Software Engineer · Phone Screen · Coding

Google — Software Engineer

Level: Mid-Level

Round: Phone Screen · Type: Coding · Difficulty: 7/10 · Duration: 60 min · Interviewer: Unfriendly

Topics: Algorithms, Data Structures

Location: Mountain View, CA

Interview date: 2026-01-15

Summary

I was asked a variation of the Meeting Rooms problem, where time cycles daily. I needed to determine the number of meeting rooms required, followed by a question on optimizing the solution for a large number of meetings.

Details

The coding question I received was related to the Meeting Rooms problem:

Problem: Given a set of meeting times within a single day, determine the minimum number of meeting rooms required. The times cycle daily, meaning the range is within 24 hours.

Follow-up: How to optimize the solution if the number of meetings is very large?

My Approach:

Initially, I approached the problem by sorting the meeting times by start time and then iterating through the meetings to check for overlaps. For the optimization follow-up, I considered using a more efficient data structure like a priority queue or segment tree to manage the meeting times and reduce the time complexity.

Key Insights:

• Understanding the daily cycle constraint is important for accurate calculation.
• Optimization might involve different data structures depending on the scale of the input.