Overall, I found this to be a very challenging experience. I struggled with the majority of the material and concepts presented, which made it difficult to keep up at times. Many of the problems required a deep understanding of the underlying principles and strong problem-solving skills, particularly in areas related to algorithms and data structures.
In hindsight, I would highly recommend dedicating significant time to studying LeetCode (LC) and Logic Puzzles (LP) in advance. Practicing these types of problems regularly would definitely help build the intuition and technical foundation needed to approach the questions more effectively. With better preparation and familiarity, especially in algorithmic thinking and pattern recognition, I believe the experience would be much more manageable and rewarding.
In summary, while it was a tough challenge, it also highlighted key areas for improvement and emphasized the importance of consistent practice.
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.
Standard cookie cutter interview with a coding interview, a system design interview and culture interview. The coding part is basically leetcode. The system design is what you can find on many youtube videos. The culture one is more tricky as they want to see that you fit Meta's culture, not that you were doing great at your existing company. So skills like dealing with conflict without calling in managers is sought after.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
coding: I forgot, sorry
system design: design ticketmaster
culture: talk about past project; when you disagreed with a peer; how I resolved dissagreements, etc.
The interview felt more straightforward than I anticipated for a well-known tech giant. After a recruiter screen, I faced a technical round that included a DSA question about finding the lowest common ancestor in a binary tree. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized the exact problem had popped up in the algorithm practice section on PracHub during my prep. Ultimately, the experience was decent, but I chose to decline the offer as it didn’t align with my current goals.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a binary tree, find the lowest common ancestor of two given nodes in the tree.
