Anecdotally, last year I did loops with Netflix and Google and was incredibly impressed by how they were conducted.
The coding questions at both places were not anything I had seen before (despite studying on leetcode), however none of them needed any esoteric tricks or algorithms. Recursion, loops, hashmaps, lists, etc was all that was needed to pass the coding portions.
I'd say the questions would be considered 'hard' on leetcode, but still only needing fundamental understanding of DS&A. And I was given about 40 minutes.
I also had some coding rounds that were 100% practical stuff. Basic 'data munging' kind of stuff. It was non trivial but again nothing weird or funky.
System design rounds were practical and engaging and fun.
I think the template is pretty solid, it's just most places have poor implementation (and from what I've heard, it's very possible to roll poorly at Google and get someone who asks a super weird or challenging question).
When I first started studying for interviews, I would absolutely panic with someone watching me, I could barely do a proper for loop. But after enough practice it became fine.
Overall the interviews were challenging but NOT what I was expecting, I thought they did a good job of asking unseen questions that tested coding fundamentals.
The coding questions at both places were not anything I had seen before (despite studying on leetcode), however none of them needed any esoteric tricks or algorithms. Recursion, loops, hashmaps, lists, etc was all that was needed to pass the coding portions.
I'd say the questions would be considered 'hard' on leetcode, but still only needing fundamental understanding of DS&A. And I was given about 40 minutes.
I also had some coding rounds that were 100% practical stuff. Basic 'data munging' kind of stuff. It was non trivial but again nothing weird or funky.
System design rounds were practical and engaging and fun.
I think the template is pretty solid, it's just most places have poor implementation (and from what I've heard, it's very possible to roll poorly at Google and get someone who asks a super weird or challenging question).
When I first started studying for interviews, I would absolutely panic with someone watching me, I could barely do a proper for loop. But after enough practice it became fine.
Overall the interviews were challenging but NOT what I was expecting, I thought they did a good job of asking unseen questions that tested coding fundamentals.