I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (San Jose, CA) in Sep 2010
Interview
1st round HR screening
2nd round coding online
3rd round coding online
The 1st and 2nd rounds are great. However, the 3rd one is terrible since the guy on the other end of phone is keeping silent and provided little feedback during the whole process.
Basically I think they are more interested in find the people who can do tricky programs in a very short period of time while keeping solid code and clean coding style.
The HR is very fast in turnaround, though the final decision is kind of be kept back for a while, but if you ask they will let you know. Anyway, this is the first company I got interview so maybe it is just too difficult for a rookie interviewee.
BTW, I though Chinese engineers tend to be more silent in interview, which is sort of "rude" to the interviewee since there is not much conversation in such case.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a matrix print it clockwise from the first element to the very inner element.
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.
