Found optimal solutions to LC hard + medium in 2 interviews but failed both of them because of messy code and leaving bugs in. Was told I did perfectly on system design and behavioral. Is meta actually able to find engineers who can solve these questions in no time, make no mistakes, and debug without actually running code? What portion of engineers are actually able to make it through this process? I read that they’re ramping up hiring but the coding requirements just seem totally insane! Meta engineers who made it through this, what was your practice regimen like? Is the 12-month blacklist period real? Any way I can try again? TC 350
I mean if you had messy code and bugs why would you expect to pass
Optimal linear solution to a LC hard and medium in 45 minutes? How can you solve 2 questions, one of which is hard, explain your thought process, and clean up your code, and debug your code without being able to run? Like what kinds of superhumans can do this?
Don’t forget you have to mention edge cases and run through 2-3 sample inputs too!
Following
It's also a factor of luck. Let's say you practiced a lot graph problems but a little slow on string manipulation. Then you can probably handle 2 hard graph problems and have messy and buggy code with 2 medium string problems
Yes, clean code is expected in interviews. I recommend writing your code on pen and paper or a whiteboard first, or not relying on the run button in LC to debug for you
Yes in 35 min you can even write on wall why not . 2 mediums and 2 follow-ups
Yes? The point is writing clean code, speed comes after. No point in writing messy and buggy code fast
They are looking for Unicorn. Its the sad place our industry is in now. If i was a unicorn, I won't even touch FANG.
It can’t be that bad right? There’s new grads who are acing these coding interviews. It doesn’t look like the bar is much lower if at all for them
New grads have much more time to prep and only have to focus on coding
Well then technically experienced hires have much more interview experience and have had much more time to leetcode in their lives before (for getting internships, for getting new grad jobs, for getting experienced positions). Agree with your part on system design tho
It looks like the hiring bar has increased since 21-22 but how do you think the bar compares to pre-covid?
Memorize
Luck! Luck and luck! You got unlucky with LC hards. I have worked at the old FB, got only LC mediums and easy’s and had bugs in all my solutions before I finally fixed them. I interviewed there again last year and got just LC mediums and easy’s again. And even more lucky because I only got the ones that I had already solved in the past. Blinders and mEtAmAtEs in general like to beat their chests after getting offers from big companies but they don’t understand that it was 98% luck and just 2% preparation.
So in 1 year they went from easy + medium to easy + hard?
No they didn’t go from anything to anything. It was just the interviewers you got. Why don’t SWEs understand this simple concept? There’s no “they”, it’s just random people interviewing, and what questions they choose depends on their mood and the kind of shit they had in the morning. You might have heard Snap asks LC hards, haven’t you? Will you believe me if I told you I got asked only LC mediums and easy’s?
The ones who memorize as many LCs as they can are the winners here. Sad but true.
Memorizing is a terrible strategy. Bad advice and not true.