Hi, hang tight until you officially hear back.
I worked at Meta for 8 years and conducted over 400 interviews there and I can tell from the way that you wrote this up that you're over analyzing every minute of the interview a little too much.
There's so much that I could say about the process and I can't explain it all here in a Reddit comment, but I think it's misleading, especially on Reddit and blind about like studying certain lists of questions and getting flawless solutions. and again, emphatically state that the goal of these interviews is not to see how many problems you studied and memorized.
They are looking for your problem solving process and the fact that you got questions you hadn't seen before might have rattled you. but if you had a clear and clean problem solving process and produced clear code that you walked through and explained well then you might have passed even though you're assuming that you failed.
You might not pass but don't blame yourself for not doing enough practice problems because that's not the reason, and you might have just not practiced your problem-solving method enough.
u/dombrogia wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Hey Michael, thanks for all your responses across all the subreddits and your site. I have read a lot of your content over the last month.
I’m aware of some of the nuances and have read about it a lot — including your content about individual pieces of the different interviews.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Thanks for sharing, you come across like a super self aware engineer so I'm sure you'll come back stronger and find a super great job that's the right one.
u/Excuse_Odd wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I just passed my meta interviews and I certainly feel like if I didn’t memorise all the common problems I would have failed. Not real sure what you’re talking about lmao.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
'm speaking to overall patterns, trends, and intentions, as someone who did 400+ interviews at Meta, trained interviewers and contributed to developing new interviews - like Product Architecture. I can definitely state that the goal of the interviews is not to see how much LC a person can memorize and spit out under pressure.
If I was doing a Meta interview I would absolutely be practicing common problems and patterns, my point is HOW you practice and not WHAT you practice. If you are doing LeetCode and just getting the submissions to pass, you aren't doing it right for example. If you spend months and months doing things inefficiently you might still pass! But you could have had a much easier time about it and maybe even performed better to get better team matching or negotiation.
u/smartIotDev wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
There is a reason for the heavy focus on Meta top 50 due to the inherent nature of speed being the deciding factor while maintaining consistency and reaching a working solution. This is simply not possible a completely new problem unless you are one of those grinders or competit
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Wow what's with the tone? I think the biggest criticism of my view is that I was there 2009 to 2017 and left like 7 years ago now so I have an old view, but it's not a wrong view so I don't appreciate the attacking tone this is coming across as.
I did 450ish interviews. I trained interviewers on the ground. I attended dozens of hiring committee meetings and packet reviews with Shrep and Jay and Boz and the execs.
The amount of details they consider in those reviews is crazy. They look at the exact questions asked, and the interviewers history asking that question and their interviewers feedback history, etc...
It's not just like you memorize 50 questions and pass. I assure you that it's theoretically possible pass that way, and I assure you that's not the right way to do it.
I don't want to talk about this much because it seems like product placement, but I professionally mentor people through my company (Formation) and we've helped a ton of people get jobs at Meta, choose their teams, negotiate etc...