I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta in Mar 2012
Interview
The recruiter first emailed me to confirm a time for a telephone call. The call from recruiter was not for interview, she just told me their hiring and interview process, gave some basic suggestions for interview and finally confirmed a time for the first phone interview. After the first phone interview I got the second phone interview in one week and stopped here.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a m*n grid starting from (1, 1). At any point (x, y), you has two choices for the next move:
1) move to (x+y, y);
2) move to (x, y+x);
From point (1, 1), how to move to (m, n) in least moves? (or there's no such a path)
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.
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.
