I’ve applied to Google since my freshman year of college for the past 3 years, during that time I’ve interned twice at FAANG companies and gotten an internship at a T1 quant firm as a SWE, yet I’ve never even gotten an OA from Google. I deadass have no idea wtf I’m supposed to do to even get an interview.

If you are a 10x engineer can you avoid being laid off. I am asking because layoffs are becoming rampant and I am afraid I am next.

Been putting 100% at work but I feel I can do more and devote myself to work and try and be one of those 10x engineers.

Before people say work isn’t everything. Unfortunately for me it is I depend on it to live and will do everything I can in my power not to lose it.

I’m not sure if this is just a matter of intelligence, but I’ve been trying to solve LeetCode problems repeatedly, and I still feel like I’m stuck at the beginning. I really struggle with it, even though I’ve seen the questions before and understood them most of the time. I tend to freeze and ask for help, which isn’t ideal, but I’m trying my best. I’m not sure if I should consider changing careers because of this. I love coding, building projects, and all that, but when LeetCode comes up, I just get so defeated. Any help would be great because that’s the only thing I’m worried about for these internship applications. I GENUINELY DONT KNOW WTF TO DO AMYMORE
PS : I’m a junior in college

R1: everything went extremely well. Got asked heap question with mutiple follow ups (sorting, heap, bucket sort). Also got a leetcode hard follow up but answered that too with a deque. This round went perfect 0 hints were asked and interviewer liked me a lot. All time complexity and space complexity was perfect and we finished with enough time to converse for 10-15 min. We even went over the 45 minutes just to talk (ended up being an hourish)

R2: I got the weirdest strings question. Interviewer first made me figure out logic for a second example given a first example but was very empty with it, like no help at all. After figuring out after 10 minutes, I came up with a verbal working solution. Although in the coding I definitely had some bugs in the dry runs in the beginning but fixed them in the end. In the end my code ran perfectly but there was no time for follow ups. I also messed up time complexity as it shouldve been o(nm) but i did o(n^2). I could tell the vibes were off in this one from the beginning.

A week after, I got rejection email today, not even round 3 which im so shocked about. Good luck to everyone out there

Is this an auto OA or is it a good sign I got it? 😭

I genuinely felt both interviews went really well. Solved the coding problems, passed all test cases, explained complexities correctly, and received positive feedback from both interviewers along the way. Vibes were good overall and felt very confident.

What confuses me is how quickly I was rejected and that the email was a generic rejection template identical to one I received for another Microsoft role where I didn’t even get an OA.

For my previous Microsoft interview, I received a rejection after about 2–3 days, followed by a recruiter email explicitly confirming the interview results.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Is it normal to receive a generic rejection this quickly after final rounds

I’m a sophomore studying CS, and I genuinely don’t wanna do it. I already have a position at a startup for the summer, and I haven’t even taken a DSA course yet. I’m self-learning it right now, but I can barely implement solutions independently without hints. Seeing all the horror stories on here doesn’t help either. I’m in a constant state of anxiety over these interviews, and it genuinely feels like I’m counting down the days until doomsday. It’s stressing me out so much more than it should, especially during exam season when I already have enough on my plate. I keep telling myself that if I fail, I’ll be in the exact same position I was in before anyway, but then there’s the possibility that I could actually intern at Google if I sacrificed my grades and academic performance for the next three weeks to prepare. The problem is that doing so would bleed into finals season, and I really don’t want to bomb my exams and tank my GPA just for a chance at an internship when I already have something lined up. The worst part is that I feel like I’d regret not trying, but the thought of spending the next three weeks in this constant state of stress and anxiety, preparing for interviews I don’t even feel remotely ready for, is genuinely miserable. I genuinely don’t know what to do. Part of me wants to just withdraw and be done with it, but another part of me feels like I’d be throwing away an opportunity I might never get again.

I just got my OA for NVIDIA Ignite Summer 2027 (sophomore). I have basically done zero LeetCode and was wondering what types of questions have popped up in the past for people who have cleared the OA.

Considering Ignite is a program for freshman/sophomores, I'm a little surprised NVIDIA is still pushing out an OA for us to do...

Anyways, any tips or sample questions would be incredibly helpful!

Hey guys posting this here to maybe get some opinions on it,

I just completed both technical interviews for Google, the first one I was able to solve the problem and it was kind of a mix of LRU Cache and a leetcode medium graph problem. The interviewer and I had a discussion afterwards and he seemed satisfied with my solution, I also didn’t use too many hints.

The second interview was a leetcode hard+ equivalent, the optimal solution as I found out after was O(n2^n) using bitmask dynamic programming. I was able to code most of my implementation of an algorithm but wasn’t able to finish coding which was O(4^n) the interviewer admitted that he didn’t expect me to solve it optimally and that my implementation would have worked albeit the code was a bit messy. He also mentioned he just wanted to see how I would approach a difficult problem. I think I really hit it off with him.

Do you think I might make it to team matching?

Round 1

Interviewer was super friendly. Asked me a dfs heap question maked as a real world product implementation. I was able to get a working solution very quick. I explained the approach well , asked good clarifying questions ( according to him) and correctly gave the complexity

He asked me if the space could be optimized and I was able to do that as well.

He then asked me a 2nd follow up saying it was bonus and most people don’t get that far but I was able to comfortably solve that as well.

Overall I’d say this went very well

Round 2:
This is where I’m nervous about.
The interviewer was very cold and just pasted the question. Id say the question was a medium hard/ hard graph level because the graph nature wasn’t obvious at first I started forming an idea and explained to him. He said it made sense. Started implementing the solution but got stuck at a place , he pointed out some flaws in my logic code wise and asked me to clarify all his doubts. As I did those I figured how to solve the problem optimally.

