I’m not trolling. This is serious. I’m asking because I think I want to leave Meta and go work somewhere else (nowhere in particular, still looking), but I’m struggling to gain the confidence because of my depression. TLDR at the bottom if you don’t have time. I got in to Meta as an E6 without ever having worked at a tech company. First attempt. I’ve worked as a SWE at non-tech companies my whole career, though. I thought the interview was hard and comprehensive. In fact, I actually thought it was a lot of fun because I got to tap into a lot of my strengths that haven’t been touched in a long time. But I didn’t think it was that hard. Nowhere near what Blind or the rest of the internet makes it seem. Maybe calling it easy is a stretch, but I did very well on my first try with very little preparation. And I’m a terrible interviewer, by the way. The biggest hurdle really was just trying not to run out of time during the coding rounds, simply because it’s been almost 10 years since I dropped out of school. So yea, I practiced something like 50 questions on LeetCode, figured out types of questions that I tend to be slow at, and worked on getting faster. That’s really it. I tried to study for systems design, but every source of study material I could find was just too basic. Things like Grokking and various YouTube videos helped with learning the format of the questions, but they lacked depth. So other than reading through one example and watching two videos, I didn’t study for this. Behavioral was easy. I basically just winged it and tried to use specific bullet points on my resume to justify my answers. Since I wrote my own resume and everything on it is true, it was easy. I didn’t study for this either. During my interview loop, I answered all 5 coding questions (two in each coding round, one at the end of my behavioral) optimally and within the allotted time, but just barely. They were fully explained and clean, though. If I had to rate them, they’d probably all be somewhat equivalent to LeetCode medium. One of them was pretty hard just because of wording, but that’s really it. I had never seen any of these questions before and I didn’t look for them on LeetCode later. The two Systems Design interviews were very fun. They were challenging questions, but I had no issue getting through them with by far more depth than any study material I ever found. I’m glad I didn’t study for this because my experience was way better than prep material. TLDR: - Passed an E6 interview at Meta, first attempt, without experience at a tech company. - Should I feel confident to interview elsewhere? TC 550k in LCOL area, down to 340k after stock tanked.
Blind level of humble brag
You sound like you’re legitimately good at your job, so the interview should be easy.
Once you reach a point of good interview readiness, it's luck. Sounds like you got lucky the first time around. I interviewed with them twice and got an offer the second time - passed with flying colors as it was super easy. I didn't do anything differently, didn't have any special knowledge. I just had a few asshole/aloof System Designers the first time, and the second time, I got people who actually cared.
You’re underestimating the amount of luck involved. Definitely wouldn’t leave meta without another offer
Some get lucky, and get an ego boost, some don't. If you'd had an interviewer who asked you for details about something you didn't understand and he didn't have his morning coffee, things could have been quite different. This is not just tech interviews, this is Life.
Looks like you had a good interviewer. I had much the same experience in my ic6 interview this year. But I would say the interviews tapped into my strengths and they found out what I knew and what I'm good at. A good interview should be fun and challenging. They could have made it so hard that I wouldn't have answered a single question but that wouldn't have told them anything There is nothing special about big tech, there are many industries that are just as challenging.
How do you like your experience at Meta so far?
Hate it, want to leave. Been here for a little over a year. I gave it an honest shot, tried to be open minded, but I just feel like I don’t belong here. Maybe if I was 10 years younger, wasn’t married, and didn’t care about doing work I actually enjoyed, things would be different.