I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta
Interview
I got the opportunity through internal referral.
I passed an technical phone screening and was invited to an on-site. I had 5 interviews in total. Two coding, two system design, one with manager (on PhD research + a quick coding exercise).
The technical questions were not too difficult, but I was unprepared for the system design problems. One of the interviewers kept walking around in the room and was really distracting and annoying. I couldn't focus on solving the problem and didn't do well in that session.
The interviewing schedule was not the best. I was scheduled to have lunch at 2pm PST, but considering I'm from a couple time zones east of PST, I was already way too hungry to have lunch at that time. Perhaps a low blood sugar level also contributed to my impaired thinking abilities.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Signed NDA. Distributed system design problems were out of my expectation as I do not claim any experience in that area nor was I interviewing with any positions related to that area.
Generic LeetCode-style questions, many tagged as Meta, so extensive preparation is required to perform well in the technical interview. The experience varies significantly - some interviewers provide hints and guidance, while others expect candidates to solve problems independently with minimal assistance.
Spoke with interviewer over video conferencing. He was very communicative . He answered my questions. Asked me BFS question. A question that involved BFS search. Given a matrix, I am suppose to find a path from top left to down right.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A question that involved BFS search. Given a matrix, I am suppose to find a path from top left to down right.
The technical round hit me with a classic array manipulation problem: moving zeroes to the end without disrupting the order of non-zero elements. As I tackled it, I felt a wave of familiarity wash over me; I had just practiced a similar challenge on PracHub. The rest of the interview followed a straightforward path, with some easy behavioral questions sprinkled in. Overall, it felt very easy, but I wasn’t quite the right fit for what they needed, so I didn’t receive an offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Move zeroes in an array to the end while keeping non-zero element order, in place