Status: Junior, BS MIT CS, Asian Male, 5+ yrs coding, Interned@FANGS&small company, Co-founded startup
Position: SWE Intern at Facebook
Location: San Francisco, CA
Date: November 19, 0219

Technical phone screen (45 min):

• Behavioral questions
  • Tell me about your work experience
• Algorithm question
  • https://leetcode.com/problems/serialize-and-deserialize-binary-tree/
    Performance: The interviewer was nice in guiding me through the problem. I finished more than half the question and didn't have time to complete the deserialization part which was mostly pseudocode in the end. Before the interview, I was so sick that I was hospitalized afterward the interview. In addition, I was supposed to be given accomodations as a result of a recent disability, so they decided to move me to the next round anyway.

2nd technical phone screen (1 hr 15 min) (Accomodations):

• Behavioral questions
  • Tell me about your work experience
  • Do you contribute to open source?
• Algorithm question
  • https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-number/
  • https://leetcode.com/problems/integer-to-english-words/
    Performance: Finished both problems in less than half the allotted time with explanation and optimal runtime. When I asked if there was a third question, interviewer deemed my previous answers sufficient and moved on to questions about Facebook. Thought the interviewer and I hit it off. Had several laughs.
    Result: Rejected the next busness day.

Afterthoughts:

1. Initially incredibly discouraged and just absolutely befuddled by the results. Second round I had received harder questions than others and still solved them correctly and quickly. Still was rejected in an instant.
2. For someone who usually emphasizes the soft skills and lacks the technical in these type of interviews, this was one of my best performances holistically.

Learning lessons:

1. Cannot count your chickens before they hatch
2. Communication is always important as some of these engineers can be passive diks. idk lol what can a kid do