I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Mar 2013
Interview
I was contacted by the recruiter who found me via graph search, and was asked whether I was job hunting. I chose to go onsite for the initial phone screen. The question was straightforward with emphasis on fast and accurate coding, and the interviewer was very knowledgeable.
A few days after the screen the recruiter scheduled an on-site with me, and the dates were quite flexible. The on-site consisted of four interviews, 3 pure coding (of which one is about design) and 1 research interview (I guess this is for all PhD applicants). I was quite happy with the coding ones but the research one was, well, a little annoying since the interviewer seemed to be dismissive to everything. But overall, it was a nice experience, two interviews plus lunch + tour around plus two in the afternoon, and it was done!
I did wait for 3 weeks till the decision was make, and during the period the HR seems to be a little nonresponsive. When I followed up what I received was something like a one line email saying "we are reviewing your case and will come back to you soon". This was a little annoying especially the feeling of being silently rejected started to grow, but I guess it is not the HR's fault anyway.
In the end I was offered a job with flexible titles - software engineer or research scientist or whatever. I decided not to take the offer in the end, but the interview process was very smooth.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Signed NDA, so maybe it's not OK to disclose the questions... It was standard coding questions, not those hard ones at leetcode, but you need to make sure not to make silly mistakes. Missing a few semicolons is file, though.
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.
