Google SDE VO: Passed Both Rounds (Behavioral + Locker System)

Overview

• Role: SDE
• Rounds: behavioral + coding, 45 minutes each
• Result: passed both rounds ✅

It started with a self-introduction, followed by a few behavioral questions. The questions were classic but really tested the fundamentals.

Round 1: Behavioral

1. How do you handle disagreements within your team?
2. Tell me about a cross-team project you led or were deeply involved in.
3. Tell me about a time you proactively found and fixed a system performance bottleneck.

Round 2: Coding — locker system

Problem: design a locker system with "store" and "retrieve" operations. After assigning a locker to a customer, return the number of the most recently assigned locker.

Approach:

• Keep free lockers in a min-heap so the lowest number is assigned first.
• Use a hash map to bind each user to a locker.
• Keep an extra variable with the last assigned locker number.
• When a customer returns a locker, push its number back into the heap for reuse.

Operation	Time complexity
Store (assign a locker)	O(log n)
Retrieve (return a locker)	O(log n)
Query the last assigned locker	O(1)