Google Frontend Interview Mid Level

Interview Experience
1

Education: Bachelors (B.S. Computer Science, USC)
Years of Experience (YOE): 4

Questions Asked:

  1. Merge Intervals
    • Example 1
    Input: intervals = [[1,3],[2,6],[8,10],[15,18]]
    Output: [[1,6],[8,10],[15,18]]
    Explanation: [1,3] and [2,6] overlap → merged to [1,6].

    • Example 2
    Input: intervals = [[1,4],[4,5]]
    Output: [[1,5]]
    Explanation: End of first == start of second → merge.

  2. Implement a debounce utility from scratch in plain JavaScript.
    – Follow-up: discuss trade-offs vs. throttle and how to unit-test timing-based code.

  3. React rendering performance: given a 10 k-row list, outline two ways to reduce initial paint time (e.g., code-splitting, virtualization).

  4. Behavioral: “Tell me about a decision you made that was unpopular with your team and how you handled push-back.”

Context: 45-minute Google Meet with an L5 engineer. ~25 min coding (shared Google Doc), 10 min front-end performance chat, 10 min behavioral. Interviewer emphasized verbalizing edge-case checks and writing self-tests.