Compensation is the biggest pro. Also, unlike other hire to fire companies (most tech companies at this point in 2024), you at least have a chance to prove yourself and are given a couple months to onboard. There are worse tech companies out there such as Amazon and Intuit, but Meta’s culture is still quite terrible. They try and justify the long hours and stress with how much you can make - Meta still pays more than any other major tech company, even in 2024, which is definitely a pro, but the culture is cutthroat and you can’t trust anyone. It would probably be easier to work two remote jobs at “less prestigious” tech or tech adjacent companies to make the same amount at Meta with more stability, better WLB, and less drama.
Pretty much the same as what one would experience at most tech companies in 2024. But some aspects are better or worse than others. Long hours. WLB is highly team dependent. Apparently Meta used to be a lot better in this regard, but now not so much. It is intense, but if you have startup experience, it is at least less intense than that. And again, it is more fair than a place like Amazon. Office politics are a thing at all tech companies, but a little more extreme at Meta. Blame and shame culture is big. People are snakes and are prepared to throw even the newest and most vulnerable employees under the bus to save their own skins. This makes things quite unfair, but as long as you’re proactive and document everything thoroughly, you’re at least given a chance to refute these attacks. A lot of gossip and backstabbing. This is separate from and still related to PSC culture, which everyone complains about. Management is terrible overall. Sometimes there is micromanagement. One of the few companies where it’s possible you’ll have a manager younger than you, even if you’re only 27-31ish. Often ICs seem to be held accountable for things that are way beyond their day-to-day scope - basically things that are ultimately the fault of leadership and management. Management frequently tries to pin things on their employees. Your manager is often trying to screw you, and if they can’t find a way, they are often trying to invent things you did wrong. This isn’t a dealbreaker because as long as you’re doing your job, it is easy to refute, but it creates a ton of work because you have to be extremely well-organized and have documented every interaction with your manager colleagues. I recommend studying employment law / consulting with an employment lawyer early on in your tenure at Meta, so you know what to look for. Because it is a massive tech company, you are there to please your manager and make them look good, so you need to do pretty much whatever they say. there’s a lot of internal conflict because it’s very authoritarian, also fairly draconian, and it’s bottoms up at the same time, every man for themselves. Do everything your manager says and it is somehow still all up to you as an individual employee to make the company successful. To top it all off, your colleagues suck too. People brag about work that YOU did as being THEIR work that THEY did if it is successful. If a project involving multiple people is so much as an hour late, then YOU are blamed, even if you had nothing to do with the lateness. The lateness itself isn’t really the problem because guess what? It’s not anything is broken. Except for when things do break and the whole app crashes for a day because everyone is forced to focus on office politics instead of their actual work. it’s not really about the value you create, so much as it is the PERCEIVED value you create and whether or not your manager likes you. Ergo, a lot of bootlicking charlatans make it to the top.
I have an E5 interview and was told that i can chose between System design interview vs Product Interview. Since i havent worked on low level systems much, i picked Product Design. Can someone tell how different this interviews are? If possible provide some examples? #facebookdesign #facebooke5 #fa...Read more
Hi, I had a sys design interview for E4 recently. I feel like I didn't do well, as I didn't display enough signals that I know stuff. Specifically, I created some high level design of the system (without mentioning architecture stuff, only talking about the services of the system). Then, the inter...Read more
Need help on FB system design questions, can someone who has been to FB onsite, please share their experience and questions they have been asked, really tensed about the interview...need help. #facebook #systemdesign
I don’t have a question.. just sharing my product design interview experience. I had the most fascinating design challenge today at Meta. The prompt was to design a web3 based social token economy. I hear people talking about designing a remote, lock or atm and how fb repeats these prompts but boy...Read more
I've started interviewing with Facebook for a product design role. I would love some input from other designers at FB about work life balance, TC, general design culture, interviewing tips, and their take on being remote beyond Covid. Current TC is 101k plus 10% bonus potential which rarely happens...Read more
In a week I have meta onsite for Swe - infra role. Please post your recent onsite system design questions. Totally appreciate the help. #piped #tc:0 #tech #interview #meta
Hi, does anyone know if we need to screen share or share excalidraw Link with the interviewer? During the system design interview
I got this system design question at my Meta onsite (E5) where I was asked to design a price tracking application like camelcamelcamel.com. I answered most of the questions that the interviewer had, but I am not sure if I choose the right db. The requirement was to store price changes for up to 2 ye...Read more
Hey Blind, anyone can shed some light on how’s the work life balance for IC6+ meta product designer? Thx! #ui/ux #design #meta
I just cleared Meta E5 phone screen. What resources can you suggest for system design and behavioral rounds? YoE: 10 $: 400k #swe #software #engineering #interview #phoneinterviewquestions
Hi Blinders, I have a system design interview with Meta London for an EM role. I understand preparation is the key. I am using the following resources: System design primer (from github) educative’s Grokking the system design interview Designing Data Intensive Applications book System design interv...Read more
What’s the expectation for this question? Seems to be a common question at Meta https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/124657/Facebook-or-System-Design-or-A-web-crawler-that-will-crawl-Wikipedia Do we need to discuss a distributed peer to peer crawl with chord algorithm for minimizing co...Read more
Is Facebook ML design interview more focused on algo or more on system design? What should be covered more. Not asking for sample questions but directions. Thanks
I'm interviewing for e4/e5. My behavioral went pretty well. phone screen coding and onsite coding were absolutely stellar, almost perfect. System design (backend) did not go well. I got a working design, estimated qps and storage well, talked through func and non functional requirements well. Took m...Read more
I just got a verbal offer from Meta. What teams would you recommend for a senior designer? (L5) Looking for - Growth in my craft - Opportunities to work on cross functional projects that are larger in scope than a single flow or page - Design mentorship on my team - Work life balance (being offl...Read more
I am preparing for Meta onsite. Only have 2 weeks to prepare. What is the best resource to prep for system design rounds? #swe #software #jobhunt
For System Design round, Recruiter provided an option to choose between regular System Design vs Product Architecture. While Product architecture seems easier on paper, can someone help me understand the expectation? maybe I am missing something. #tech #meta #em
I have done a lot of interviews at FB and have seen several patterns that can help people be more successful. Note: this is my personal observations. I think my observations might help people interviewing for E5 the most, and hopefully not just at FB but other tech companies as well. 1. You don't ...Read more
Had initial phone screen with a recruiter for product design. He scheduled two back to back interviews (past work and app critique). He never responded to questions I had while preparing my past work presentation. I had the two interviews 8 days ago. I reached out to him for feedback. Still no respo...Read more
Had the system design interview at Meta. Was asked the classic question to design Uber. Even though I practiced these type of questions for weeks before, my answer wasn’t enough. I think that I kept it too high-level around overall architecture, API, and DB schema - while the interviewer wanted me t...Read more