I recently interviewed with Meta for their Product role and wanted to share my experience across the phone screen and onsite rounds.

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Before the phone interview, I completed two assessments:
• A coding assessment with 4 stages (I passed 3 stages out of 4)
• A work-style assessment

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Phone Screen

1. Count number of 1s in a given subarray in a large array of 1s and 0s. We'll be given indices for start and end of subarray.

   I started with a simple linear approach, then optimized to a prefix-sum solution:
   prefix[end] - prefix[start - 1]

   Follow-ups asked:
   • What if the digits were 0–9 instead of binary?
   • How to handle cases like start > end?

2. Find Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

   Implemented the standard recursive LCA and walked through examples.
   I missed one edge case where p and q have the same value, and needed a small hint for the scenario where both references point to the same node.

Overall Phone Screen Feedback:
• Strong coding
• Clear communication
• Fast implementation
• Improvements needed in clarifying questions and edge-case coverage

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Onsite Rounds

Round 1

1. Find first 1 in a sorted binary matrix — solved cleanly.
2. Trapping Rain Water — solved cleanly

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Round 2

Design Round:
Design a concert ticket booking service (small scale: one venue, many concerts).
Discussed requirements, flows, API design, data model, bottlenecks.

I drove the conversation end-to-end; detailed but clear, and moved quickly through the design choices. I pushed back when needed.

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Round 3

1. Valid Palindrome II
2. Valid Word Abbreviation
   Solved Both without any issues

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Round 4:
Behavioral:
Standard behavioral round with questions focused on handling ambiguity, conflict resolution, and using data to drive decisions. Straightforward conversation centered around past experiences, ownership, and collaboration.

I could only remember these questions:

1. Tell me about a project you’re most proud of. What was your role?
2. Tell me about a time you pushed a bug in production or something went wrong because of you. What did you learn?
3. What do you do outside of work to learn or improve yourself?

Update:
Cleared the interviews. Moved to Team Match

My Takeaways:

1. Clarity > everything
   Meta cares more about clear communication, stating assumptions and calling out edge cases than just producing the correct solution. Even if your solution isn’t optimal at first, they reward clear communication and structured thinking.

2. Ask questions
   I got explicit feedback that I should have asked more clarifying questions in my Phone Screen regarding a couple of edge cases. Clarifying early shows how you reduce ambiguity, which is a core Meta value. I made this a big focus during my onsite prep.

3. Hints are normal
   I needed a small hint in one or two problems and still passed. Don’t panic if the interviewer nudges you. Other signals were strong for me, so this was fine.

4. Pace Matters
   Meta interviews move fast. In a 45-minute round, ~5 minutes go to introductions and ~5 to your questions at the end. That leaves about 35 minutes for two problems. I tried to move quickly while still explaining my thought process and testing with examples and dry run.