Practicing for the Technical Interview for PMs

So you are a PM preparing for the Google technical interview and you are seeking some advice on how to prepare. Here goes:

NEW

Lewis Lin has launched a course. I still haven’t tested it but it can be found here for just under $85.

If you have a little more time, PMHQ also offers a course that has gotten great feedback here but it is just under $300. If you are not a technical PM the extra context might be what helps you win.

Get Engineers to Grill You

1. Find some engineers to help give you Systems Design questions from the attached PDF. Even if the engineers don't totally understand the Google approach, they will have the same sort of mindset as your interviewers as they are engineers. (If you need a few, I can ask a few friends.) The more geeking and awkward your interviewer, the better. Their awkwardness was what threw me off when I did it. Google is an engineer-first company.  

Practice Difficult System Design Questions

Practice the System Design questions that are 'hard' you might get them. 

Also be able to explain how the internet or calling a web address (or this one) might work. 

If you have to do math, think in queries per second. 

Think about current issues

Think about what is going on with the Apple/Google contact tracing app, you might have to talk about how you would approach that. People thinking about current issues might ask you about how that is constructed. Think around data privacy issues too. 

Interview Cake Rocks

I liked the Interview Cake for how they break down the system design question for Ticketmaster. It lets you work on it step by step and work on it without help and not read everything at once. Pay for access to their site for a month, but don't get to bogged down beyond the high-level systems design interview questions. 

Untested but Promising

Only a guess, I didn't use them, but seems viable given what is on the line:

These guys have some tech questions that might help if you scroll down to tech questions: Try Exponent This is a sample of someone who got a PM interview and you can see the sample before paying $79 for access to the whole thing for a month. The guy answering the question has been at Google for a year now. 

Interesting Blog

6. The IGotAnOffer blog isn't bad but I think lately the focus has been more about System Design questions with engineers. I think he should advise working with engineers, not PMs for this one. That is, unless the PMs are ex-engineers.