I applied through university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Palo Alto, CA) in Oct 2012
Interview
After a phone interview from the recruiter, I had a rather easy Skype technical interview (3 algorithmic questions, answered all of them correctly). Within 2 weeks I was informed that I was approved for an onsite interview in Palo Alto HQ. There I had 4 consecutive interviews (Ninja, Pirate, Jedi, Ninja). Ninja interviews require coding in board practice - quite difficult since if you answer correctly in one of them they ask something else. Jedi was related to my PhD. Pirate was the most difficult one as there were no right/wrong answer and questions were related to database design and overall Facebook feature design. The interviewers were very friendly and helpful. In overall, a great experience!
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.
