[mdwrigh2]

So, to be fair to Google, I was not once asked anything like the train question nor was I asked to write a binary search in C then to read it out over the phone. I did implement a few things in Google docs, which is kind of ugly, but it wasn't anything ridiculous, and most of the functions were fairly short (20-30 lines).

They did, however, ask a whole bunch of conceptual questions, but I don't think this is all that surprising.

[Lewisham]

I'm an intern right now. Just today I saw Neil Fraser [1], who wrote MobWrite [2]. I shook his hand and thanked him, he's probably one of the reasons I actually managed to pass! My third phone interview had code in MobWrite, not Google Docs, and it was so much better.

I'm going to try to find a way to feed it back to HR, because it really is much easier to think about code when what you're doing looks like code.

[1] http://neil.fraser.name [2] http://www.mobwrite.net

[mdwrigh2]

That's awesome! I'll have to play with this, and suggest it whenever I hear the topic of coding interviews come up.

As a side note, if there's any chance of you being in the bay area this summer (Mtn. View specifically), I'd love to grab lunch with a fellow HNer. I'll be interning at Google starting early May and know a sum total of 0 people out in the area. If you're interested and possibly going to be around, my e-mail is on my profile page.