I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Nov 2014
Interview
A recruiter reached out through LinkedIn. Was easy to work with and helped set me up with a phone screen. Phone screen was a short product design question about how I would design an app for my favorite sports team (I had the choice between this and another question not related to sports).
After passing the phone screen got passed to a new recruiter who helps with the rest of the process. Was brought on site for a day of being interviewed by 4 different PMs and 1 SWE. Mostly standard PM questions around product design and metrics. SWE had two parts: implementing a fibonacci algorithm, first naively and them optimizing (iterative vs. recursive, memoizing, etc...) and the a systems design question around implementing Google Instant.
I thought the interviews went well, but the still couldn't decide so they brought me in again for a second round of onsites. This time I only met with senior two people, a high-level SWE (had been at Google for 9 years) and a Director of PM. These went well and my final package was approved by the hiring committee about two weeks after the second round.
Throughout the interviews there were no brainteasers or estimation questions. The closest thing was the ladder question I included below, which is really more of a CS/algorithms question.
Overall the process took much longer than expected, about 3 months from initial contact to offer.
Google feels big and it is big. I also interviewed at Twitter and Facebook and the size differences jump up an order of magnitude for each step (Twitter -> FB -> Google). It also noticeably feels like an older company, i.e. interviewing with people who have been at Google since before FB or Twitter were founded. This isn't a bad thing, just an observation.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have a ladder of N steps (rungs). You can go up the ladder by taking either 1 step or two steps at a time, in any combination. How many different routes are there (combinations of 1 steps or 2 steps) to make it up the ladder?
The process was straightforward and moved quickly. After applying online, a recruiter reached out within a few days for a brief phone screen. That was followed by two video interviews, one with the hiring manager and one with a panel of team members focused on project planning and stakeholder communication. The whole thing wrapped up in about two weeks, and the team was responsive and clear about next steps throughout.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I walked through a specific project where a key vendor delivery slipped. I explained how I flagged the risk early in our weekly status review, reset expectations with stakeholders, re-sequenced dependent tasks, and brought the timeline back within an acceptable range by negotiating a partial early delivery.
standard 1st round digital interview, they are asking about your experience, background, some behavioural questions and technical questions. and they also share a bit more about the role, culture and expectation
Very self-driven, first of multiple rounds, where I had to take the initiative to arrive at the problem, constraints, approach, solutions, tradeoffs and reasoning behind it in a matter of 30 minutes.