Google New Grad Full Loop Rejection: Live Message Queue, Filesystem Sizes, and Gravity Intervals

Role: Software Engineer, New Grad
Result: Rejected after the onsite
Report time: July 2025
Application: Applied online

The candidate applied in April, completed the phone screen in late May, and completed four onsite rounds in mid-June. The final decision arrived about two weeks later.

Coding round 1: live message queue

Design classes and methods for a real-time message queue.

Follow-ups asked to:

1. Keep only messages from the latest n seconds.
2. Remove duplicate messages appearing within the latest n seconds in real time.

The candidate used a HashMap from timestamp to message but felt the second requirement had not been clarified completely. The source does not define accepted versus rejected events, duplicate identity, or deletion semantics, so no deterministic practice link is asserted.

Coding round 2: dynamic filesystem sizes

Given a directory, compute the total size of all descendant files and subdirectories. The follow-up added dynamic insertion: adding a file should update every ancestor directory's size.

Practice: Filesystem Entity Total Size

Behavioral round

The remembered scenarios emphasized leadership.

Coding round 4: planet gravity ranges

A series of planets had gravity ranges, and the task asked how a spacecraft could travel without being affected. The candidate recognized an interval-merging core, but the source does not preserve interval representation, output, or the safe-region rule.

Recruiter feedback was generally positive but said algorithmic performance needed improvement. The candidate believed the incomplete duplicate-message follow-up was the main weak signal.