I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Meta (Seattle, WA) in Mar 2015
Interview
Was contacted by facebook recruiter. I thought I will give it a try. I selected in person tech screen vs phone interview since I think it is much easier to express yourself in person, plus there is whiteboard. Especially, if it is a graph or tree problem, easier to draw on whiteboard.
I had to sign NDA unfortunately, so won't be able to share the exact question. But for a software engineer (not senior), the question was pretty hard to solve in 40 minutes. Backtracking was required and the best solution to the problem is n! (n factorial). So if you haven't heard of the problem before, it is quite likely you will spend time just on finding an optimal solution before jumping to code. That's what I did. However, I was able to code most of the solution and interviewer seemed happy. He himself told me that.
Interviewer was pretty nice. He answered my questions pretty well and seemed down to earth, only thing I am not sure is the choice of question. I was informed that they will not move ahead with the on-site round, which is what I expected.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
NDA signed. But the question involved matrix calculations and required backtracking. Best solution was n!
Recruiter call was pretty standard, first round was 2 Meta tagged LC mediums in 45 minutes. On-site was 2 coding sessions of 2 LC mediums, a system design interview and a behavioral interview with an engineering manager.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you answer if someone asks how long a deliverable or project will take?
The entire process usually takes 3–8 weeks, depending on scheduling and the specific role. Coding interviews heavily emphasize common DSA topics such as arrays, strings, trees, graphs, BFS/DFS, heaps, hash maps, and dynamic programming. System design becomes increasingly important for E4+ positions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an array of integers and a target value, return the indices of two numbers that add up to the target
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.
