Google 26NG VO was tortured crazily? ｜Two rounds of real question analysis + data structure design + BQ high-frequency question analysis

this scene Google 26ng VO, the overall rhythm is "typical Google style" - technology is not involved, communication is extremely important, and every step depends on how you think and express. My biggest feeling from these two rounds of our students is:
Google rarely wants to see "how well you write" but very much wants to hear "what you think."

Google 26ng VO Interview Overview

This time Google 26ng’s VO has two rounds in total. The overall pace is fast but controllable. The first round is the classic "data structure + scenario design" - the question itself is not complicated, but the interviewer attaches great importance to how you clearly state your assumptions, how you make trade-offs, and how you guide the conversation. With the assistance of ProgramHelp's VO, the students explained their thoughts clearly at each step, and the interviewer kept up with the rhythm from beginning to end, and the effect was very stable. The second round is pure BQ, with regular questions, but Google pays more attention to whether your story is true, reflective, and logical. We helped the students sort out a few experiences that best represent their work style in advance, and they performed very naturally on the spot. Overall, this VO belongs to the type where "the quality of expression determines the upper limit". As long as the rhythm is controlled, Google can play smoothly in the two rounds.

Round 1: Data structure design

The interviewer was a white uncle with a very gentle attitude.
As soon as he finished introducing himself, he started the topic directly:

"Let's design a restaurant waitlist: add people, delete people, and serve when there are empty tables."

The question itself is not difficult, but what Google pays most attention to is you - how you frame the question, how you align your assumptions with the interviewer, and how you explain your choices.

At first, the students briefly thought about entering the plan directly, but I immediately reminded them through VO assistance: "First make the assumptions clear and tighten the boundaries."

He immediately adjusted it and the effect was very good:

Explain the scope as soon as you open your mouth

We're talking about "single restaurants"
Each party is party_id + size + arrive_time + priority
The table is not dismantled by default
There will be concurrency and data consistency needs to be considered

The interviewer was obviously relaxed at that time, knowing that the scope of our discussion was clear and clean.

The data structure part also uses the most stable solution we have tutored.

Doubly linked list + hashmap, all operations O(1).

Added: tail insertion + map record reference
Deleting people: map to find nodes + O(1) unlink
serve: Find the first group of people who can sit from the head of the team
VIP: Multiple queues or priority queues can all be explained.

The students spoke very smoothly because they had simulated it many times before - which sentence to say first, why they did it, and what the interviewer might ask, they all had a good idea of what to say.

We have pre-practiced the concurrency aspect in advance, so the on-site performance is particularly "engineering-like"

He mentioned:

Join/leave/serve may fight
Use fine-grained locking or CAS to guarantee no double-serve
There will be no race between deleting neutral and serve

In this section, the interviewer nodded directly and said "that makes sense".

Tip: At the end, we remind him to take the initiative to "guide the interviewer"

We gently reminded you in VO: "offer options, let the interviewer choose the part you are good at."

So he naturally asked:

"Do you want me to continue writing pseudocode, or expand the concurrency part? I can do either."

The uncle immediately said: "Let’s do pseudo code for serve()."
The rhythm is very smooth.

Round 2: BQ

Google's BQ is not difficult, but if the story is not polished, it will look very dry and templated.
This round we mainly did two things:

Help him put his experience into “human terms” without being too STAR-y.
Help him add "reflection + dimensionality enhancement" to key points, which is Google's favorite

Questions include:

How to deal with conflicts among colleagues
What should you do if others slow you down?
Impression of colleagues from bad to good
What to learn from managers
Most proud project

Take "colleague conflict" as an example

He told a real experience, and we helped him make two optimizations in advance:

Make the cause of the conflict clear
It's not about "poor communication", but where the real misunderstanding is.
Make actions more perceptible
For example: how he takes the initiative to do 1:1, align assumptions, and how to break down requirements into a structure that is not easily misunderstood.

This is what he said at the scene:

What exactly is the misunderstanding?
How to take the initiative to date 1:1
How to advance a project after alignment
Finally went online half a day early
And summarized this experience into his subsequent "misunderstanding checking mechanism"

Google interviewers like this kind of "growth texture" answer the most.

I also reminded him in VO: "At the end, increase the dimension and explain the methodology."

Win favor on the spot.
“Later on, I would do a misalignment check at the beginning of every project.”
What he said——

Why did both rounds run so smoothly this time?

Because we did not rely on templates or memorizing answers, but did three things throughout the process:

Let students know in advance what Google wants to hear and what it doesn’t want to hear
(For example, don’t use a lot of jargon, don’t write a screen full of code, and don’t say “I learned that communication is important”)
Real-time reminder of rhythm points in VO
When to clarify, when to summarize, and when to proactively give options.
Polish the student’s original story into a way that “makes the interviewer remember you”
Real, detailed, logical and reflective.

The overall feeling of this last Google VO is:
Stable, smooth, and conversational.
The technical skills are clean, the BQ is sincere, and the whole person looks like a person who can work together.

ProgramHelp Interview Assistance | Turn VO’s uncertainty into certainty

Prepare for VOs such as Google, Meta, TikTok, and NVIDIA. There is a fact that everyone knows but is difficult to say:
The real difficulty is not the question, but the pressure of the scene, the change of rhythm, and the 30 seconds when your brain is stuck.

The role of ProgramHelp is to directly remove this part of uncertainty.

What we provide is a complete real-time voice assistance system:

You listen to the microphone during the interview, and we listen to the questions in the background and give Timely, brief, and unobtrusive reminders
When coding gets stuck, we will give you keywords and directions "within the range of what you can say"
When system design goes astray, we will quickly help you get back on the right path of exploration.
The BQ part helps you control the rhythm and logic without long pauses.
All processes have been polished by hundreds of VO operations and are stable, traceless, and undetectable.

To put it simply:
You talk at the front desk, and we look at the overall situation from the backstage. You just need to play normally and we will make sure you don't fall behind.

It is precisely because of this system that we have successively brought in a large number of students from Google, Meta, Databricks, Roblox, Amazon and so on.
It’s not that most people don’t know how to do the questions, but they just can’t handle the on-the-spot requirements of VO on their own——
What we do is to let you "as long as you are strong enough, you will definitely be able to pass."