If you have ever applied to tech jobs you must be familiar that the process is fairly common, You visit the company's website look for a job that best fits your interests and skills, and apply there. If the employer finds your profile is a match they will most likely reach out to you with a coding assessment. This is also true for the tech giant Google. But they also have a "secret" way of hiring developers around the world, It is called the Foobar Hiring Challenge. I heard about this challenge for the first time sometime back during my undergrad(at least 3 years ago). But never really researched about it, until I experienced it myself last week. There is no official info from Google regarding this but only from folks who have shared their experiences on the internet.
So for those who are hearing about this challenge for the first time, this is what I could collect from the internet and based on my experience regarding this challenge as of Oct 2023.
Google Foobar is a secret hiring process that Google uses to hire developers from around the world. The challenge is designed to evaluate and recruit potential engineers for Google. This challenge is unlocked to folks who have been searching some specific coding related terms on Google
This happened last week, on a bright Sunday morning when I was studying a topic for school and I did a regular Google search, the term was "Genetic Algorithm" and as the search executed, My Google Search results Page collapsed flat backward and I was taken to this black screen with a shell-like interface and I couldn't believe it for a minute.
The web URL looked genuine and to confirm again I did another Google search just to see what exactly is the foobar challenge and the search results convinced me that I actually landed on the Foobar challenge. I didn't waste a lot of time and I signed in with Google to ensure the invite doesn't get lost.
Now it was about giving my best, I had tried Google's coding challenges like Codejam, during my undergrad and gave up because they were too tough for me to solve, and I was convinced I was not there yet to even compete. But now since the challenge showed up itself, I tried to give it a shot and I was prepared to give up again because I still have that notion that the Google coding challenges are extremely difficult to solve.
So now I have this unix-like shell on my screen, so seeing this black screen I know what needs to be done, ask for "help"
and with this information, we exactly know what needs to be done to request a new problem using the command request, running this command a new directory was mounted at the root changing into that directory I was presented with the first coding challenge. As I said even at this point I was prepared that this question would be extremely difficult and I would give up again, But to my surprise the question was pretty easy and I think I was able to solve it in less than half an hour.
Solving the first challenge would present you with a bunny jumping across the screen. So to summarize this challenge
- Google Foobar is an invite-only challenge.
- The challenge consists of five levels of algorithms 9 problems in total that can be completed in either Python or Java. Level 1 & 5 has one problem each, Level 2 & 4 has two problems each, and Level 3 has three problems
- The first two levels are relatively easy, but the difficulty increases as the levels progress.
- Each challenge needs to be completed within 168 hours (7 days)
- After completing level 3, players are asked if they're interested in hearing from a Google recruiter. Those who clear the challenge are offered direct interviews for positions that match their qualifications.
After hearing some experiences from folks on the internet it seems completing these challenges does not guarantee an interview with Google, But regardless the challenges are definitely fun to solve per se.
I am currently in the midst of these challenges, If you would like to read more about what were the exact problems? And How I solved them stay tuned for my upcoming blog post.
Edit: I have published a continuation of this blog post where I shared the challenges from foobar and the approach I used to solve them.
Happy Coding!