Google Software Developer interview questions

There was initial generic HR interview of the question and answer type. Then two 1:1 phone interviews of about an hour each. Then a day on site full of 5 one on one interviews, each also about an hour, asking difficult technical questions, but thankfully none of the hard logic puzzles and riddles that they were rumored to use. The on site interviews included a lot of grilling on basic skills, data structures (both existing ones, and having to create my own to meet an examples problem), performance scaling, networking, and I forget what else. Interviewers were helpful. They encouraged you to talk out what you were trying to do. No one was hostile. I would describe all 7 (2 by phone, 5 in person) one on one interviews as rather fun. The accommodations were nice. The cafeteria's were very nice. Everyone was tremendously friendly. I really liked the town as well. The only criticism I would offer is that the time after each interview to hear news and find out what the next step was seemed very long. Over all the process was thorough, but it felt a little drawn out.

It started out with an email from a google recruiter. She was very responsive and helpful in terms of trying to get me prepared for the interview. On the day of the interview she went through her previous interviews and tried to give some sample questions that were given to other interviewees. When it came time for the interview, I received an online google document and the interviewer posted up the question:"How would you write a sort routine to ensure that identical elements in the input are maximally spread in the output?" I worked through the problem and he asked the BigO notation for every solution that I had.