I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Meta (Tampa, FL) in June 2013
Interview
Contacted by recruiter, set up phone interview. Spoke with interviewer and was asked to implement Fibonacci sequence. Knowing that there are several methods of implementing it based on what is important (space, runtime) and what the goal is (for N > large values there's a constant time solution) Interviewer was unable to answer questions on the use and instead just told me to "just write something". I proceeded to implement the algorithm three ways.
I asked a friend there if he knew the interviewer, found out later that the interviewer was reading off a script and that's why he couldn't explain the requirements better.
Several weeks later was told they decided not to continue forward.
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.