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I’m Michael. I was a principal engineer at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I was the top code contributor of all time and also conducted hundreds of interviews. I recently co-founded Formation.dev, an engineering fellowship that trains and refers engineers directly into big tech. Ask me Anything!

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u/FrozenSoviet wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hi Michael, We often hear a lot about interview advice for new grad/entry level roles, but often it's a bit more nebulous what the expectations are for more experienced positions. I'm curious how interviews may differ for non entry level roles (e.g. E4-E5 at Facebook), and do

u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Hi! At Facebook the interview process is the same for all individual engineers (ICs) E4+. In the onsite you'll do 2 coding interviews, 1 half coding/half behavioral, and 1 system design (SD) (sometimes adapted to your role, like product or frontend). The key difference is the expectations in the SD interview. A more junior person will be tested on their approach and more basic knowledge of various pieces of a large system. A very senior candidate will be tested on their ability to give more alternates, more pros and cons, and more thoughtful examples leveraging their existing experience. Experience with big scale products can't really be faked, so this interview is aiming to test and calibrate that experience against Facebook's bar.