The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Meta in Jan 2011
Interview
The interviewer was very friendly, and we chatted some after he introduced himself and his projects.
He asked me to design and implement algorithms that correct typos, offering guidance, encouragement, and confirmation along the way. It felt really good to voice my thoughts along the way, and it helped him to know what I'm thinking.
He asked a few follow-up questions afterwords about my code (which I think he made up on the spot). I answered and we agreed on the answers.
Next, he presented a scenario that we formed a web startup featuring that code at its core. So then we discussed how to use more memory and less CPU, and how to scale up the company.
At the end I asked him his thought about fb and what he did before working there.
The experience was very fun.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design and implement an algorithm that would correct typos: for example, if an extra letter is added, what would you do?
Got a referral through a friend who worked at Meta, which sped up the entire process. After a casual initial chat, I went through a technical interview where I faced a DSA question about validating palindromes. The interviewer was friendly but rigorous. During prep, I had spent time with the coding challenges on PracHub, and it was funny to see a similar palindrome question pop up. Overall, I received an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it after careful consideration.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a string s, return true if it can be a palindrome after deleting at most one character (Valid Palindrome II).
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
