Realize though, the unfortunate result of the way this is implemented results in an interview process that ends up being perceived as quite coarse and unfeeling, and seems to filter on often capricious tests of algorithmic knowledge; Some highlights in my personal experience, writing an RB tree, and "write a regex to capture the comments in code;" simply put I never felt that my experience was even slightly under consideration. I realize the typical response from a Googler (including my friends there now) is that these things specific instances are disallowed/not recommended, and I trust they're not lying with those statements, but for whatever reason _those did happen some years back_, and I continue to hear similar attestations both here and at work.
Feel free to write off all of my frustration as a selfish fear that I won't be able to pass these gates in N years with the heavy focus on algorithms-under-pressure; it's certainly hit and miss now, and I'm open that I've been both accepted and rejected at all the places I've worked to call out how much of a crapshoot this process seems to be.
I fully acknowledge that an org of G's size has needed to make certain tradeoffs/processes, but that has tradeoffs for candidates, which can be hair-pulling when we do/have done isomorphic work at a high level.
(I should probably disclaimer that MSFTie, I have nothing particularly against G in this and all opinions are my own, but highly algorithmic interviews are a topic I've always been selfishly unsettled about)
