Master Google Interview Prep: The Ultimate Roadmap from an AWS Expert

A web engineer who started in 1997, John Washam, wrote a comprehensive learning and interview guide as his personal plan to become a Google software engineer.

After several jobs he became an AWS Technical Specialist in 2017, and his tutorial has earned nearly 100k stars on GitHub.

The guide has now been fully translated into Chinese, so anyone can use it to strengthen their knowledge even without a Google interview opportunity.

Why Write This Tutorial

Washam, who has no computer‑science degree, has been passionate about computers since childhood and has worked on web and server development.

Although he succeeded in switching careers, he still wanted to work at Google to deeply understand systems, algorithm efficiency, data‑structure performance, low‑level languages and their inner workings.

He collected various computer‑science resources and employee‑shared materials, organizing them systematically.

He stresses that aspiring Google engineers should not underestimate themselves; even Google engineers sometimes feel insecure about their intelligence.

Learning Resources

Follow Washam’s steps:

Choose a programming language commonly used at Google (C++, Java, Python; sometimes JavaScript or Ruby). Supporting technologies like SQL and HTML are also useful.

Study computer hardware fundamentals.

Master core computer‑science mathematics: algorithm complexity (Big‑O), data structures, trees, sorting, graph theory.

Learn recursion, dynamic programming, combinatorics, probability, NP‑complete problems, caching, threads and processes, system design, scalability, and data processing.

Use flashcards (including code snippets) to review concepts; the project’s homepage provides source code for creating them.

Refer to the ASCII table, OSI stack, Big‑O cheat sheets, and other quick reference sheets included in the repository.

Read seminal papers published by Google and recommended books on algorithms and C++ programming.

What to Watch for in Google Interviews

A strong résumé is the first step; tech blogger Steve Yagge offers ten tips for crafting one.

Prepare answers for about 20 common interview questions, with 2‑3 story‑based responses each, and be ready to ask insightful questions of the interviewers.

Washam also suggests additional knowledge such as Emacs/Vim, Unix command‑line tools, and cryptography to boost efficiency, even if not directly tested.

Portal

Resource link: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university/blob/master/translations/README-cn.md