My Google Interview Experience

I remember it like it was yesterday, end of the 5th semester after a long, strenuous , irksome and mentally grueling semester ( the adjectives are to give the effect) , I was back in my domicile in Hyderabad. Two days into the holidays, I get a call from the HR department of Google Hyderabad asking me whether I was interested in the internship program that I had applied for a few months back. Of course I was interested, then why would I apply ,I thought to myself before answering the receiver with the most innocuous of tones that I could muster, "Yes, yes I am very much interested in the program." , I said to the lady at the other end. "OK Anirudh , we will contact you soon and fix the date and time for the Interview , Bye." CLICK , End of conversation.

The next day the Google Lady (GL)( is kept anonymous and short for obvious reasons) confirms my interview two days from that day. It was supposed to be a telephonic interview but since I was in Hyderabad, instead it would be a personal interview. The initial plans of keeping Google handy when attending the telephone call to search for the answers to any difficult questions were annulled by the fact that it would be a personal interview, on the bright side I may get to see the office and hopefully some young, hardworking and "beautiful" female employees, so I wasn't that bothered about it.

Two days I slogged , mugging whatever I felt was closely related to Computer Science, crammed my brain with difficult algorithms either through understanding or by rote. Read the e-book on "101 Ways to crack an interview", "Interview Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed". Not knowing what the portion is for the test made things a lot more harder.

D-day. With the help of my friend, I reached the office , half an hour before the expected interview time. I saw the familiar Google Logo displayed on every piece of item in the Visitors Lounge, from the Desktops to small mugs, it was everywhere. Then the GL comes and introduces herself. Disappointment, she was old and probably married, something that her cherubic voice over the telephone belied. As I was toured around the office, I noticed that most of the workers were not in formals. I saw pets in the office, people getting bumps, people playing video games. There was not even an ounce of corporate culture in this office, not even an iota of corporate etiquette. It felt like it was just another university dormitory, man how I wish I could work in this office for the summer.
The interviewers come in and at first glance, being a prejudice, I judged them to be someone from a local college in Hyderabad who went through one of those computer language coaching centers and got through the interview, they probably know little and I thought I could work my way around the interview. BIG MISTAKE!!!! As I would find out.

The interview commenced not with the usual "Tell me about yourself" or "Why Google?" or "Why should we select you?", no Google was far too nerdy for those questions it was "What algorithm would you use to solve an anagram problem and how would you make it more efficient by reducing the complexity?". What! what is an anagram solver?, so much for the two page essay on the "Why Google" or the one page essay on "Tell me about yourself" that I so meticulously prepared. As I got down to understand the problem first and then probably look for a solution, I began to hear the continuous clicks of the keyboard, apparently they type each and every single thing that you do in the test and occasionally laugh to disconcert you, some type weird stress test. Something I can't do is that I cannot work when someone is scrutinizing me while I am working, I am fine with working alone, getting the solution and then being scrutinized. So it didn't help with the interviewers one foot away from you, boring with their eyes. Write an anagram solver , what the hell is that...finally I gave a solution , a brute force method, they told me thats not good enough, Can you optimize the solution?. I optimized it . Can you optimize the solution further??...I optimized it. Can you optimize the solution further???.. What ! thats as far as it is algorithmically possible to optimize it I told them, thinking that this was just one of those interview technique to see the candidates thought process. But as I was told later , such a solution existed and worse I fuzzily remember it being taught, thats what you get for sleeping in the class. One by one and one after the other they asked questions which had me confounded. Even the attempts of equivocating the answers to confuse the interviewers, were scotched. Lesson number one, never underestimate the interviewer, Google does not hire fools! Lesson learnt.

I had two rounds of interviews, one and half hours each, where I was thoroughly screwed. I could have given you an analogy to that but then there are sensitive audiences reading this. Finally when it was over, the interviewer says "Any questions you would like to ask?". Yeah ,"Why Me? ", I thought to myself. I asked him "How did I do?", and I could make out a restrained chuckle and then a condescending reply saying "The fact that you play basketball might help."

I hope so too.

Completely dejected by my poor performance in the very first interview of my life, I vented my anger on my bike, riding with such recklessness that I had several close calls, much to the horror of my friend sitting behind. Once I got back home, it wasn't that good either with people asking you "How was the interview?", "How did you do?", trying to make you remember the things that you are so desperately trying to efface. What was worse was the wait, it took them a whole week to send a email that read-

"Dear Anirudh,

We would like to thank you for taking the time to interview with us for an
Engineering Internship opportunity. After carefully reviewing your
experience and qualifications, we have determined that we do not have a
position available which is a strong match at this time.

Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your endeavors
and hope you might consider us again in the future."

One whole week just to tell me that I am not selected, I was livid. But my anger was obliterated when I told my mom what the mail read, "they didn't have a position for my qualifications" and to that she goes,

"Does that mean you are over-qualified?"

Happy "Bumps" Day

Feb 11, 2007


The day started out pretty well. I got up at 10 in the morning with a slight head ace and a sore throat, I had been suffering from fever for the past few days. It was a Sunday and went on like any other Sunday , sleep in the afternoon and the game time in the evening was allocated for mugging and assignment completion (quizzes started the day after tomorrow).

Fast Forward, Time 11 pm .

