Google SDE Firmware New Grad VO: Manager, Peer, and Reporting Queries

Role: Embedded Systems / Firmware Engineer, New Grad
Result: Rejected
Interview time: January 2026

The candidate described this as the most difficult interview from the previous six months.

Technical VO: organization relationships

Implement three operations:

1. manager(a, b): record that a is the manager of b.
2. peer(a, b): record that a and b have the same manager.
3. is_manager(a, b): return whether a is a manager of b.

The report does not preserve examples, the input encoding, return values for update calls, a cycle policy, or whether “manager” means only the direct manager or any manager in the reporting chain.

Practice: Direct Manager and Peer Queries

Behavioral VO

A less familiar question asked how the candidate would handle peer pressure when a teammate usually contributes very little but says the candidate's high effort makes them feel pressured.