The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Meta in Mar 2009
Interview
they asked a few questions straight from the textbooks and asked me to implement some algorithms in
trees. Once you finished, they wanted to know if you can improve the implementation by optimizing the complexity and memory usage. It looks like the interviewer is fresh out of the school and does not have much industry experience.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Palo Alto, CA) in Sep 2008
Interview
I applied online through the Facebook website and heard back from HR within 2 weeks. After speaking with the recruiter, we setup a phone interview with one of the engineers. The phone interview was about 20 minutes long and consisted of 2 questions which were algorithmic in nature, one of which was reversing a linked list. I heard back from them about a week later and we setup a time for an on-site interview. I was alotted $1000USD for travel expenses to travel from Toronto, ON to Palo Alto, CA. The on-site interview lasted 4 hours and was split up into 1 hour interviews with a different engineer. The questions were mostly abstract, and language independent. Content of the questions varied from riddles to database design. My impression of the first three engineers was good, they seemed like nice guys, and knowledgeable. The last interviewer came off as pretentious, I felt as though he wanted me to fail -- just my opinion!
Overall, the office culture seemed relaxed and the problems they are solving there are interesting ones. I'd recommend interviewing with them if only for the chance to visit Palo Alto!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have two lightbulbs and a 100-storey building. You want to find the floor at which the bulbs will break when dropped. Find the floor using the least number of drops.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Meta (Palo Alto, CA) in Feb 2008
Interview
A recruiter contacted me and I preformed a brief initial interview and then setup a follow-up interview with manager of engineering who gave an online interactive interview. The interview consisted of typing into a web-browser sudo-code solutions to various engineering questions.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Explain the difference between a LEFT and RIGHT SQL JOIN