Getting into Big Tech Reliably

28 Apr 2024

I fooled you, there is no surefire way to get into Google. Otherwise, everyone would've done it. But there are ways to improve the odds.

You already know what these companies ask so I won't bore you with the details. But broadly, Big Tech focuses heavily on Algorithmic interviews. I'm taking Google as an example, For SDE-2 role, they have 4 Leetcode + 1 Behavioural round.

Exercise

• Search for “Past Google interview experiences". Pick an experience, it will generally be segmented like Round 1, Round 2 etc. All rounds kind of have similar difficulties so you can interchange them.
• Pretend there's an interviewer sitting in front of you. Now, solve the questions given in a round in next 30-40 minutes.

Repeat above steps for 20 Questions.

At the end, you will have an array like this: PFFFF [P = Pass , F = Fail]

Calculation

Lets assume your results for last 5 attempts is PFFFF. Since companies require you to pass every round. You have a 0% probablity of clearing the interviews.

But this only 1 sample right? Luckily you sample this for 2-6, 3-7……15-20 and get somewhat reliable results.

Ex: Let's say your results are PFPPPFPPFPPPPPPFPFPFPPP.
There are 2 samples containing "PPPP" in total 18 samples. This means you have 11% chance of clearing the interview.

Note that in above example, you had 16 "P"s and 7 "F"s. Meaning you were passing 16/23 = 61% of interviews. But still you only had 11% chance of getting selected. The key point here is that you need consecutive wins not just higher percentage of them.

Behavioural/Design Rounds

I feel these rounds are more of a toss since they depend on interviewers mood a lot. I'd give a 50% chance with no preparation and 80% chance with full preparation. You can integrate these into calculations to get full results.

I've added a small calculator which makes it easy to do these calculations.

Thanks for Reading!! Reach out to me prakhar897@gmail.com for any queries.