

In the first onsite round, I faced a task scheduler question that involved asynchronous operations and multiple follow-ups, requiring proficiency in both async JS and DSA. The next DSA round presented a practical situation related to a cricket match, which I solved by applying game sense step-by-step. Third round combined async JS with DSA.

After receiving positive feedback, I moved on to the Googliness round the following week, which covered standard questions easily found online.

Following this, I entered the team matching phase. Although the first team didn’t give approval, the second team did, and we proceeded to the Hiring Committee (HC). After an additional round, I received approval from the HC and an offer from Google.

The salary negotiation was swift, and the initial offer was satisfactory. I received my offer letter within the same week and joined soon after. Here I am, proudly wearing the famous Noogler hat.

Salary Structure:

Google salary structure contains 3 Major components (Numbers are approx based on people shared on Leetcode, feel free to explore Leetcode and levels.fyi for salary details)