I applied in-person. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta in Aug 2010
Interview
The interviewer was very nice and friendly. After initial introductions about work experience, I was asked to solve a coding problem. Problem was for middle level of complexity.
At the end, the interviewer asked me whether I have any questions. I asked question about their project, which was answered to reasonable detail.
The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Mountain View, CA) in Aug 2010
Interview
I was referred to Facebook by a friend and the hiring recruiter emailed me the next day. He asked for the resume saying that he will send it over to the hiring manager. Next day, the recruiter asked for the convenient days and time to call, and called me the following day. He explained the hiring process, asked me about myself and what I did/do.
Then, a week later, I had technical phone interview with a FB employee. We had a session in Google Docs set up. She first asked me about myself a little and asked one technical question. I had to write C/C++ code in Google Docs while explaining what I do on the phone.
It was quite hard actually. Not even the question itself but the whole experience, you feel bad if you make a typo (and i did many silly typos that I usually do not make when writing code), because she can see your typing in real time. Also, you cannot debug or anything.. In the end, to understand my idea of a solution, she gave me an example input and asked to traverse it using my code. After getting an idea she said, ok, almost correct, you could find a bug in 10 mins, ya, but we gotta end now.
Next day the original recruiter emailed me saying that they wouldn't take me. It seems they needed the correct solution and code to be done on the fly in 25 mins.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a set of integers, print out all its subsets. Write C/C++ code to solve it.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Palo Alto, CA) in Jun 2010
Interview
Was originally contact by a recruiter over LinkedIn.
I had a phone interview, followed by a visit to a Facebook recruiting event where I met with an engineer in-person, followed by another phone screen, followed by an on-site in Palo Alto with 4 members of the engineering staff.
The whole process seemed somewhat disorganized, I was informed after my recruiting event visit that I would be getting an on-site as the next step, but was informed a couple of days later that I'd have to do another phone screen first.
The questions in the screens and the onsite seemed reasonable enough. I'll admit to having somewhat of an off-day at the on-site. I completely fumbled the "are there any bugs in your code" question with at least one of the interviewers; I said there wasn't, but there was a pretty obvious bug once he described the failure mode to me.
There was a scheduling mix-up with at least one of my interviewers, which caused my time with him to be cut short. I'm sure that didn't help with him getting a good feel for me for the sake of his interview feedback.
The culture seems a bit more corporatey than the recruiting buzz might put forward; it seems geared toward people who want to have one foot in the startup pond while having the other firmly planted on the dry land of large, relatively safe organization. There are a lot of small teams, and the reflection I got is that there is a non-negligible amount of bureaucracy weighing on the organization. I guess when you get to 1000 people, that will happen.
The office space is a mostly open floor plan, and the gear the developers are provided to work on is really good stuff.
But that's an initial impression, and things are not always as they appear.
So yeah, weirdness in the interview scheduling and such dragged down my impression, but I'd probably give the dice another roll if the chance comes up again. If nothing else, it will allow me a second glimpse to either bolster or contradict my first impressions.