Google Software Developer Intern Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timing: Between 3-5 pm we could take the test anytime
The test environment was hackerrank. Great user interface and I did not suffer anyt problems.
There was no interviewer as it was coding test. 
There were 2 coding questions asked.

Q1. 
Subset OR Problem Statement
You are given an array/list ARR of N positive integers. Your task is to determine the size of the smallest subset that achieves the maximum possible OR value among all subsets.
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Ans. 
Find the size of the smallest subset with maximum OR value among all subsets of an array of positive integers.
• Iterate through all possible subsets of the array

• Calculate the OR value for each subset

• Track the size of the smallest subset with maximum OR value
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Q2. 
Wildcard Queries Problem Statement
Given a dictionary D with N words, each of a fixed length L and consisting only of lowercase English alphabets, answer Q queries. Each query consists of a word W of the ...read more
Ans. 
Given a dictionary and queries with wildcard characters, determine how many words in the dictionary can match each query.
• Iterate through each query and dictionary word to check for matches

• Replace '?' with all possible lowercase letters and compare with dictionary words

• Count the number of matches for each query
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Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Timing was late at night ie 9:30 PM for this round.
The environment was nice. It was on Google meet.
The interviewer was very friendly and explained the question well

Q1. 
Rat in a Maze Problem Statement
You need to determine all possible paths for a rat starting at position (0, 0) in a square maze to reach its destination at (N-1, N-1). The maze is represented as an N*N ma...read more
Ans. 
Find all possible paths for a rat in a maze to reach its destination, given a matrix representation of the maze.
• Use backtracking to explore all possible paths from the starting position to the destination.

• Keep track of the current path and explore all possible directions at each step.

• Terminate the exploration when reaching the destination and add the path to the result list.

• Sort the result list of paths in alphabetical
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Q2. 
BFS Traversal in a Graph
Given an undirected and disconnected graph G(V, E) where V vertices are numbered from 0 to V-1, and E represents edges, your task is to output the BFS traversal starting from the ...read more
Ans. 
BFS traversal of an undirected and disconnected graph starting from vertex 0.
• Implement BFS algorithm to traverse the graph starting from vertex 0.

• Use a queue to keep track of visited nodes and their neighbors.

• Ensure to print the nodes in numerical sort order when multiple neighbors are present.

• Handle disconnected components by checking for unvisited nodes.

• Output the BFS traversal sequence for each test case in a separa
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Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timing : Evening

Q1. 
Distance Between Two Nodes in a Binary Tree
Given a binary tree and the values of two distinct nodes, determine the distance between these two nodes in the tree. The distance is defined as the minimum num...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the distance between two nodes in a binary tree.
• Traverse the tree to find the paths from the root to each node

• Find the lowest common ancestor of the two nodes

• Calculate the distance by adding the distances from the LCA to each node

• Return -1 if either node is not present in the tree
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Q2. 
Delete Leaf Nodes with Value X
Given a binary tree where each node contains an integer value, and an integer X, your task is to delete all leaf nodes that have the value X. Continue to remove newly formed...read more
Ans. 
Delete all leaf nodes with value X in a binary tree until no such leaves exist.
• Traverse the tree in postorder fashion to delete leaf nodes with value X

• Recursively call the function on left and right subtrees

• Update the root of the tree after removing leaf nodes with value X
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Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timing : 10:00 pm

Q1. 
Maximum Sum Path from Leaf to Root Problem
You are tasked with finding the path from a leaf node to the root node in a binary tree, such that this path has the maximum sum among all root-to-leaf paths.
I...read more
Ans. 
Find the path from a leaf node to the root node in a binary tree with the maximum sum.
• Traverse the binary tree from leaf to root while keeping track of the sum along the path.

• Compare the sums of all root-to-leaf paths and return the path with the maximum sum.

• Use recursion to traverse the tree efficiently and update the sum as you go.

• Consider edge cases like null nodes and negative values in the tree.
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Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timimg : 11:00 pm

Q1. 
Ninja and the Bulbs Challenge
Ninja owns an electronic shop and possesses 'N' bulbs. To verify the quality of the bulbs, Ninja performs a unique technique. After 'N' rounds of this process, bulbs that rem...read more
Ans. 
Determine the number of good quality bulbs remaining after 'N' rounds of a unique technique.
• In each round, bulbs are toggled based on their position (e.g. every second bulb, every third bulb, etc.)

• At the end of 'N' rounds, count the bulbs that remain on to determine the number of good quality bulbs.

