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Michael Novati's Summarized Guide to the Meta Interview Process

14 of Michael's comments in this thread · View thread on Reddit ↗

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Hey that's me! If anyone has follow-ups feel free to ask here, I had nothing to do with this post though.

u/Murky-Artichoke8778 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hello Michael, what are the expectations for an intern during the interview?

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Yeah! It's just the DS&A coding interviews + brief background/project/past internship discussion. Generally the recruiter does the work to see if your background is a good fit and coding is critical. Having a unique or impressive project or previous internship can help you pass in a borderline case.

u/Murky-Artichoke8778 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

The questions are the same difficult as a full time employee?

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Yeah, they are surprisingly!

u/UsualSweaty8554 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hi Michael, thanks a lot for these points. What would you say it’s the best way to get into the interview process at Meta, assuming the CV looks good and the candidate is ready for it? I’ve been preparing for a frontend interview at a FAANG company for a few months already, still

u/michaelnovati replied ·
If you have that much experience than you should standout for E5 senior roles. I would do a combination of: 1. Apply online to appropriate level roles 2. Message Meta sourcers on LinkedIn (ideally ones that appear to be in the technical area of the role and geographic region you applied to) after you apply with a brief message saying you are interested in a specific role and feel like you are a good fit. Preparing for the interviews themselves is another topic, I wouldn't put too much pressure on yourself though to perform in a specific interview, because there's a lot outside your control and you can just show up and give the best performance you can.

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

Hello Michael, I have one question that seems like a **chicken and egg** problem. What do you think about senior engineers that don't have a lot of hands-on experience with large-scale systems but understand and know the concepts by reading books or are trying the concepts on si

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Yeah typically means you'll get down-leveled to E4. And if you pick things up really fast you can get promoted to E5 VERY fast, like a year. Now I don't think you necessarily need large-scale experience exclusively, you can have extremely complex smaller-scale problems you've solved, but you need to demonstrate the same patterns and complexity in managing that these large-scale problems always come with. For example, let's say you worked on a NASA moon lander. There's like 1 or 2 of them, but you had to work on a huge team solving complex problems with a lot of complex API's between systems and complex technical challenges, but scale? Not really.

u/Apprehensive_Toe9057 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hello u/michaelnovati I wanted to ask if the DSA coding rounds would be redundant in the years to come or will continue to be a part of the Hiring Style. I am asking this based on the current trends with AI and all.

u/michaelnovati replied ·
I don't think they will change much. Maybe new companies will change their styles and then become so large that those new styles become more common. DS&A interviews are extremely fair, calibrated, consistent, at scale and more practical interviews are much harder to scale. A very calibrated interviewer isn't testing if can solve LeetCode problems but it's testing your problem solving ability and thought process.

u/half-clutch wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hi u/michaelnovati , for E4 interview is coding (DSA) enough or do I need to prepare for system design as well? If system design is a necessary then is it low level design (LLD) or high level design (HLD) or both ?

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Hi, the first interview is just DS&A, but the onsite will have SD yeah. First you can choose to have a Product Architecture (i.e. "full stack system design") or a System Design ("infrastructure system design") Both are both haha, start of HLD and then you'll dive into different pieces and get lower level. For example you might write psudocode for a ranking algorithm, the API for a news feed, or a SQL schema, etc... but for specific parts of the overall system.,

u/Apprehensive_Toe9057 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Amazing, apart from Programming on leetcode (which I already have been doing), what else can I keep doing to brush up my skills. I am currently working with a British Bank, but the pace of tech adoption is very slow.

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Practicing LeetCode and solving unseen Medium problems easily is 80% of the way there. But we're talking Meta and the bar is high. To get that last 20% it's a different set of skills that's hard to put in words. It takes genuine practice and a clear problem solving method. Everything is about probabilities. If you solve 1800 Leetcode problems you might have a chance of passing but to increase your chances beyond that you need the above.

u/Apprehensive_Toe9057 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

I hear you! Thanks! For me the bar is a little lower, prepare Leetcode and just keep giving interviews. I just want to interview and get more experience knowing my problem solving skillset. I am currently at 150 problems on Leetcode. So I've got a LONG way to go haha

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Conducting interviews yourself is actually really good practice yeah. Especially if they are DS&A.

u/Apprehensive_Toe9057 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

I see [Interviewing.io](http://Interviewing.io) as a platform, but haven't explored that yet. Any other resource I could possible look at?

u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Yeah interviewing.io is great for doing 1 to 3 mock interviews. There are a few newer competitors that you can look into like hellointerview.com I'm the cofounder of Formation, we don't officially support the UK, but we do on a one off basis, and our competitors are Interview Kickstart and Pathrise and you can look into those as well. All of these options are the many thousands of dollars range of cost but more consistently fill in the the last 20%, but are way more time commitment and way more expensive than just a few mock interviews. All these options are worth looking into to see if something feels like a good match for what you think you need.

u/Agreeable_Twist_1459 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hi u/michaelnovati, for production engineers do you have any suggestions since there is so little out there to prepare for system design interviews from a PE standpoint. The PE SD interviews are just as tough but abstract, so any tips?

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Yeah I don't know much and don't want to mislead you with wrong advice. I know in general PE cares fairly equally about infrastructure as infra SWE roles, but they also care more about nitty gritty unix commands and networking tools/debugging and such. But nothing specific I can advise you on.

u/macosxfan2 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hi u/michaelnovati the link is not accessible anymore. Can you please share an updated link to your post?

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Hmm I don't know anything about who made that summary or who hosted it so I'm not sure :S

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

Hi Michael, i have built a novel, scalable, solvable business system from concept through deployment, wearing every hat along the way. However, I am disabled and have a unique way of solving problems which means that I am disadvantaged by the typical interval process. Any advice

u/michaelnovati replied ·
If your product is really really good, share that with engineers. If someone really likes it, they can help bridge the gap with recruiting to backchannel the support you need in the interview process.

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

Thanks for your message. My system is ground breaking and complete. but of course, protecting it is important.

u/michaelnovati replied ·
In that case, I would consider these options: 1. creating a demo mode that shows the product without revealing the secret sauce 2. making a demo VIDEO that shows you using in a protected way 3. writing a "white paper" document that explains it (without giving away implementation) and share that around. Generally speaking if something is ground breaking and no one else has done it, then it will take a lot of effort for people to copy you and there should be SOME WAY to share some amount about it publicly to get some support.