I have 15+ years of experience in infra and distributed systems, and this was the first time in over 3 years that I sat through interviews.
How did you prepare? What worked and what didn't?
LeetCode covered coding, an online system design course covered system design, and for the behavioral rounds I kept a journal of my stories written out in STAR format.
I knew I was a rusty coder, so when I started prepping for the full loop I gave LC about half of my time. Once the Meta-tagged top-125 problems started feeling comfortable, the share dropped, and in the last couple of weeks before the loop I was coding for less than a quarter of my prep time.
For system design, that course became my main resource. The structure it teaches helped me a lot, and I'd strongly suggest following the same structure when you're in the actual interview.
The recruiters hand out a lot of helpful information. I put that together with the course's interview guides to figure out how the interviewers grade.
What was the interview process like. Any surprises?
Time disappears fast in these interviews. Time management matters everywhere, but it hit me hardest in the system design round and the project retrospective round. My biggest lesson was to ask clarifying questions at the very start. That gets you and the interviewer aligned early, so you don't go down the wrong path and then have to correct course when there's barely any time left.
What would you tell other candidates preparing for this interview?
Make a clear prep plan. Take the time to assess yourself honestly, find where you're strong and where you're weak, and let that drive the plan. Meta raised its hiring bar a lot over the past year, so by the time you walk into the full loop you want as many gaps closed as possible and your weak spots as small as you can get them.
Anything else you'd like to share?
Go in with a growth mindset and enjoy the ride!
Discussion
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