I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Seattle, WA) in Jun 2015
Interview
I've applied through an employee referral and got a ping from the recruiter in about a week. After the initial chat with the recruiter to chat about FB, my interests and logistics, I got scheduled for the initial 45-minute screening. I was given two options for the screen, either phone/codeshare or an onsite visit (likely an option available for local candidates only). I chose the in-person option, and got an invite for a round of full day (5 total) within few hours after the initial screen.
Facebook recruiters send interview prep materials to the candidates on what to expect, what to brush up on, as well as some suggestions tailored to a particular candidate's weak-ish spots (in my case it was the speed of coding). I knew what to expect going in and felt well prepared on this front.
Initial screen was algorithm + coding. Nothing overly challenging.
Onsite consisted of 5 interviews (+ informal lunch) covering:
1) One "Jedi" interview with a hiring manager testing behavior / culture fit + warm-up coding. Prepare to talk about past experience, career goals, as well as several "tell me about the time when..." questions.
2) One "Pirate" interview: System design portion of the interview. There are great resources on Quora on suggestions on how to prepare and what to pay attention too.
3) Three "Ninja" interviews focusing on algorithm + coding. I actually have seen all of the questions I got asked at Facebook before, but that did not help me as ultimately the reason for rejection was cited as not being able to come up with optimal solutions and code fast enough.
Got an phone call from the recruiter in about a week+few days after the interview telling me the unfortunate news. I think I had to wait few extra days because of the July holidays and typically the process is faster.
Culture: I did find some of the junior Facebook engineers conducting my interview a bit arrogant and cocky, but nothing too alarming.
All in all, I had a positive interview experience. I wish the interview loop was better tailored towards someone more senior, e.g. less emphasis on coding, more on design. Current interview process makes it seem they hire code monkeys.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I can't discuss specifics due to NDA, but interview questions were neither overly difficult nor tricky. Check careercup and brush up on algorithms (string processing, binary trees, graphs, etc.). Practice coding fast (which potentially means forgetting good software engineering practices such as class design, refactoring as it will only slow you down).
Establish rapport with your interviewer, remember to ask clarifying questions, talk through your thinking process and solutions and you'll do well. Hopefully better than me:)
Best of luck!
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
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.