YOE: 5 years 8 months

A recruiter reached out to me for a position at Facebook London. We didn't have discussion about the position, etc that time. He scheduled my screening interview couple of months after the introductory call. I was out of touch with DS/Algo, so couple of months was a good time. I wanted to relocate to London so thought this would be a good opportunity.

Technical Phone Screen Interview (45 minutes)

1. Binary Tree Easy
2. Something to do with a calculator LC medium

Solved both the questions in 30 minutes with all the edge cases covered. The expectation is to solve both of the questions with explanation, code, test cases in 40 minutes.

The recruiter contacted me after a week about the feedback and next steps. He mentioned that the interview will be for E5 position and Software Engineer - Product. Due to unavailability of slots, the interview was scheduled 6 weeks after the call. The interviews were scheduled back to back with 15 minutes of gap after each interview.

Behavorial Round (45 minutes)

• Pretty standard "Tell me a time when" questions. I felt that the discussion went well, but that turned out to be just my opinion.

Design Round (45 minutes)

• Interviewer asked about my previous project. I spent too much time explaining that so I was left with 30 minutes for the design problem he was supposed to ask. The question was from G***-the-system-design book. I explained the whole flow but by the time I was done, there were 3-4 minutes left and we didn't get time to get into scalability, trade-offs, DB choices etc.

Coding Interview I (45 minutes)

1. Binary Search LC medium question. Something to do with probability and randomness.
2. Array LC medium. Something to do with max length.

Coding interview II (45 minutes)

1. LC medium Reservoir Sampling
2. LC medium Union Find

Solved all the coding questions with test cases under 40 minutes.

**Feedback **

I already had an offer from a different company and the recruiter didn't get in touch with me for a week. I sent out two mails stating the same that I have to give an answer to the other company but he didn't reply. Finally I had to call him from my phone (international call) about the feedback. The thing that pissed me off the most that he did receive the feedback and yet didn't let me know about it.

He explained me the feedback from behavorial round was that I didn't meet the E5 requirements, and system design didn't quite work out for them. Both my coding rounds feedback was positive.

Preparation

1. Did around ~400 facebook tagged questions from leetcode. Skipped the easy ones focused more on Medium & Hard. Skipped some Hard problems like Skyline problem, Expression add operator, etc. Revised top 200 problems a week before the interview. This is very important to do. Use the leetcode plugin Leetcode Time Tracker to get the idea about the time taken. Move the time taking questions to a separate list and practice them again.

2. The mistake I did was focusing a lot on coding questions and not on design and behavorial round questions.

3. Don't take behavorial rounds very lightly. Yes, it is the easiest one but I suggest to have the answers prepared beforehand. These questions might help.

4. Facebook freeze period is 1 year. So always have that in mind; you might feel motivated to do it now.

5. Dont get demotivated if you get rejected. Pour a good portion of whiskey for yourself and light up a smoke. A company/job can't be your dream company/job when you know nothing about working there. There is a large number of companies that can help you grow better and achieve more and can be your dream job.

6. Nothing is unachievable.