YOE: About 10 years
Position: E5 at Facebook
Date: May - Jul 2020
Rounds
- 1 Phone Screen [2 LC Easy]
- 3 Virtual Onsite Coding Interviews (2 Virtual coding + 1 Follow up virtual coding, Each coding interview had 2 LC medium questions.)
- 1 System Design (A question directly from G** the system design interview.)
- 1 Behaviour Interview.
My Journey
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The Beginning
I started preparing for the interviews of FAANG companies from July 2019. And when i started, i was under the impression that it will take around a month or two for me to get in shape and start contacting the recruiters. Needless to say, I was very wrong. I faced many rejection from lesser known companies. However, By the end of 2019, I was able to crack two locally popular companies. I ended up joining one of the startup in Nov, 2019. -
The Tragedy/Opportunity
As the world started to see the wrath of COVID-19 from early February 2020. My company also became a victim of it and I was retrenched at the end of March 2020. I took this moment as an opportunity and decided not to join another startup or mid-level company(At Least not in next 6 months or so.) and give my 100 percent to interviews at FAANG. -
The Hope
I contacted Facebook at the end of April 2020. I had my phone screen round on 1st week of May 2020. The interviewer asked two easy leetcode questions. The phone screen response was positive and I asked for a month time to prepare for facebook focused Virtual Coding rounds. -
The Hiccup/Minor-Setback
All the virtual coding rounds went smooth except one. In that coding round, I took more time in explaining the thought process and so there was no time to code the solution. The interviewer was happy with the solution I provided, or so I thought. Later on I got to know that the response was not so positive for this particular round and I have to do a follow up coding round. -
The Reward
In Follow up round, I made sure that I not only show the thinking process but also write the executable code. So, As soon as i shared the idea and interview agreed to the solution, I asked the interview if it’s okay for me to code. At the end, I managed to code both the questions and got the positive response from Facebook within a week. YAY! -
Preparation
As I mentioned earlier, I started preparing for FAANG from July, 2019. From the beginning itself, I had my friend to study with and we would spend countless hours discussing different ideas and approaches to a problem. Often times, one of us would get an insight that would not only solve the problem but also simplify it tremendously. And we would try to find the genesis of that thought/insight so that we can apply it deliberately rather than rely on our subconscious mind to take over.
My Two Cents
- In an Interview, Coding the solution is as important as sharing your thought process. Don’t try to explain everything or every corner case. You can fix/handle some of the edge cases while doing a dry run.
- Find a buddy to prepare with (The one who shares the same goal and enthusiasm is better.). I really believe that having a buddy to bounce of your ideas and to challenge your thoughts can up your game exponentially. (For my preparation, I was on call with my friend 4-5 hours a day, almost everyday, since July 2019.)
- Enjoy the learning process and take breaks if you need to. (It’s very hard to do something for so long if you don’t enjoy it. And you don’t want to burn yourself out in the process.)
- Though I did solve a lot of problems on Leetcode, I wouldn’t recommend to make that a target. I would suggest to definitely cover all the DS and Algo topics mentioned in leetcode till you get comfortable with them. There are 40 different topics in leetcode as of now. On an average if you do 5-10 questions per topic that would give you 200-400 questions. Some topics are definitely more important than others, so it would make sense to do more questions of them over others. But knowledge of most of the topics makes you ready for the surprise.
- Only start doing the time bound questions when you are already comfortable with the topic.