What the Foo-Bar (google) ?
By: Neha Jirafe
Tags: Google, Foobar Challenge, Foobar, Recruiting, Recruitment

Here I am sharing my experience with the famous google foo bar challenge which I have attempted multiple times (directly and indirectly)

For those peeps who don’t know what FooBar is , some say it’s a secret hiring challenge by Google ,but I may not agree to it entirely (again its my personal opinion). From my point of view , it was just a set of challenging coding problems which would get you scratching your head a couple of time and surely improve your coding(optimisation) skills.

The Invitation

I was always curious about the foobar challenge , but I was still a bit shocked when the invitation arrived in my inbox. Initially I thought it was just a spam , but after validating email address and URL , it was indeed an invite from Google.

Alternatively you can also get access to this challenge if some you has passed Level 2 shares the referral code generated with you.

Levels

There are total 5 levels to this challenge , each having different set of questions and time limit to solve it.

Level 1 : “Easy peasy lemon queezy” , This level consists of 1 problem and 48 hrs to solve it. You should be able to cross this one even if you know basic coding

Level 2: “Warming up” , This level consists of 2 problems and 72 hrs to solve each. A bit of programming and a bit of reviewing the elementary education should get you through this one

Level 3: “Party Starts Now” , This level consists of 3 problems and 168 hrs to solve each. This is also where the actual action starts, make sure you are good with your programming optimisation techniques. I would rate these problems somewhere between medium to hard level.

Level 4: “Enjoy the ride” , This level consists of 2 problems and 360 hrs to solve each. I hope by now you would have picked up the momentum and are well prepared to solve the problems Again, would rate these problems somewhere between medium to hard level. Make sure you know your algorithms well

Level 5: Lastly if you have managed to reach up-to this point then this should be “Not so tricky” for you to solve, This level consists of 1problem and 528 hrs to solve

Problem Format :

You are given a hypothetical situation of a rescue mission and all the problems are just building up the story. Every problem will have 2 known test cases and some hidden test cases agains which you can “verify” and “submit” your solution . You must pass all the test cases to be able to submit your solution.

You may choose “JAVA” or “Python” as your coding language.

As of the time I attempted the challenge , foobar relied on Python2 and my code would at times fail incase I used Python3 modules or syntax , unfortunately there were no compiler error messages for me to track the actual problem. Also note you cannot stdout any debug statements.

Using Java was hassel free , since I didn’t try any fancy advanced java syntaxes in my solution.

Does Google really recruit using foobar ?

You get an option to submit your contact details after completing level 3 , alternatively you may also use the “recruitme” option later , however this option is activated only after level 3.

As I said earlier , its not entirely for recruitment purpose, I have known people who have completed all 5 levels and still didn’t receive a call and the others who got a call after level 3. I would say enjoy the challenges and the journey in the hypothetical mission.