I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Phoenix, AZ) in Feb 2015
Interview
I applied through a referral, 1 Skype interview (2 were scheduled but I didn't make it past the first one). The interviewer briefly introduced himself and asked me a coding question straight away. I chose to use Java. No behavioral questions, just 1 coding question. Contrary to what most people have said, I got an interviewer who wasn't very friendly. He was there to do his job. Plain and simple.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Before I get to the question I just want to say that the interviewer had a very thick accent (I'm an international candidate, BTW), and that made it really difficult for me to understand what he wanted me to do. This isn't me being bitter. I'm saying this so that I present a very honest opinion about my interview.
That being said, the question wasn't something that can be found online or in most books, I was given 2 functions String recv() and String ReadLine() [ both these DO NOT take arguments]. recv() generates some string (Example:"123\n45\n6789"). ReadLine() should read the string being returned by recv() and print all characters until the first \n. After that it should read the recv() string again and print the next characters until the 2nd \n.
Example: recv(): "123\n45\n6789"
ReadLine(): "123" //first call of ReadLine
ReadLine(): "45" // second call of ReadLine
However, the next sequence now doesn't have a \n. So, once the end of the string is hit, the ReadLine() function must call recv() again, and append all characters until it reads a \n.
Continuing the above example: ReadLine():6789abcde //Third call of ReadLine
recv():"abc"// still no \n...so you must call recv() again
recv():"de\n"
The commented sections are my explanations (the interviewer didn't give any such things). I've explained the problem as clearly as I can. Unfortunately, the interviewer kept overwriting his examples, and (I have to emphasize this) his accent made it really hard to understand just what he wanted out of this program.
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
