I recently had my E6 interviews at Meta, where I completed ~500 Meta-tagged LeetCode questions in preparation. In one of the coding sessions, both questions were new; I managed to solve one, but not optimally. In another session, the questions were from Meta-tagged problems, but I made a small mistake in the second one and didn’t catch it in time. Although I excelled in the ML system design and behavioral interviews, I was ultimately rejected. It seems that even a small bug or a suboptimal solution can lead to rejection at this level.
I think once you get a call at Meta, you just really got to do the top75 meta questions on Leetcode. I got all the questions from the list. So just get that list and prepare the questions and be real quick since you need to answer 2 questions in 45 minutes! My background - I have interviewed with meta early this year and went to the onsite and bombed one of the technical onsite rounds where I couldn't crack one question. but we need to pass all rounds to move forward. Later realized it was from the leetcode list. Wish I had just practiced it.
maybe this is a dumb question but judt to clarify, when you say top 75, do you mean go to problems in leetocde, choose meta tag and look at the top 75 that appears or is it better to filter based on "role" and/or "time posted" and look at the top 75 of the filtered problem set?
You were able to get another interview within 12 months? I thought you had to wait a year if you failed it. I have an interview at the end of the month with them, but I just started doing leet code again, I'm going to need to see if i can extend it because I've not done the top 75 yet, not even half
Were all the questions asked during your onsite coding interviews from top Meta 75 / variations of the top 75? With the limited time we have to prepare, I was wondering if it is worth the time to study questions outside of that list to solidify our general fundamentals, and if it is worth the time to also memorize the top 76~100 questions. Thanks a lot for your content. It took a lot of time to unpack solutions on leetcode that weren't actually optimal or were difficult to understand. Your videos made the problems much more digestible 🙏
I have an interview at Meta coming up in three weeks for full time swe role. 3 tech and one behavioral. How should I go about preparing for the technical interviews?
I remember interviewing with Meta about 3+ years ago and one of the questions was something like 'Given a string with numbers and mathematical operators,return the result of the expression' not even sure how to efficiently solve it now
Leetcode recently changed how they display tagged questions which has been a bit confusing to me. When you say top 75-100 Meta questions, should that be for the last "30 days", "3 months", "6 months", "more than 6 months", or "all" that you can select from the drop down? The problem set that each timeframe presents can be pretty different. Thank you!
Good question! Especially that not all of the problems from lists are the same. What I did is merge top 70-80 from 30 days and 3 months. If you'd like to be sure, maybe even better to merge top 70 from all of them.
Hey @crackingFAAANG big fan of your work. I have a upcoming interview for new grad role at Meta and I wanted to know that in an interview should I directly give optimal solution to save time or I should give brute force and then move to optimal. If latter then how do you recommend transition from brute force to optimal. Thanks in advance.
One more question. I wish to use my iPad with keyboard for interview. Can I explain my thought process by opening white board with Apple Pencil ? In this way I can significantly save time when explaining questions on trees and graphs.
I failed my meta loop because during a coding interview, I couldn't understand someone's English. I spent 20 minutes trying to understand what they were asking me. When I brought it up to my recruiter and asked why they didn't just write the question down like in all of the other interviews, including my mock...he said that all the other interviewers had done it wrong. That they were not supposed to write the question down. feelsbadman.jpg
I applied for a remote contract role through a 3rd party recruiter. Had a general screening, and then they went straight to the technical interview in less than a week. Not sure if this is the norm for contract roles. Anyone here have a similar experience?
I actually got rejected even after providing the most optimal codes and I felt I did really so good, but the interviewer said he did not get the signals from me
I disagree that you have to memorize 75 leetcode questions. You should have the FUNDAMENTALS locked down. But the interviews are supposed to test your problem solving abilities. The resources provided by the recruiter are enough. Of course, you should practice though.
This simply isn't true. Of course I totally agree that you need to have the fundamentals drilled well, but if you go into the interview not having seen a large majority of the questions they ask then you are playing with fire. There's so many things you need to do in an interview (ask clarifying questions, come up with possible solutions, discuss trade-offs, code a bug free solution, dry run test cases, talk about time/space) that you simply don't have the time for figuring it out on the spot. I think everyone at this point knows these interviews do exactly the opposite of test your problem solving skills. Maybe at Google where they heavily rotate their questions, but at Meta where they've been asking the same questions for years with little change, you'd frankly be a fool not to memorize the most popular 75 beforehand. Why waste the opportunity to make hundreds of thousands of $$$ just to avoid grinding some LC problems 🤷♂️
This so depressing, to get a job at the big tech companies you just got to memorize all the solutions for all their problems …. I don't understand how that filters bad candidates?!
