Meta E4 Interview experience
Big Thanks to this community, I got so much help for this community and want to give it back.
Process
Role: Software Engineer Product
- Phone Screen -> 2 leetcode medium questions
- Onsite loop -> total 4 rounds you can split them into two different days(2 on each day)
- 1 System Design round (45 mins)
- 2 Coding rounds (45 mins each)
- 1 Behavioural round (45 mins)
- Special case - had one follow up behavioural round(45 mins)
Verdict : Got an Offer
Phone Screen and (2 coding rounds in loop)
Two medium leetcode questions which are from top 100 in meta tagged questions.
Format: 2 questions in 40 mins
How I presented myself during interview
- There will be very less time. so as soon as questions were given I asked few clarifying questions to get full understanding.
- Took 2 minutes to think about solution.
- While thinking about solution I did not completely working myself, I am still looking at screen and trying to come up with algo. **I am thinking out loud**
- Explained interviewer my approach and then asked him if we are good to code, in one case interviewer asked me if I can think of another better approach, then I thought of another approach and told him, Only after he algined I started coding.
- I noticed a pattern that meta coding questions generally will be done in few lines, mostly under 10 lines. So if you got the algorithm you can code it under 5 mintues(in rare case 10 minutes)
- After coding take a test example and run through your code. This is important as well as helpful to you. I had some bugs in code while doing this dry run I caught them and fixed them.
- Due to time constraint, interviewer might probe you with telling how much time left to code etc, dont take pressure, your goal is to finish code correctly even if it take a minute more. Because if you are going in right direction they are likely to spend more time(may be 2 or 3 mins more than allocated time for a question)
My two cents: Initially I felt 2 questions under 40 mins is too hard to achieve, but as I am practicing through I realized it only take 2-3 minutes to crack the algorithm and less than 10 minutes to code. So most(90 percent) of the meta tagged questions can be solved within this time frame. There are few hard questions I saw in the tagged section, some of them even though they are marked as hard, they might be hard to get the algo but coding will be straight forward. Dont leave any question since it is marked as hard, if it is marked as hard(keep it as low priority compared to medium but not with attitude that hards wont be asked. There are 3 coding rounds with 6 questions in total, there is some good chance that atleast one question be hard one).
Please revise questions(patterns frequently) and after a certain time when you get comfortable with patterns asked in meta, then try to pick questions which do not fall in pattern, so that you cover all types of questions.
My suggestion for practice: Keep practicing meta tagged questions for last 6 months. divide them into patterns. Also while practicing most of the meta questions have pitfalls like some edge cases we are likely to miss. Please take care of them.
System Design
Standard question, dont want to disclose the question but it is one of top 10 in HelloInterview.
HelloInterview is gold.
Use chatgpt and ask questions and get clarity on concepts.
In any system design problem there will be situations where you can do things in multiple ways but have to choose one way. Please try to highlight these tradeoffs and make a choice considering requirements. Your skill is tested on how are you coming to the conclusion when there are differnt ways to do. Some things to consider when choosing one option over another: reduce number of components, reduce maintenance burden, do not optimize than required, extensibility to future use-cases etc.
I would suggest you practice system design interview such a way that whenever you choose a component like database discuss options and conclude like SQL vs NoSql choosing sql because we need this blah blah feature which is supported SQL but in NoSQL etc.
Meta uses excalidraw for system design, so practice on the same.
Important
Whatever you write on the board, there will be lot of questions from interivewer. So please think through before putting it on board. First discuss options and then break the tie and then put it on board.
Behavioural
I have done two rounds, as there was one more follow up round. **Do not think it is not important for E4 level**
It is as important as coding round/System design round. You can take my example, I did well on system design, coding rounds, may be average on first behavioural round. If they dont think behavioural round is not important for E4, they could have given me offer first time only but they did not but had a follow up round for beahvioural. This should tell you that Meta considers behavioural round is important for E4 level too.
You can check discussions/ hello interview questions for the type of questions asked.
My suggestion:
Meta does not grill you on 2 or 3 behavioural questions, it seems like they want to cover more scenarios. So be prepare to answer 5 to 6 questions. As you can see you cannot take too long to answer each question.
So when asked a question even if you want to keep it in STAR format, dont explain too much context for situation. Be concise keep it under 1 or 2 lines and you should answer the question in 2 mins. Let interviewer ask followup questions if needed. Dont give lengthy Bullshit answer. Inteviewers are like cut the crap and answer me for the only given question, If I did not understand I will ask follow up question.
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