The road to my new role @ Meta

Feb 27 23 Comments

The interview road to my new role @Meta
TC: 220
YOE: 10+

TLDR: I interviewed 5 times and got rejected, until I focused on my soft skills improved and got an offer.

Salesforce has excellent WLB, great culture, and I was doing meaningful work, TC was meh, but I though it was very good until I learned about blind. Despite the TC I was very happy and didn't really want to leave, until some shit went down in my org, and a portion of my team got let go and others got force moved to another project.

I freaked out updated my resume, and for the first time in my 10+ YOE started to LC, and learn the fundamentals of data structures and algos. I have no formal education in CS, but I'm a pretty decent programmer and just grinded for a few weeks. 30Medium/30 easy. It was a struggle, a slog. I figured if I got hards in an interview, there was no chance, so I didn’t focus on it at all. Algorithms and Data-structures don’t have that much to do with the craft and art of software development except in rare cases, so its not something I spent much time on in my career.

First I applied internally at Slack, not wanting to leave Salesforce.

First Slack interview for Staff level position. No LC, easy peasy conversation, I really thought I was going to move teams. Ghosted after months.

Second Slack Interview. Team had red flags, no LC, easy peasy interview Hiring manager said he wanted to move forward. Later denied.

Third slack interview. No LC questions, easy peasy conversation, I was highly qualified for the position with over a decade of experience in the stack. Later denied because I didn’t have enough experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Finally I just decided to give up on Salesforce, but I didn’t feel I was ready for Meta, or Google, and applied to Auth0, Microsoft and Amazon, to my surprise I got interviews at these with no referrals.

Auth0 -
Phone screen easy, no LC, Tech interview round was interesting, kind of like system design. I moved on to the next round, but I didn’t want to work on the project so I decided not to move forward.

Microsoft-
Phone Screen: LC Easy, solved optimal
Full Loop Rounds: Mix of easy/medium, I solved each of these without a whole lot of trouble, maybe a hint or two. In the bar raiser round the hiring manager wanted to poach me for his team, and gave me a softball question reverse a binary tree type thing. I just over thought it, and was foolish, and just really struggled. Ghosted for months, finally rejected. I thought I nailed all behavioral questions.

Amazon-
Phone Screen: LC easy
Final Rounds:
1 hard which I struggled on, but solved, not optimally.
1 hard I struggled on but with help solved optimally
The rest medium, which I also sort of struggled on. I think I nailed the behavioral questions. One of the interviewers connected with me on LinkedIn.
Ghosted for months, finally rejected.

After 5 rejections I started to feel like an imposter, but decided to YOLO for a dream job at Meta, to my surprise I got an interview.

Before interviewing I reassessed the 5 rejections. I realized that my LC wasn’t great, but I could probably charm my way into hints and solve the problems well enough for a passing score so long as I rocked behavioral and highlighted my experience and real accomplishments. I focused 80% of my study time working on behavioral prep, being confident, and being prepared for the behavioral questions. Despite thinking I did well on the behavioral in my previous interviews, I obviously did not, especially since Slack rejected an obviously qualified candidate with no coding rounds. I had to accept that I did poorly, despite thinking otherwise. Educative.io has good resources on STAR interviewing, and I highly recommend it.

Meta - Phone screen LC easy Slam dunk
Final Rounds, 4 of the 5 rounds were LC easy/medium level questions; slam dunks.
1 round had a non LC coding questions that I sort of struggled with. I got asked some light system design questions that I answered confidently. Another round I solved one of the LC medium question easily, but then was asked to solve it another way, and I just couldn’t see a different solution. I felt bad about it, and resigned myself to getting rejected again.

The difference this time with Meta, was that I focused way more on soft skills, and this helped dramatically even during coding rounds because I was able to be articulate about my solutions, and was able to better read and gage the interviewers reactions.

I ended up having a 6th round. Mostly talking about the project, and a LC Easy. Nailed it

Finally got an offer. During negotiation the recruiter said I was pretty much the only candidate who was qualified, and did well. (surprised to hear that since it gives up leverage). I accepted a decent offer and I’m grateful and humbled for the opportunity, I’m feeling relieved, validated and excited for my new project. Don’t give up, don’t take rejection personally look objectively at your flaws and improve them.

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TOP 23 Comments
  • Meta
    reshabpent

    Go to company page Meta

    reshabpent
    Can you share the level and TC you got at Meta ?
    Also, ex Salesforce here, welcome and feel free to ping if you want any help :)
    Feb 27 6
  • Meta
    metaverse2

    Go to company page Meta

    metaverse2
    Congratulations. Welcome to Meta!
    Feb 27 0
  • No competing offers. I could only leverage my position at salesforce. You have to do well enough on the coding rounds at least enough to give signal. You must also have great soft skills. For my role there was very little system design but I have a feeling this is not the norm. System design would have been my strength.
    Feb 27 2
  • Rocket Mortgage
    nYHG20

    Rocket Mortgage

    nYHG20
    Congrats.

    This was a great story for me to read. I’ve had 7 loop rejections so far and it’s extremely frustrating. You reach out for feedback but get ghosted and so you are left to guess about where you went wrong.

    Got a virtual Meta E6 loop in 3 weeks and prepping hard, fingers crossed!
    Feb 27 4
    • Toptal
      xwTh68

      Go to company page Toptal

      xwTh68
      Could you please share your experience when you do the interview? Also, how are you preparing? I've scheduled an E6 loop in a month, so I'm now gathering prep materials for it.
      Feb 28
    • Rocket Mortgage
      nYHG20

      Rocket Mortgage

      nYHG20
      Right now I am prepping by grinding leetcode mediums (the Blind 75 + meta tagged questions), at least 3 per day. Also doing the educative.io series on Grokking The System Design Interview (at least 1 mock “system” per 2 days). I also read the “Cracking the Coding Interview” book from Amazon as it has lots of practical and useful information for algorithm solution explanation.

      Might ask a few friends for mock interviews, but I have done several now so it’s less about nerves and more just making sure I know the material.
      Feb 28
  • I’m planning to leave SF too. How long were you at SF? How long did you study for Meta?
    Feb 27 2