[geebee]

I sympathize. My experience was much better than yours - nobody showed up 15 minutes late, and everyone was exceptionally polite. Given how stressful in person, whiteboard exams can be, I'd actually compliment google on how well their interviewers treated me as a candidate. But in the end, I was (as I stated below), surprised with just how much optimized, relatively clean and ready-to-run code I was expected to write at a whiteboard. Writing plenty of code that shows you are capable of doing so, along with outlining a strategy that shows you clearly understand the problem and are working toward a solution? As far as I can tell, that's a no-hire.

One disagreement, I don't think this is purely about remembering algorithms from college. That's a necessary but not sufficient condition. If you can't do the basic binary tree traversal (and so forth) stuff cold, I'd say there's no way you'll pass the exams, because you need to solve more complicated problems that are based on core data structures and algorithms.

Honestly, I have to say I'm pretty damn impressed with people who can do this at the whiteboard. I might be able to get there, with a few months of study, though this would probably require neglecting other aspects of my life and job for a while. The cynical part of me has this vague suspicion that this screening is actually designed to hire only those without these sorts of demands on their life (kids, family, outside interests).