• Example: For N = 4, bulbs 1 and 4 remain on, so the output is 2.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timing : Evening
Online : No webcam proctoring

Q1. 
Count Distinct Bitwise OR of All Subarrays
Given an array of positive integers, determine the number of distinct values obtained by applying the bitwise OR operation on all possible subarrays.
Explanatio...read more
Ans. 
Count distinct values obtained by applying bitwise OR operation on all possible subarrays of an array of positive integers.
• Use a set to store distinct values obtained by bitwise OR operation on all subarrays.

• Iterate through all subarrays efficiently to calculate distinct values.

• Optimize the solution to handle large input sizes efficiently.
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Q2. 
Problem: Search In Rotated Sorted Array
Given a sorted array that has been rotated clockwise by an unknown amount, you need to answer Q queries. Each query is represented by an integer Q[i], and you must ...read more
Ans. 
Search for integers in a rotated sorted array efficiently using binary search.
• Use binary search to efficiently find the index of each query integer in the rotated sorted array.

• Handle the rotation of the array by finding the pivot point first.

• Check which half of the array the query integer falls into based on the pivot point.

• Return the index of the query integer if found, else return -1.
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Round duration - 45+45= 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

2 rounds of interview of 45 minutes each
Was scheduled late at night: 9 pm(Interviewers were from USA)
Through Google meet and google online code platform
One interviewer per session

Q1. 
Count Palindrome Words in a String
Given a string 'S' consisting of words, your task is to determine the number of palindrome words within 'S'. A word is considered a palindrome if it reads the same backw...read more
Ans. 
Count the number of palindrome words in a given string.
• Split the string into words using whitespace as delimiter.

• Check each word if it is a palindrome by comparing it with its reverse.

• Increment a counter for each palindrome word found.

• Output the final count of palindrome words for each test case.
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Q2. 
House Robber Problem Statement
Mr. X is a professional robber with a plan to rob houses arranged in a circular street. Each house has a certain amount of money hidden, separated by a security system that ...read more
Ans. 
House Robber problem - determine maximum amount of money to rob without triggering alarm in circular arrangement of houses.
• Use dynamic programming to keep track of maximum money robbed at each house.

• Consider two cases: robbing the first house and not robbing the first house.

• Handle circular arrangement by considering the first and last house separately.

• Example: For arr[] = {2, 3, 2}, the output is 3. Mr. X robs house 2.

• ...read more
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The test was held at 3:00 P.M on Hackerearth and we were provided separate Login IDS and Passwords for the same.
There were 2 coding questions .

Q1. 
Hotel Room Booking Problem
You are managing a hotel with 10 floors numbered from 0 to 9. Each floor contains 26 rooms labeled from A to Z. You will receive a sequence of strings representing room bookings...read more
Ans. 
Given a sequence of room bookings and freeings, find the room that is booked the most times.
• Create a hashmap to store the count of each room booking.

• Iterate through the sequence of bookings and freeings, updating the count in the hashmap.

• Find the room with the highest count and return it. In case of a tie, return the lexicographically smaller room.

• Example: For input n = 6, Arr[] = {"+1A", "+3E", "-1A", "+4F", "+1A", "-
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Q2. 
Maximum Time Problem Statement
You are given a string that represents time in the format hh:mm. Some of the digits are blank (represented by ‘?’). Your task is to fill in ‘?’ such that the time represente...read more
Ans. 
Given a string representing time with some digits as '?', fill in '?' to get maximum time.
• Iterate through each digit of the input string and replace '?' with the maximum possible digit based on the position.

• For the first digit (hours), if it is '?', replace it with '2' if the second digit is also '?', else replace it with '1'.

• For the second digit (hours), if it is '?', replace it with '3' if the first digit is '2', els...read more
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Round duration - 45 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round was held on Google Meet at 10:00 A.M and there were 2 interviewers.
They were friendly and helped whenever we got stuck.

Q1. 
Count Ways to Reach the N-th Stair Problem Statement
You are provided with a number of stairs, and initially, you are located at the 0th stair. You need to reach the Nth stair, and you can climb one or tw...read more
Ans. 
The problem involves finding the number of distinct ways to climb N stairs by taking 1 or 2 steps at a time.
• Use dynamic programming to solve the problem efficiently.

• The number of ways to reach the Nth stair is the sum of the number of ways to reach the (N-1)th stair and the (N-2)th stair.

• Handle base cases for N=0 and N=1 separately.

• Consider using modulo operation to avoid overflow for large values of N.
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