Google Cloud Platform Interview

On this page you will find some useful tips&hints if you want to nail Google Cloud Platform Interview.

I was interviewed in Frankfurt, Germany in a period from January 2019 to May 2019.

The whole interview was very interesting and I really enjoyed it. I received referral from my colleague for a position Customer Engineer in Google Cloud.

1. Initial contact as per Google referral policy was done in 48 hours after applying. The conversation was very friendly, I didn’t have any tricky “Google like ;)” questions. I received many questions why I want to leave, my motivations to join Google and of course how much do I earn.

2. After the initial interview I received positive feedback and the next round of interviews were scheduled.

3. Second interview started to be typical “Google like”. I had two 45 minutes round of interviews.

   1. First Interview was with a person outside of the Google Cloud and it wasn’t technical interview.

      Interview was very challenging and you had to think outside of the box.

   2. Second interview was two persons but active was only one. Second person was shadowing the interview process.

      This was a technical interview and quite frankly the last technical one in the process. I received many technical Cloud Computing related questions. I didn’t answer few of the questions but still I was successful.

4. Third interview was scheduled onsite in Google location in Frankfurt.

   1. This interview was very exciting. I received a list of several scenarios and I had to create a solution to the scenario. As my background is mainly IaaS I’ve selected IaaS one. Obviously I can’t share the exact scenario with you but what I can tell is that the scenario itself was easy and difficult at the same time. It was very tricky because it you had very limited amount of the information which was done intentionally. It forced you to think on so many aspects of the solution. What decisions affect the solution, what if I change that brick, etc. At the end of the day it took me more than two weeks to create a final solution. Once done I presented it in front of four persons. It was a role play type of interview. One person was CEO, second CTO and so on. You had to present the solution plus defend it. I enjoyed it very much and I did well.
   2. The second interview was as well focused on “googliness”. Google want’s to check if you will simply fit to the Google itself. They check how will you behave in hypothetical situations to assess if colleagues will simply enjoy working with you.

5. I’ve received the information that I did well after that interview and I should wait. Suddenly I’ve got a friendly request to come again to Google office for a discussion with my potential manager. I came onsite and I was prepared for a peer to manager discussion which ended up with another round of interview! I was really pissed because nobody said anything about it. All of the Google recruiters were keep saying this interview will not be scored as this isn’t interview. However, my potential manager really grilled me well there.

6. If you were successful you will receive a notification that you passed the interviews and your application will be send to a panel to review it. Google hire is not a manager decision but a collective one. Simply google to read about it. In my case I never passed it because at the end of the day I took job at Microsoft.

Why would you ask?

This will be a bit longer story. As I was parallel applying with Microsoft I’ve got an offer at the end of the April. Google wasn’t replying with the answer when will I got the offer - they were keep saying. You did well please wait. I kept waiting, I tried to postpone an answer to Microsoft as long as I could.

I managed to postpone answer to Microsoft for three weeks but then I finally had to choose. What was super stupid about Google I was told that due to some internal organizational restructuring they can’t give me final answer.

This was so so stupid and I was extremely angry with them. Google Cloud CEO - Thomas Kurian want’s to attack Azure and they stop hiring because of some fucking changes!?!

Why not hire the person, let the person join and then assign it to a new team or organization? Since in most of the people have notice period this would fit perfectly.

I hope when you will apply for job at Google something like that will not happen and you will have better experience than I had.

At the end of the day I still I would have got it, the questions is when.

Perhaps in a near future?