I averaged somewhere between one and two interviews per week during my 4 years with Google. Google has (or at least had) more applicants than they can shake a

I averaged somewhere between one and two interviews per week during my 4 years with Google. Google has (or at least had) more applicants than they can shake a stick at. They have the choice between smart people who can look up things on the Internet but aren't interested enough to memorize the basics, and smart people who are interested enough in the subject matter to have the basics memorized (or at least are smart enough to put on a good show of loving the subject matter). Maybe having the basics memorized isn't necessary for the job, but it's a good signal that you're not a zombie banging out code without really being interested or thinking critically about what you're doing. It's not a perfect signal, but it's still a useful signal. Everyone knows you need to know your basic data structures for a Google interview. If you don't know your data structures, cram for a week or two before your interview. The basic data structures are just the basic starting point for the data structures interview questions. The interviewer needs to know you know the basic data structures before they start throwing curveballs at you to see how you think about and solve hard data structures problems. The people who think they're too smart or too cool for the basic data structures questions are just going to drown, so if they bomb the basic data structures questions, the interviewer justs moves on and pretends that was where the question ended. There's no sense in frustrating the interviewee and making the whole company look mean and forcing the interviewee to answer questions they lack the background knowledge to begin solving. On top of that, if you can't even be bothered to cram some basic data structures for an interview, you're not going to fit in well at Google. I also asked some constrained bin packing questions, related to scheduling distributed computations in a cluster and placing files in a distributed filesystem, but I'd simplify the problem a bit and make up some slightly silly story about kids selling candy or something. The simplification and the non-computer back story helps reduce the amount of assumed specialized knowledge, and keeps people from over-thinking the thing, thinking it's a trick question, or otherwise running off into the weeds. Silly stories really do help people accept the simplified problem and not get lost thinking they're supposed to be thinking outside the box. If you ask a question about networking, people will suggest reducing the number of intermediate switches or maybe even swapping the network media with something with a higher signal propagation velocity. Rephrase it as kids playing Pokemon with cards, and they're moere likely to notice that O(N^2) network traffic can be reduced to O(Log(N)). Some people just thought some problem involving candy or trading cards instead of computers was beneath them and silly, obviously missing that the underlying problem had real implications for computing at massive scales. If they got upset about the problem, I just let it go, since arguing with them or making them feel dumb by pointing out the isomorphism would just rile them up for their next interviewer. I usually genuinely hoped they'd do better with the next interviewer. Good engineers are hard to find, and if I'm the only person they rubbed the wrong way, they're unlikely to be working with me anyway. If you notice how the simplified silly problem is probably related to a real problem the interviewer has had to solve, it's probably best to make a nonchalant comment. "Oh, so it looks like a constrained bin packing problem, maybe with applications in distributed storage or distributed process scheduling, or something like that. Let's see, you said the Hershey Bars can't be kept near dogs, so let me think about the heuristic of allocating them first. They're each $X and Y Calories, so ..." If you think an interview question is silly, make sure you hide that opinion well from the interviewer. You're likely missing something, especially if your interviewer appears otherwise bright.