> But as an aside: is it really typical for someone to prepare this hard for an interview, even if it is for a dream company? If so, then something seems to be

> But as an aside: is it really typical for someone to prepare this hard for an interview, even if it is for a dream company? If so, then something seems to be clearly broken with the interview process. My idea of a superstar candidate is not someone who memorizes possible questions and answers, but simply someone who is really really good at what he does. The problem is that the google process tests how good a computer scientist you are. Irrespective of how good you are with the fundamentals, the fact of the matter is that is most software engineering jobs don't necessarily involve that much algorithmic knowledge and essentially are all about glueing complicated systems together. Irrespective of how much practice you have gotten in the past, practice for an interview is unfortunately essential. The process is broken and people just believe that copying the Google process will help which really doesn't. (I am not disagreeing with you that the person did seem more intense than usual but the again what is intense for me might not be intense for him: Who am I to judge?)