Meta: are bootcamp mentors your advocate?
I'm starting at meta soon as a machine learning engineer! This is something of a career pivot for me (both in language and specialty), so I have holes in my skill-base (best practices for unit tests, python style, dev environment setup, switching from Ubuntu to Mac, operating at scale, that kind of thing). I'm tempted to lean significantly on my mentor, but these seem like skills that an E5 should already have. Would it hurt me in team matching/reviews to come clean with my mentor on this and ask lots of stupid questions, or should I find another way (outside of meta) to gain these skills? Any other advice for a new remote worker at meta? Thanks! E5 Machine learning TC: 470K plus sign-on YOE: 7? It's complicated
Congrats. Have an MLE interview. Would you mind sharing the interview questions, no of rounds, topics in each rounds. Please mention exact questions. Will help a lot.
Sorry, but I'm under NDA about that- besides, it's not fair play! I interviewed with (and got offers from) several FAANG companies, and the Meta interview was very normal. Be able to swing LC hard, talk about your thought process and think about edge cases and you should be fine!
Cool. How to prepare ML System design? And, what were the rounds and how many rounds in total?
I don’t think you fully understand how it works. Teams are specifically prohibited from conducting 2nd interviews. It’s your decision which team to join. Your bootcamp mentor is here to answer questions, help with logistics, and maybe give some advice on how to pick the best team for you. Bottom line is if you passed the interview bar, you’re not going to be questioned about your skills in bootcamp.
They might not know enough to help you - think of them as mini managers. They should be able to point you to where to get help though. Also, bootcamp used to have daily office hours with people from various part of the company, that might be a better venue for finding someone.
Office hours are still around, used them for hack which was helpful for hitting the ground running. Echoing this. You should tell your mentor if you feel like you have any glaring skill gaps - even if they did have malicious intent for some reason, there isn't really any avenue for them to use that information against you (not like they'll be conspiring with your prospective managers or whatever). All they can do is give you the tools to help yourself. In fact, your bootcamp mentor is probably the most unambiguously "in your corner" person you'll encounter at FB since they genuinely have no competing interests against you.
Awesome, thanks to both of you! That's awesome feedback. I'll definitely be frank with them about where I'm at 😃
OP, this is very insightful of you to recognize your issues and areas for approval, so bravo on knowing this about yourself. Boot Camp is a great time to build up the skills because once you’re on a team it’s going to be harder without this built in slack time to research and study. I would absolutely discuss this with your mentor, part of Meta is to unblock yourself well so you’re going to learn some great skills while figuring this out
Just don’t idolize them. Some bootcamp mentors are junior engineers who are trying to get to promoted and might not know enough to help you.
Location?
Remote!
Thanks for the reply. Sorry I should have asked the question clearly earlier. I meant what city you are working remotely from? Am curious because I could do negotiate accordingly as per the COL.