I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Jun 2016
Interview
First call with recruiter went well and after a few days they told me that I am being invited for an onsite interview with a single interviewer (instead of the phone screen). That interview went well and I was selected for the 2nd "pirate interview". They gave me enough material about what those interviews will be like and how to prepare for them. Everything good so far. I go for the 2nd interviews and I thought I did really well in the interviews. The only gotcha was that I had a lunch with an "interviewer" and that lunch took too long and it shortened the time I had available for my next coding interview. Unfortunately that lack of time resulted in me doing not so well in the coding interview (i.e. not being able to come up with a good working and efficient program) and apparently that resulted into it being a "no go" for me. :-(
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design the Google search bar that prompts you with suggestions as you type in it. These suggestions are not personalized but based on most popular queries in the past by all Google users. e.g. as you type "Fac" in the search bar the drop down prompts you with "Facebook" or "Facts about Great Britain" and so on based on recent most popular queries. Once designed, optimize this based on feedback from the interviewer (e.g. most users don't see the suggestions within 3 seconds and Google management is complaining about the lack of performance. How will you debug and fix it?)
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
