Hello everyone, I recently took my Meta SWE - New Grad (Menlo Park, CA, USA) Virtual Onsite on Monday 11/11. I know it's out of my hands now and I can't change anything but out curiousity, can you chance me based on what you see here? Please be honest and don't say it'll be fine if you think otherwise.
Coding 1: solved 2/2 optimal
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Problem 1: Built solution from the ground up, suboptimal -> optimal. Interviewer agreed it was correct. He brought up edge cases as I coded that I cleaned up immediately, and successfully ran dry run on a couple test cases. He asked about time complexity and I gave an educated guess which I think he wasn't fully satisfied about. He said it's ok it's some math, but if you're not sure it's alright let's move on for time.
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Problem 2: I found the optimal solution fairly quickly and actually overengineered the solution more than what I needed. He hinted at whether I needed to do all that and I caught the mistake and scaled down the solution for the given constraints and got the optimal solution. Did a dry run successfully and then we talked about edge cases for a bit (I think I got most of this right). I also got the time/space complexity right.
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After this we had like 5 mins for me to ask questions about Meta.
Behavioral:
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This interviewer laid out how he planned it to go, says he has a certain number of questions, so don't stall or else they will need a 2nd behavioral. Says he'll watch the time and preempt me to next question when needed to stay on track.
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I did struggle with the first “Tell me a time when…” question where interviewer seemed unsatisfied, mentioning it didn’t reflect enough sacrifice. Interviewer planned to revisit that question if time allowed, but we ran out of time before circling back.
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Interview was intensive, with multiple follow-up questions and challenges on design choices. He challenged the design decisions I made in my intern projects - made me lay out all other solutions I considered and compare cost/efficiency/etc against the choice I made. I would say I somewhat? successfully defended my design decisions and received ok/mixed feedback; he would summarize his takeways after each question and I felt my explanations were somewhat successful. I tried indirectly referencing how I focused on building things with long term vision and moving fast (2 meta core values). Overall I'd say my answers could have been more concise, but it wasn't that bad; somewhere in the middle for quality of speech.
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Successfully answered 2-3 other behavioral questions with similar, but slightly better results than that first question, as he didn't explicitly challenge the answers the same way. Interviewer was very hard to read and I'm not sure whether he was fully satisfied or not. I was rather surprised that he grilled me to this extent for a new grad behavioral. Hopefully my performance was satisfactory.
Coding 2: solved 2/2 optimal
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Problem 1: Recognized the problem and was able to speak clearly and derive the best solution which he agreed. He brought up edge cases as I coded and I fixed them all, and he was very happy with solution. Gave correct time/space.
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Problem 2: Again I did really well on this problem. Recognized core concept/pattern early and built the optimal solution gracefully as I went. He didn't have any edge cases since I caught them all already. Gave optimal solution and correct time/space complexity. He was very happy with the solution and it was easy to solve the followup as the code was modular in design.
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We had like 15 mins left and had a really great talk about Meta, what it's like to be a new grad, his favorite projects, team culture, etc.
Overall:
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My question to you all is - what are my odds? Is that behavioral likely the nail in my coffin, or do I still have a shot?
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Please be honest, and don't sugarcoat it if I did mess up. Appreciate the feedback and have a wonderful day!