u/GeorgeHadjisavvas

Currently preparing for Google SWE III (L4) interviews and would really appreciate advice from people who recently passed the first coding rounds / onsite loop

Background:

• ~6 years backend experience
• Mostly Golang, distributed systems, APIs, async processing, production systems
• Stronger on practical engineering than competitive programming

So far I’ve focused mostly on:

• Arrays / HashMaps
• Two pointers
• Sliding window
• Stack basics

Right now I’m planning to heavily focus next on:

• Trees
• BFS/DFS
• Graph traversal
• Intervals
• Binary Search

Main questions:

1. If you passed Google L4 recently, what topics/patterns showed up the most?
2. Did you feel medium-level mastery mattered more than grinding hard problems?
3. Was communication + structured thinking as important as people say?
4. Would you recommend rescheduling if preparation time is short, or is interview experience itself valuable even on a first attempt?
5. Any advice specifically for backend engineers transitioning into DSA-style interviews?

Would really appreciate any honest advice or reality checks 🙂