He pointed out another coding error which I fixed but the solution I reached was optional and he said it “looked good” . I was able to correctly identify the time and space completely.
(He had a very cold nature and a thick accent so this was not a good experience at all😭)

So r1 went as well as it could solved all follow ups
R2 needed help and made a few mistakes but got the optimal solution .

What do you think my chances are of team matching or 3rd interview or could I just be rejected directly

Did the OA the day I got it on Sep 18th (passed all test cases with about 2 mins left), and got the location hirevue on Sep 21st. I put my first choice as Charlotte, and for context, I'm from the midwest. Are they reaching out to closer candidates first or something or is it wraps

I'm a freshman for reference.

My first interview i had a sweeping problem I lowkey did not get to a code solution 😭but I like sorta got to a pseudo code and I communicated rly well and I think the interviewer fw me hella. At the end he gave me about 5 mins for questions.

2nd interview I solved the problem like in 20 min and we js kept optimizing , and it was good overall. Same as above, I got about 7-8 min for questions.

Both of them did note that it was impressive that I'm a freshman, but idk, is there a chance at a third interview??

Hey everyone! I have my Google SWE intern interviews this Friday and I'm looking to get a couple of mock interviews in before then.

Is anyone available today or tomorrow for a 45-minute DSA mock? Happy to return the favor and interview you as well.

Feel free to DM me if you're down!

I recently took my first technical interview (R1) and it was with a T1 quant firm as for trading. I was asked possibly the easiest questions possible (like AP Stats level 😭). Outside of an interview I probably could have solved these questions in under 10 seconds but I just wasn't able to talk or think at all. The first question I was asked, I kinda intuitively knew the solution and still decided to start explaining it by going from the opposite direction and not making progress that way. The interviewer hinted me through it too and basically gave me the answer and I still wasn't able to verbalize it. Nothing else to really say here, but they were pretty much 1 line answer questions and I'm just really disappointed in myself. Just wasn't able to think or speak properly the entire interview. Just wanted to vent a little bit.

when hosts look for intern candidates, how do they filter for candidates? is it keyword match on resume directly, or is it based on the skills / interests we list on the preference form?

So I am a CC transfer to umich. This was my first semester and I have heard terrible things about how way more rigors their cs program is. ppl tend to retake data structures which i did an easier version at cc. Also i am not declared cs until i pass those and their requrie a C or higher to pass. If i go to uiuc:

Pros

• Stronger CS-specific reputation: UIUC has a slight edge in CS depth and technical recruiting.
• CS + Economics ( i really want a dual degree): Good combination for AI, data science, fintech, and tech business roles.
• I am instate for urbana so i save 15k per year in costs and have way more friends there
• at umich i currently need to cram 9-10 core cs classes to graduate vs only 4 at urbana and i really wanna have an econ major

Cons

• Credit-transfer risk: Some credits might not satisfy specific degree requirements so I basically wasted a semester but i can still graduate on equal time as here.
• Recruiting isn't guaranteed: UMich already has excellent tech recruiting and alumni connections.

Any advice is appreciated. Whether i lose more gain more. specially for networking and future goals

Hi, I just had my interviews yesterday, and I was wondering what the chances are of Round 3 or straight to TM? I don't think it was an outright rejection.

Round 1: This was good; I got the optimal solution and the follow-up question

Round 2: This is where I am a little bit nervous. I got the optimal solution after needing a hint; I also miscalculated the time complexity for the brute-force solution. I was wondering if these stack up too much and would result in a 3rd round?

So I'm in the final interview loop for the IBM spring 2027 co op position. I'm thinking of graduating early and won't be able to do the co op since I won't be a student. Is it possible to ask to be considered for FT position or somehow convert an offer into a full time role?

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello! I just had Google swe intern r1, but I don't know if I did well or not. Interview gave me a problem saying it was "doable", and I proceeded to ask clarifying questions and thinking for like half the interview (not typical leetcode question). I think I managed to solve it, going through dry run and also a little edge cases (and thought it looked good), but my interviewer didn't even say anything if it was correct or not and just says okay, then moved on to time complexity and we were finished finished.

I am really worried that I failed my r1 and have no hope for tm, but let me know what everyone thinks

Applied to Amazon Sep 17th.

Completed OA for Microsoft Oct 1st.

Applied to Meta Oct 6th.

Haven't heard anything back from any. Am I cooked?

Scheduled 45min technical interview for IBM SDE intern (different locations) but got cancelled a few hours later. Has this happened to anyone else? What could this mean?

Hi all, I recently just got virtual final round 3h interview for CoreAI new grad recently out of no where. It seems to be a system design, a standard coding, and an AI assisted coding round. Does anyone have any recommendation on how to prep for system design & AI assisted coding round? Thanks!

Hey everyone, I have an interview coming up for the IBM Site Reliability Engineer Intern role (OneIT, Poughkeepsie NY) for summer 2027. It's a 45-minute interview.

For anyone who has interviewed for this role (or IBM SRE intern roles in general):

• Is the interview purely technical, or is there a behavioral mix too?
• What technical topics come up? Linux, networking, Docker/Kubernetes, monitoring, troubleshooting scenarios?
• Is there any live coding, or is it more discussion based?
• Anything specific about the OneIT team in Poughkeepsie I should know?

Any experience or advice would help a lot. Thanks!

Anyone do Visa final round swe intern or have it upcomin? How hard is it to

Hi everyone, I just finished my third Google interview today!

Overall, the question was pretty easy, and we wrapped everything up within 25 minutes. The interviewer seemed satisfied with my solution and said he had no further questions.

We basically spent another 10 minutes on Q&A and ended the interview about 10–15 minutes early.

What do you guys think the verdict will be? TM or rejection?