What makes the interviewer determine whether the candidate would go into E4 or E5 level in the System Design Interview?
Corporal/Specialist vs. Sergeant
I had 2 coding 2 system design , 1 behavioral And 1 ML. 1 system design was for shadowing where the main interviewer was asking questions and second just shadowing. Does that mean I was interviewing for E6 and not E5
No, it means you were in the ML loop, which has one extra for Machine Learning design. If you fail that one you will still be considered for the generalist roles.
I am not a pirate interviewer but I have read a lot of feedback. There are a few things in particular at Facebook: 1. Breadth vs Depth - how broadly can you define the system is lesser of a concern but can you describe a few topics in good technical detail and influence trade offs and solutions. 2. Driving the conversation - are you driving the conversation or your interviewer? It’s important for senior engineers to own the conversation and lead it so as to not keep asking for pointers and or affirmation. It is trivial if you have already been doing this in your job. If you are trying to force yourself to E5, don’t. You will fail. 3. Design complexity and discussions - how you design and your design choices show a lot of signal. Trivial and simple design that doesn’t factor in scalability or a bunch of other unknowns will usually make it sound E3/E4 which is probably the right call in that case. In depth discussions, trade offs, analysis are important to provide E5 signal. 4. Experience - experience will automatically show up in your conversation and that’s very important to make it to E5.
Thank you! Lovely!
E5 should have 2 system design interviews
I didn't, although that was 3 1/2 years back.
E5 will have only one SD interview as per the FB recruiter.