I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Meta in Mar 2026
Interview
I recently interviewed for a Software Engineer role. While the technical interviewers were professional, the recruiting process was one of the most inefficient and deceptive experiences I’ve encountered in the industry.
1. Misleading and "Ghost-Rejection" Emailing Style:
Two days after the full loop interview, the recruiter sent an email titled "Thank You for Your Time Today!" filled with overly enthusiastic language ("huge thank you," "enthusiasm," "here for you every step of the way"). For any experienced candidate, this reads like a "soft" rejection template, yet it was served to tell me to wait for their result. It felt like a deliberate attempt to manipulate the candidate’s expectations rather than providing a clear, professional status update.
2. Pointless Sync Call for a 30-Second Rejection:
Despite having the result ready by Friday, the recruiter insisted on scheduling a formal "sync call" on the following Tuesday morning. I had to adjust my own work schedule and book a private room at my current office, only for the recruiter to spend 30 seconds reading a standard rejection script.
When I provided feedback that this information could—and should—have been handled via email to respect everyone's time, the recruiter doubled down, claiming they wanted to "show gratitude." There is no gratitude in wasting a candidate’s productive working hours for an update that fits in two sentences.
3. The Outcome:
After all this "high-touch" (read: high-friction) communication, it ended in a standard 12-month cool-off period.
Advice to Management
Efficiency is a core value at Meta, but it is clearly missing in the recruiting department. Stop forcing "sync calls" for rejections. It is not "personal"; it is disruptive. If you have a decision on Friday, send the email on Friday. Respect the candidates’ working hours and their professional time.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard leetcode style question, with AI available in one interview
Unexpectedly, the first question in the technical round felt familiar. It was about finding a subset of strings with unique character concatenation — same problem I had worked through on PracHub a few days earlier. The interview included a recruiter screen followed by a rigorous pair of technical interviews where I tackled data structures and algorithms alongside system design concepts. After successfully answering a few more challenging DSA questions, I received an offer. The entire experience was intense but ultimately rewarding, and I happily accepted the position.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an array of strings, pick a subset whose concatenation contains no duplicate characters, and return the maximum possible length of that concatenation.
Standard cookie cutter interview with a coding interview, a system design interview and culture interview. The coding part is basically leetcode. The system design is what you can find on many youtube videos. The culture one is more tricky as they want to see that you fit Meta's culture, not that you were doing great at your existing company. So skills like dealing with conflict without calling in managers is sought after.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
coding: I forgot, sorry
system design: design ticketmaster
culture: talk about past project; when you disagreed with a peer; how I resolved dissagreements, etc.
The interview felt more straightforward than I anticipated for a well-known tech giant. After a recruiter screen, I faced a technical round that included a DSA question about finding the lowest common ancestor in a binary tree. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized the exact problem had popped up in the algorithm practice section on PracHub during my prep. Ultimately, the experience was decent, but I chose to decline the offer as it didn’t align with my current goals.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a binary tree, find the lowest common ancestor of two given nodes in the tree.
