I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta in Oct 2012
Interview
Was contacted by recruiter through linkedin profile. Had a initial phone interview with collabedit. Was not offered an onsite interview.
Was asked to write a program that would take a filename and a search pattern as arguments and return if the pattern matches the filename. Wildcards * and ? can be used in the pattern.
eg:
1. filename: file.txt pattern: f*txt result pattern matches
2. filename:file.txt pattern:f?le* result: pattern matches
Answer:
bool matchFilename(const string& flname, const string& patter)
{
for (int i=0,j=0;i<flname.length(),j<patter.length();i++,j++)
{
if (patter.at(j)=='*')
{
if (j+1<patter.length())
{
i = flname.find(patter.at(j+1),i+1);
i--;
}
}
else if (patter.at(j)=='?')
{/*do nothing*/}
else
{
if (flname.at(i)!=patter.at(j))
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the most exciting thing about the current project Im working on
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