I agree that technical interviews are totally broken but it's not just about memorization. We do this because we don't have time to figure it out on the spot. You still need to actually understand the algorithms to explain them
It filters people who arent willing to give up basically other aspects of their life for their job and who arent "intelligent enough" to understand problems they are memorizing, cause you still have to repeat it back properly and get hit with follow ups. A lot of the job really is knowledge base/ memorizing and knowing when to apply certain patterns, software engineering CRUD apps don't really require the genius you think it does because these people aren't inventing anything, they are using known patterns and solutions to create more features. But anyway, the later interviews, behavioral and managerial / team matching rounds are to further filter if you will be a good fit, you can still pass the interview and fail. What people don't realize is these interviews have a purpose of filtering as many people as possible while keeping a general pool of people "fit for the job", like it or not the truth is people who spend all day leet coding, system design prepping can PROBABLY do the basic work required of them. These companies don't need "the best of the best" anymore they just need people who can do the job unless it's a REALLY REALLY high level position, which they then have more rounds to evaluate them for. If a bad candidate slips in, companies like meta have a performance cycle review attrition where they always get rid of a certain % of engineers no matter what. There's also an "up or out" mentality where if engineers arent promoting and showing that they are improving they will just get rid of them anyway, so those who arent bad candidates (ignoring office politics) will just end up making it to the top anyway and the bad ones will be filtered out further that way. As someone who has close friends who's entire job is to collect employee data and key metrics to see if there's any correlation between hiring and output, I can tell you that if these interviews only got bad candidates they would stop them in an instant.
@@JensUwe-24 I don't remember the total count. But I had practiced the top Meta 75 so many times that I could solve almost all 75 in 4-5 hours. I went really overboard and put everything into the prep because I knew it was the only place I wanted to work and was not going to take any chances
@@crackfaang Thanks for the detailed answer. So I understand correctly that Meta tagged questions are super accurate? Also, is the interview process the same in Europe?
Appreciate all you do, starting Meta later this month. Your leetcode walkthroughs really came in clutch
There is also team matching round that goes before offer and may take up to one month with several interviews with managers.
your channel been really helpful and I have an oracle OA tomorrow and 2 days after that an Amazon OA wish me luck
Please create a playlist of System Design
I recently had my E6 interviews at Meta, where I completed ~500 Meta-tagged LeetCode questions in preparation. In one of the coding sessions, both questions were new; I managed to solve one, but not optimally. In another session, the questions were from Meta-tagged problems, but I made a small mistake in the second one and didn’t catch it in time. Although I excelled in the ML system design and behavioral interviews, I was ultimately rejected. It seems that even a small bug or a suboptimal solution can lead to rejection at this level.
I think once you get a call at Meta, you just really got to do the top75 meta questions on Leetcode. I got all the questions from the list. So just get that list and prepare the questions and be real quick since you need to answer 2 questions in 45 minutes!
My background - I have interviewed with meta early this year and went to the onsite and bombed one of the technical onsite rounds where I couldn't crack one question. but we need to pass all rounds to move forward. Later realized it was from the leetcode list. Wish I had just practiced it.
maybe this is a dumb question but judt to clarify, when you say top 75, do you mean go to problems in leetocde, choose meta tag and look at the top 75 that appears or is it better to filter based on "role" and/or "time posted" and look at the top 75 of the filtered problem set?
You were able to get another interview within 12 months? I thought you had to wait a year if you failed it. I have an interview at the end of the month with them, but I just started doing leet code again, I'm going to need to see if i can extend it because I've not done the top 75 yet, not even half
Were all the questions asked during your onsite coding interviews from top Meta 75 / variations of the top 75?
With the limited time we have to prepare, I was wondering if it is worth the time to study questions outside of that list to solidify our general fundamentals, and if it is worth the time to also memorize the top 76~100 questions.
Thanks a lot for your content. It took a lot of time to unpack solutions on leetcode that weren't actually optimal or were difficult to understand. Your videos made the problems much more digestible 🙏
Appreciate it as always!
Any advice for MLE role? Currently grinding Meta top questions, your videos have been super helpful!
I have an interview at Meta coming up in three weeks for full time swe role. 3 tech and one behavioral. How should I go about preparing for the technical interviews?
I remember interviewing with Meta about 3+ years ago and one of the questions was something like 'Given a string with numbers and mathematical operators,return the result of the expression' not even sure how to efficiently solve it now
State machine + stack
@@LuisRoel you don't need a stack, if there are no parentheses. There is a straightforward solution with O(n) time and O(1) space complexities
Basic calculator 2 bro
Please make a video on how to max out your college experience academically
Leetcode recently changed how they display tagged questions which has been a bit confusing to me. When you say top 75-100 Meta questions, should that be for the last "30 days", "3 months", "6 months", "more than 6 months", or "all" that you can select from the drop down? The problem set that each timeframe presents can be pretty different. Thank you!
