I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Mar 2014
Interview
Was contacted by a recruiter. Set up a phone interview; had weird telephone problems, couldn't understand my interviewer very well. Did some general algorithm questions in Python that were well-suited to a phone interview, but wasn't pleased with my performance overall.
Recruiter contacted me back to do a second phone screen - said there "wasn't enough of a signal" the first time. Apparently this is not common. Second phone screen had problems with the collaborative edit software we used for coding - I had to stop, copy, and repaste my code several times for some reason. Again, the questions were well-suited to the format of the interview. Thought I did better but no better than an average performance, probably.
No offer, the whole process took about a month (but I intentionally delayed the phone screen for personal reasons).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was asked the 3-sum problem. Basically, given an array of integers, find three that sum to a given value. Alternately, find all triplets that sum to the given value.
Took about a month from start to finish, which felt longer than I expected. After a couple of initial phone screenings, I faced a challenging technical round focused on system design. It was during this round that I was asked to describe overcoming a major career challenge. Interestingly, I had just reviewed a similar framework on PracHub, which helped me articulate my thoughts clearly. Overall, I appreciated the depth of the process and ended up accepting the offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe Overcoming a Major Challenge in Your Career
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.