My friend Tanker comes to my room when I just sat down to read for the Networks quiz on Tuesday. "Kamus birthday tomorrow" he says , " Bring him to Ganga at 11:50 . Tell him there is a cake waiting for him ." Realizing there will be a bumps fest awaiting Kamu and free cake , I was rearing to go. I took great pride in being given the responsibility of making sure he didn't know about it and that he didn't try to escape his impending doom. Little did I know that reality would be a whole lot different that what I pictured it to be.

11:55pm Feb 11

I took Kamu to the 6Th wing of Ganga Hostel where most of the "gult" Junta lived. Chanti comes out of his room welcoming "us" and calls all his wing mates. Apparently its Manjus birthday the same day too. About fifteen guys come out and Chanti says " Julie , You and Kamu READY". Ready ?? Why me? Its Kamus birthday right? Then everything became all too clear. I had gotten Internship in two companies and didn't tell the "Ganga guys" for the fear of getting bumps. Somehow the word got out and the "Ganga guys" who came to know about it were furious that I didn't tell them personally and for that they were going to give me bumps . The irony was, even if I had told them about it, I would have gotten bumps .

12:00 Feb 12

The bump fest started with Manju being lifted by Mechanic and Testis and ten of the other "Ganga guys" which didn't include Chanti "the Camera Guy" , Mechanic and Testis "The Lifters" , Kamu "I am Next" and Me "I wish I was dead" pounding away at "You Know What". The entire wing was filled with Manjus cries of agony and weird thoughts were running through my mind.
Should I run for my life now and risk being caught at a later point of time?? or Endure the pain for a few minutes and get it over with?? or Make a pact with them?.

Then comes Kamu's turn. This time the pounding seemed a little listless, and the cries a little shallow, may be they were tired. Option two it is , get it over with now when they are tired. But as I was later told they were actually saving there energy for me and weren't tired at all ( Bad choice).

12:10 Time Stops, My Turn.

My mind went blank, all thoughts were erased , I began pleading with them , tried to make truce but I was violating the number one rule of getting bumps . For those who are not aware of the rules here are the two and only rules of getting bumps.

First rule of getting bumps is You DO NOT make negotiations.
Second rule of getting bumps is You DO NOT make negotiations.

As expected they didn't heed to my pleas and before I knew it, my feet were off the ground. At 5'10'' , weighing 84 Kgs and possessing an behind that rivals Janet Jackson's, you think you a have pretty good chance of fighting off these guys or at least a good "cushion" for sustaining the pain. But let me tell you this the only advantage I got was there were less number of "active" participants as four people had to lift me. The pounding began , one after the other "the participants" took turns in positioning themselves , sometimes taking a run-up and began kicking away. It was like one of those informal competitions you had with your friends in school, Who can throw this ball the farthest? or something like that , but then it was, Who can kick the hardest ? or Who can inflict the maximum amount of pain? or Lets see who can make him cry?
When the first kick was placed , there was a searing pain through my bottom and I shouted at the top of my lungs. The kicks became harder and shouts louder. The thing that pissed me off was there were some innovative kicks. Kicking with both the legs simultaneously and jumping in the air and kicking were some of the things I could remember during those 5 min apart from the pain. Some of the kicks go off target and hit you in the back or in the thigh region further adding to your agony. To top it all, during birthdays they actually wish you "Happy Birthday" after giving bumps. Once it's over, the pain doesn't end there , your bottom becomes numb initially and then the blood rushes in , that's when the pain really kicks in. You cant walk for a few days and you cant sleep looking at the ceiling.
All in all, it was a good learning experience, lesson learnt -
"Never go to Ganga on your Birthday"

Meat or Wheat??

I was brought up as a vegetarian and coming from a conservative brahmin background I was told not to eat meat, that it was not in my custom and consuming it is a sin. Remember when we were little , when our parents told us not to play cricket or not to do something in the house, but we would still do it when they were not looking ,thats exactly happened to me in IIT, I was not under the observation of my parents , there was no one to stop me, to scrutinize my actions, no one to answer to , so I started tasting non-vegetarian food to the point that my stomach got upset with the sudden change in the diet and I was restricted to the bog for two days.

Then this video comes up in you-tube showing the grotesque killing (killing is never pleasant , except maybe in video game and its not you who's dying) of these animals for food. Victims in concentration camps had a better life than the animals that were raised in mass production for food. That affected me, it changed the way I looked at an egg completely, not as an omelette but as wasted life for what, for food.

But the next natural question cropped up, How is killing a plant different from killing an animal? Well most of the food from plants is obtained as a side product of a plants natural life cycle, trees grow fruits to make birds eat them and spread the seeds, we obtain rice at the final stage of the plants life cycle after which the plant dies, and there is no "pain factor" involved, basically we are not "killing" the plant at any stage to obtain food (removing a limb of a pig is definitely different from removing a branch of a tree).

My friends argued that it was in nature to kill for food, lions have to kill to survive, and so does man. Well they are right, I cant argue the fact that I used to enjoy the chase of a hunt in discovery channel, when a tiger crept up to its prey and lunged for its neck and killed it by suffocating it. But we as humans have a choice animals dont, we were given the gift to search for alternatives, to discover, to adapt, why not in the case of food. I agree people in Antarctica don't have a choice in their meals but most of us have access to vegetarian food which is equally tasty and nutritious if not more than non-vegetarian food. Why kill a poor defenseless animal, when you have an option to eat a vegetable.

To be a vegetarian or not is purely subjective and depends on how one sees the issue. As the great Dumbledore from Harry Potter says "Who we are is not about what we are doing , but its about the choices we make." So make your choice, become a vegetarian :) .