Giving it back to community.

• Product Design - Build auctions on a facebook's app. I think this went well. Interviewer was very professional and also redirected at times (which is rare in a product design). I was able to tie my design with the initial estimates before concluding the interview. This is a must to get hire for E5. (Tradeoff discussion being another)
• Behavioral - Nailed it
• Coding-1 Hard question with follow ups. Not on leetcode - something similar - https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-increasing-path-in-a-matrix/
  I took a hint to comeup with time complexity - took another hint on how to inline edit matrix so that I wouldn't need another matrix for memo table. I felt ok with this round, the interviewer was nice, at least spoke nice.
• Coding-2 -A medium question (Search in sorted rotated array). Nailed it. Then there was a fireball https://leetcode.com/problems/wildcard-matching/ (no facebook tags at the time of my interview). I wonder if the interviewer could solve this problem in 20 mins. I also think they did not do a good job in explaining the problem itself. Then they said, because I did not understand the problem, they wanted to check my problem solving skills and asked ZigZag traversal of binary tree which I solved again.

They confirmed my fears in a week and said due to coding. It could be from 1 and/or 2. No sure way to know.

Anyone sailing the same waters, here are my takeways. If they help:

1. Interviewers trying to help you in the interview is very subjective. Sometimes they want to filter you out within fist few mins. You sure know it if they asks a medim-hard-medium in a 35 mins interview. There is nothing much you can do about it.
2. Luck is a big factor even after thorough preparation. Its both number and long term game.
3. If you did not get into FAANG early on in your career or had late realization of what can be acheived, then patience is the key.
4. Don't go by company tags alone. Then again, its really hard to solve a completely new problem in 15-20 mins for most people (at least to me). Refer # 2 above.
5. If you feel discouraged then don't. Refer to #2 and/or #3 above.