Good question! Especially that not all of the problems from lists are the same. What I did is merge top 70-80 from 30 days and 3 months. If you'd like to be sure, maybe even better to merge top 70 from all of them.
Thanks, you are the best, this video just came in time! I am wondering if meta interview involves OOD and system design for a new-grad candidate?
No systems design for E3 (new grad). Just coding and behavioral
Hey @crackingFAAANG big fan of your work. I have a upcoming interview for new grad role at Meta and I wanted to know that in an interview should I directly give optimal solution to save time or I should give brute force and then move to optimal. If latter then how do you recommend transition from brute force to optimal. Thanks in advance.
One more question. I wish to use my iPad with keyboard for interview. Can I explain my thought process by opening white board with Apple Pencil ? In this way I can significantly save time when explaining questions on trees and graphs.
I failed my meta loop because during a coding interview, I couldn't understand someone's English. I spent 20 minutes trying to understand what they were asking me.
When I brought it up to my recruiter and asked why they didn't just write the question down like in all of the other interviews, including my mock...he said that all the other interviewers had done it wrong. That they were not supposed to write the question down.
feelsbadman.jpg
I applied for a remote contract role through a 3rd party recruiter. Had a general screening, and then they went straight to the technical interview in less than a week. Not sure if this is the norm for contract roles. Anyone here have a similar experience?
I actually got rejected even after providing the most optimal codes and I felt I did really so good, but the interviewer said he did not get the signals from me
Damn that’s rough. Sometimes it doesn’t go our way. Don’t give up though, I didn’t get in on my first try either
How's the process for internship ?
I disagree that you have to memorize 75 leetcode questions.
You should have the FUNDAMENTALS locked down. But the interviews are supposed to test your problem solving abilities. The resources provided by the recruiter are enough.
Of course, you should practice though.
This simply isn't true. Of course I totally agree that you need to have the fundamentals drilled well, but if you go into the interview not having seen a large majority of the questions they ask then you are playing with fire. There's so many things you need to do in an interview (ask clarifying questions, come up with possible solutions, discuss trade-offs, code a bug free solution, dry run test cases, talk about time/space) that you simply don't have the time for figuring it out on the spot.
I think everyone at this point knows these interviews do exactly the opposite of test your problem solving skills. Maybe at Google where they heavily rotate their questions, but at Meta where they've been asking the same questions for years with little change, you'd frankly be a fool not to memorize the most popular 75 beforehand. Why waste the opportunity to make hundreds of thousands of $$$ just to avoid grinding some LC problems 🤷♂️
This so depressing, to get a job at the big tech companies you just got to memorize all the solutions for all their problems …. I don't understand how that filters bad candidates?!
I agree that technical interviews are totally broken but it's not just about memorization. We do this because we don't have time to figure it out on the spot. You still need to actually understand the algorithms to explain them
It filters people who arent willing to give up basically other aspects of their life for their job and who arent "intelligent enough" to understand problems they are memorizing, cause you still have to repeat it back properly and get hit with follow ups. A lot of the job really is knowledge base/ memorizing and knowing when to apply certain patterns, software engineering CRUD apps don't really require the genius you think it does because these people aren't inventing anything, they are using known patterns and solutions to create more features.
But anyway, the later interviews, behavioral and managerial / team matching rounds are to further filter if you will be a good fit, you can still pass the interview and fail. What people don't realize is these interviews have a purpose of filtering as many people as possible while keeping a general pool of people "fit for the job", like it or not the truth is people who spend all day leet coding, system design prepping can PROBABLY do the basic work required of them. These companies don't need "the best of the best" anymore they just need people who can do the job unless it's a REALLY REALLY high level position, which they then have more rounds to evaluate them for. If a bad candidate slips in, companies like meta have a performance cycle review attrition where they always get rid of a certain % of engineers no matter what. There's also an "up or out" mentality where if engineers arent promoting and showing that they are improving they will just get rid of them anyway, so those who arent bad candidates (ignoring office politics) will just end up making it to the top anyway and the bad ones will be filtered out further that way.
As someone who has close friends who's entire job is to collect employee data and key metrics to see if there's any correlation between hiring and output, I can tell you that if these interviews only got bad candidates they would stop them in an instant.
@@crackfaang How many LC's did you do before passing the interviews at Meta?
@@JensUwe-24 I don't remember the total count. But I had practiced the top Meta 75 so many times that I could solve almost all 75 in 4-5 hours.
I went really overboard and put everything into the prep because I knew it was the only place I wanted to work and was not going to take any chances
@@crackfaang Thanks for the detailed answer. So I understand correctly that Meta tagged questions are super accurate? Also, is the interview process the same in Europe?