Ho presentato la mia candidatura tramite un selezionatore. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Google DeepMind (Londra, Inghilterra) nel mese di lug 2017
Colloquio
Very long and tiring process. First, there were few phone/video interviews with technical questions and general technical quiz. Some of the questions were wikipedia-style (please define X) and didn't have much connection with the job but rather with how much you remember from your university education.
Some people in this stage were assigned by random and were not the people you most likely ever work with. Many questions were asked multiple times by different people. Sometimes even the people interviewing me asked if I already had that question with someone else or not. Compared to software engineering interviews in other companies those questions were very dry and detached from typical software development activities. When I gave detailed answers to questions that were very close to my experience I got impression that the people interviewing me don't understand the answer fully, it's more like a general "knows / doesn't know" assessment.
After that, there was an on-site interview with around 7 people. Questions were varied, some people were technical some were more like managers. A lot of questions asked by managers were strange and had a hidden agenda of judging your approach towards different things without actually asking you about it. This part felt more like a psychotherapy than an interview. I had a very bad impression of those people and the style of not talking to you straight but instead trying to influence you by other means.
The whole on-site process was very tiring and it took almost whole day. It was very hard to keep concentration and smile at the last interview. A lot of people asked again the same questions and expected me to ask (again) questions about the company and the job itself. The structure of it and the reason of meeting all those people also seemed random. The breaks between the interviews were short and they often were lost when an interviewer forgot to finish his part on time.
It was very hard to get clear information about the role. Eventually I felt like the actual day-to-day job may be much much simpler than all this interview process may suggest.
Also, when it comes to cultural fit my personal impression was that they are really aiming to hire people that DREAM about working at DeepMind. Also from the questions asked by the managers it seemed like they don't want great software engineers, that want people that are eager to put the company interest first. This observation and the general impression of cult-like atmosphere made me lost interest in the company after the interview.
Finally, the company is based in central London and that has as much cons as pros, maybe even more cons if you don't like big cities and things that comes with it. The office layout is typical open space with very small desks, it looks packed. People I met on the corridors during the very short tour seemed a mix of detached and smug. The atmosphere didn't seem welcoming.
Right after the interviews I got a positive feedback from them with congratulations. Few days later I got an email that they will not proceed with the final offer with. No detailed reason was given, they just changed their mind.
Ho presentato la mia candidatura online. La procedura ha richiesto 4 settimane. Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Google DeepMind (Londra, Inghilterra) nel mese di ott 2025
Colloquio
I personally had a bad experience. I applied online, then after about 3 weeks I received a message from a recruiter asking me to submit my availability to have a call, this was roughly on a Tuesday. I was also told that I will receive an NDA to sign. I provided availability for 2 full weeks continuously starting the first Monday via the link in the email. The recruiter did not get back to me with scheduling a call or the NDA. On Thursday I sent a follow-up message and the recruiter told me that she is travelling the following week and if I can do the call this Friday or "we can work somthing out". I emailed her that I can do the call on Friday but never got a response. I decided to wait longer thinking that maybe the recruiter is on vacation but heard nothing further for 2 weeks. 2 weeks and I sent another follow-up email but got no response. I then tried applying online again and received an automated email telling me "As you may have noticed, you were recently rejected for this role and we have a cool down period"...which was strange because, no, I did not "notice" I got rejected, because I never got a response after being asked for availability for a call. If this was the recruiter wanting to collect numbers for people screened that are supposed to get rejected, to look in a specific way in stats, bell curves and all, but with the extra skipping on the actual call, this was so not cool. Not what I expected from a company like Google.
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
call from email never got scheduled but was silently placed on rejection list with ban
Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Google DeepMind (Bengaluru)
Colloquio
2 coding rounds leetcode style followed by ML system design round followed by googliness round. 2 coding rounds are standard and team agnostic. System design is team specific, if you have applied to a specific team. Coding rounds are done on coderpad so you execute the code as well.
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
DFS question and greedy question about painting fence with min number of strokes
Ho sostenuto un colloquio presso Google DeepMind (London, ON)
Colloquio
Easy and straightforward. Super friendly people. The interview started with a quick phone screen, then moved on to a few technical rounds with coding and design questions. It wrapped up with a final interview covering soft skills.
Domande di colloquio [1]
Domanda 1
1. Implement a distributed system to process large-scale data efficiently.
2. Design and implement a neural network from scratch in Python.
3. Describe a research paper you implemented.