I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Meta in Sep 2013
Interview
Recruiter contacted on LinkedIn. Set up phone screen for a few days later, which consisted of basic behavioral questions and some technical questions (basically questions passed to the recruiters by engineering to weed out super weak candidates). Then a technical phone screen with an engineer. First a basic coding question. Second question was a weird one. It was basically a language specific question related to how to modify the default behavior of a certain class. I spent the rest and a long portion of the interview trying to understand what exactly needed to be done and couldn't come up with a solution at all. Then I asked the interviewer how what he was asking could be achieved and he told me about a similar class that would provide that capability. Since I had no idea about that class (and there's really no reason for anyone to know it off top of their heads), I wasted a lot of time trying to solve something that I could have never solved. This was akin to a trick question and obviously very flawed to ask to a software engineer to assess any analytical skills whatsoever. Then chit chatted with the engineer about Facebook but it was obvious that neither side wanted to engage in anymore conversation. Got a rejection email from the recruiter I believe a couple days later.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A seemingly analytical coding question which couldn't be solved at all if you didn't know a certain class.
Took about a month altogether, which felt longer given the intensity of the process. Kicked off with a technical screening, followed by two rigorous coding interviews. The DSA question on binary tree vertical order traversal hit me hard at first, but then I recognized the prompt instantly — I had just worked through something similar on PracHub. The final round was focused on system design, and while I ended up receiving an offer, I ultimately declined it. Overall, a challenging experience that definitely sharpened my skills.
Overall, the process took a little over two weeks, which felt a bit longer than I anticipated. After a quick screening, I went through two technical rounds focusing on coding and DSA concepts. One of the questions was a classic palindrome check; mid-way through, I realized it was something I had practiced on PracHub just days earlier. The final step was a casual behavioral interview. I was relieved to get an offer shortly after, which I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a string, determine if it is a valid palindrome considering only alphanumeric characters and ignoring case.
I applied online. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA)
Interview
It's honestly striaght from leetcode tagged
There are no surprises if you do tagged you would be good and do well.
System design is much harder. Would recommend using hello interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design Twitter and consider if it was suddenly an extremely low latency env