I want to know if anyone knows someone or themselves have been selected in Google India without doing a lot of competitive programming and preparing only from leetcode and other resources.
Is a strong competitive programming background needed to get into the likes of Google if yes up to what level it is needed (i.e required rating on codeforces / CodeChef etc)?
Talking mainly in the context of off-campus opportunities here.
YES, there are a lot of people who cracked companies like Google without doing CP at all.
And NO, it’s not a necessity that you’ve to be very good at CP in order to get into Google (or any company for that matter). The companies only test your problem solving skills in the form of Data Structures and Algorithms. During an interview there’s zero to very less chance that you’ll be asked a question from Segment tree or Matrix exponentiation which are widely used in competitive programming.
But there’s a small chance that you may get such questions in the preliminary coding rounds conducted by many companies. But to clear the interview you need to be very good at DSA which one can definitely learn from sites like LeetCode and GFG.
So yes, you need to know CP at some good level (actually depends on the company) to clear the initial coding round. But CP won’t be a necessity in the further rounds. A lot of people do CP just to improve their problem solving skills as that’s what is being tested by these companies.
So to develop problem solving skills, you can go with any track.
- To ace the initial coding round - do CP
- To ace the further rounds in interview - do LeetCode.
Hope you got clarity. Happy coding. 
But One think that I strongly believe that if you want to learn DSA, CP is a very good to practice as it polishes your problem solving skills. And companies like Google takes an initial online coding test where they give questions on CP. I gave one and it asked questions based on FFT and was no where near the questions present in Leetcode or GFG. So, CP is the best thing as you can learn things 20 times more than without it.
But it is write that your CP profile is not needed until you are asking for referrals, where some recruiters prefer to see the background of coding you are coming from so to make sure they are not wasting their time.
Wow FFT, that’s one good interview. Can you tell which company asked for it? I’ll be definitely surprised if it wasn’t CodeNation. And also it’ll be pretty useful if you can share the question or its variant atleast.
Short and clear: Yes, you need Cp to get into Google(atleast in India)
It was Google.
Refer this thread for more
But sometimes a recruiter reaches out to candidates and in that case, there won’t be any initial coding sample as the interview process starts with a phone screen directly.
For that, I don’t think CP is necessary. Correct me if I am wrong.
Thanks a lot. That’s a relief!!
Yeh that’s true … but as I know we have to apply to let the recruiter know that you are interested …especially such cases happen when you go for some referral … If you know someone then their is no headache but if you try to get a referral without knowing the person then they might try to look out for your resume and try to estimate your problem solving skills that time your cp skills might play a vital role.
And sometimes luck also matters like sometimes in interview they ask probability type of questions or dp with trees.
Anyway, I will suggest to do whatever you feel like and enjoy programming that is important than anything else
Well, I did mention that you’d need CP for the initial coding round. I just said these may not be asked in a phone interview or a face to face interview. But anyways thanks for sharing.
I know many expert, specialist level people getting into Google India.
That’s true.
During an interview there’s zero to very less chance that you’ll be asked a question from Segment tree or Matrix exponentiation which are widely used in competitive programming.
Google asked me Matrix Exponentiation Today. Hence this is not a norm. I would say practice a lot of problems on these topics too. I didn’t and I under-performed. 
