Why did I get reject from FB?
For some context, I have done 500+ leetcodes around 100 hards. I grinded them in the bathroom, in my dream, under the bed, eating, etc. I also mentored people to get internship at Google, Microsoft, Lyft, Dropbox, Facebook, etc. I had final interview with FB for internship 2 weeks ago. The questions asked were very easy. 3 sum and right side view binary tree. I discussed the approach, walked though test cases, discussed the time and space complexity before implementing it. Then after interviewer approval, I implemented the solution, then I walked through the codes line by line. Then after that I walked through the test cases again, and comes up with other test cases, and answer follow up questions correctly. The coderpad should have documented all my solutions. I was able to do all this within 30 mins. Also, the interviewer was like 10 min late to the interview. Then I got rejected on Monday. Needless to say I was like WTF. The only reason that I can think of might be because of my accent, but my accent is not even that bad. Another unlikely reason might be because the interviewer might have wrote my feedbacks after thanksgiving and by that time, he might have forgot and mixed up who he interviewed.🤦♀️🤷♂️ What do you guys think? Any FB insider thought? What should I do at this point? Also I'm in host matching for Google winter/ spring internship rn. If any Googler is interested to advertise my profile to managers, I'll dm you. 🙆♂️🙆♀️
I can't comment on what exactly went in your case. Usually, you're expected to solve 2 questions in the phone screen. Roughly take 20 minutes each.
I agree, that seems to be the process.
You could probably ask the recruiter for some constructive feedback. They usually get to read the complete feedback.
Racism
Interview is not exam, interview is inter-view, so from your perspective you view FB as a place you want to work at, from your interviewer’s biased perspective, he or she doesn’t like you the person or your code or you lack the sense of humor or whenever you talk your audience want to commit suicide or any possible reason. Remember interview is not an exam you take at school, you can be 100% correct but if you annoy the interviewer or if your voice sound like the interviewer’s ex-boy/girlfriend who broke your interviewer’s heart, you will still fail. It’s just that simple, i know its not fair and it doesn’t say anything about you, welcome to the life outside school.
Yup, nodded. I wished I looked like David Beckham with perfect english accent and sense of humor like Robbin William and smart like Einstein.
You'd still fail. Someone might not like Beckham. Your British accent might seem to difficult to understand. And Einstein is ..
you may have just gotten some interviewers on a bad day unfortunately
It’s similar to get into Harvard or MIT, huge number of applicants, very limited open spots. If you didn’t get in, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your skills aren’t good enough. It’s some other variables in life.
Grow up. It’s not similar to get into Harvard or MIT.
It's definitely no where closer to Harvard or MIT LOL! At the most you'll get hired in 6 months again.
So, you already started mentoring people in getting into FB and Google? First, I thought you’re the techlead. Then you said, you applied for intern position! WTF? Also, you took too long in coding.
Lol, I mentored fellow college students that don't know d&s. I taught them various type of problems, datastructure and algorithms. Eventually they got good enough to get these internships. Also the coding part actually took less than 5 minutes. The rest was me communicating my solutions.
Nice of you to fellow students. For interviews, don’t overdo communication. Talk as much as you want while coding. But most interviewers prefer that you solve another problem instead of talking for 25 additional minutes for a problem you solved in 5 min.
Shit happens. It’s not your fault, but that’s how the world works. You stay grounded, confident and do great things in your life. Many people assessing your skills might not be as bright as you would imagine them to be. They will have degrees from the right schools, work at the right firms and will have the right words coming out of their mouths. Over time you will get a sense of who knows what, how well and how much. Let me tell you a story. Back in college, I was dating a girl and helped her with her homework. She turned in my work and got a zero for a problem. She was furious at me because all her friends got the answer right and she was the odd ball. To make matters worse, this problem was very similar to an example problem that came with a solution in the course textbook. I stood my ground and told her I was right and the text book was wrong. I provided her with the correct formula that should have been printed in the first place. I had the derivation written down and she took it to her professor. In his 20 years of teaching, no one had spotted this error and the professor was very impressed and fixed her score. I asked her to ask the professor to give a zero for all other students who answered it incorrectly. He declined and tells that’s not how the world works. No pat on the back, no acknowledgment of this fix whatsoever in class and the world moves on. If you think this won’t happen in your school, it’s was top 10 CS school and the course work was in algorithms.
I’ve also seen that if you’ve come across the problem before, you should at least pretend to struggle with it or ask for a different problem. If you start straight up writing the solution without even asking clarifying questions etc, the interviewer knows you’re going off of memory and not actually engineering a solution. This may have been a reason contributing to the denial
If you just bang through the solutions you don't give them a useful signal. You just show them that you've done this problem before. They want to see you struggle and figure out what the best solution is.
Too much randomness in the process, it gets better the more experienced you are untill you are interviewing for staff positions or the like when people basically want you to ace everything including hidden soft skills