I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Oct 2015
Interview
A single day of 4 round technical interviews with the hiring manager asking very tough and technical questions about the role and device that I would be working on. One of the team members of the team I was joining also interviewed me and asked equally challenging but different questions about speaker design, mechanics and electronics involved in the audio hardware. The last two were a product design engineer and a Program manager. There was a lunch session so got to experience the Google food offering before getting started.
After being contacted by a recruiter, I had a phone interview that lasted a little bit more than 45 mins. I passed this stage and waiting for the onsite interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Relatively simple coding questions followed up by compiler-related and system design questions that builds on the original code.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jul 2015
Interview
The recruiter contacted me for a position for a hardware engineer within the Maps program. Although I have done hardware development for years, I stepped out for a few into focusing onto Signal Integrity yet working closely with hardware group. Consequently, I may have been a bit rusty on some specifics, but overall I am fairly comfortable with the process in general.
The first step was a phone screen which led to an on-site interview. Then silence for over two weeks.
Suddenly the recruiter responded that they liked my Signal Integrity experience and would like to have me come in for another round to interview with their Signal Integrity engineers. Another two weeks or so later, I take more time off-work to come in for the second round that went as smoothly as an interview process possibly could.
And then....and after two pings to the recruiter.......silence....
It all took well over 2 months. While I don't have a degree from a fancy school that they would like to see, I am an experienced and creative engineer who's had very unique experience set.
And at the end I never heard from the team.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The onsite interview questions were relatively basic/undergrad level:
- Basic board development process
- Simple state machine question
- An op-amp circuit (a log amplifier)
- Basic time-domain reflectrometry
- Simple serdes functionality
If you are rusty, you'd be caught a bit off guard (like I did in some cases)
A series of signal integrity questions:
- Simple lossless t-line example with 0 ohm source and open end
- Diff via optimization
- Basic stackup design overview
- Equipment checks
And so on