Facebook interview: Split feedback.
Interviewed with FB last week. I think it went really well and was hoping to get some answer by next few days since I had competing offer deadlines. Its over a week and I was told that the feedback from my interview was "split". So it has gone to hiring committee for making a decision. What does that exactly mean and what how is a decision made thereafter, if anyone has a clue ? TC : 150K.
Was it for SWE E4 level? and what location?
I don't know what level. I thought level is determined by the interview feedback. FWIW, I have 6.5 YOE. So my assumption is E5, but I could be wrong.
Was the interview onsite or phone? If it was phone give up all hope as it's not hard for recruiting to put 3 or 4 people onsite who got all thumbs up in the phone screen. If it was on site, you're at best 50/50 for the role, and most likely they're chasing the top candidate first, which is why you're waiting. In a calibration meeting only the hiring manager can over rule a split decision, and to do that they need strong footing. You almost would never go against the crowd feedback, and one "no hire" on the loop.
Was an on-site. For the part where you mentioned searching for top candidate. But I thought any new hire goes through a boot camp so that would make the search for top candidate meaningless, no ? I mean to ask, in that case, every interview will be independent of other candidates, since FB has boot camp and then team selection. Let me know if I’m missing something.
The first step for interviews is the interviewers discuss if they want to pass the candidate on to the hiring committee or drop them. If they pass them to committee, the committee makes the actual call. Right now you're in the first step - not a clear pass or fail. They'll discuss a bit more and either pick one of those or decide to schedule you for another interview (with just one person) to get more signal.
They will look at the written feedback rather than the hiring rating to make a judgment call. They will err on the side of caution because a bad hire is more expensive in the long run. The other outcome is they could schedule another interview to probe weak areas