The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Meta in Jan 2010
Interview
I was referred by an employee and was contacted by a hr recruiter, who scheduled a phone interview with me. From reading online I was expecting a basic screen with questions like why do I want to work at Facebook, and what I do currently. I wasn't expecting any technical questions at this stage but she did throw a basic search question, which flustered me a bit, and after a few minutes of me talking it out but not giving the exact right answer, she said she would get back to me with next steps which would either be to complete one of the puzzles on the website or to schedule phone interviews with an engineer. Promptly the next day she responded that I needed to do at least one of the puzzles and that there was no time limit, but the faster I completed it, the faster I could move on. I'm currently working on one of the puzzles.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum numbers guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint "higher" or "lower" for each guess you make.
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.
