I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Oct 2013
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter for the security team through email about a few openings on the security team. I said, I would like to know more. After a number of email exchanges to set up a time, another recruiter emailed me and told me someone would call me at the scheduled time. The first recruiter mentioned that I will be using the tool on collabedit.com. So far, I was not told what position I was actually interviewing for or whether I was setting up a time for a general interview or whether they were giving me more details! I did apply to a few different roles on their site so I wasn't sure what was up.
Turns out first phone call was with hiring manager and I was getting interviewed for a software engineer position. Hiring manager asked if I was told what positions were available and I said no and he was glad to explain for me. I told the manager I was hoping for a security engineering job, not software engineering. He told me I might be a better fit for a different team and he will tell the other manager I was interested and I will hear from him. I asked if there was a opening on that team and he said they are always hiring new talent. I took that as a good sign. I didn't actually get asked to code during the phone interview. I followed up with the recruiters asking where to proceed and whether I could interview with the manager on the other team and they said they will get back to me.
I waited and got no emails setting up another interview. I asked what's going on and have not heard back. It's been 10 days. I guess I have been dropped?
I am disappointed at the lack of communication and lack of detail from the recruiters. I guess this is common with big companies.
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Other Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Meta
Got a referral through a friend who worked at Meta, which sped up the entire process. After a casual initial chat, I went through a technical interview where I faced a DSA question about validating palindromes. The interviewer was friendly but rigorous. During prep, I had spent time with the coding challenges on PracHub, and it was funny to see a similar palindrome question pop up. Overall, I received an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it after careful consideration.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a string s, return true if it can be a palindrome after deleting at most one character (Valid Palindrome II).
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