want to get into MetaIn this article, we will take you through the whole interview process of one of Programhelp's students in Meta SDE: Coding + System Design + Behavioral, all of which should not be left behind. Today's article brings you into the whole Meta SDE interview process of one of Programhelp's students, from the topic dismantling to the system design strategy, as well as the actual triggering scenario of our "real-time voice assistance", the whole process is restored.
Company Profile: Meta's Technical Interview Preferences
Meta's engineering team prefers to pursue "efficient solutions + systems thinking". Interviewers generally value this:
Are the boundaries of the code well thought out
Ability to dictate the pace of the discussion
Ability to grasp system bottlenecks and trade-offs
The Coding session favors variants of high-frequency questions, and the System Design session favors modeling around an actual product abstraction with an emphasis on scalability and fault tolerance.
Brief background of trainees (Programhelp voice-assisted trainees)
Fresh graduate of Haibun CS, 400+ questions in Leetcode, fluent in English, listening, reading and writing.
Meta got the interview through the internal promotion channel, worried about Coding face high pressure + System Design stuck in the rhythm, so I found Programhelp and chose our main "online remote + no trace voice reminder" service to assist in the whole process.
Review of the interview process
Round 1: Two algorithmic questions
This round was a white male interviewer who cut right to the chase right out of the gate. The first question was a typical DFS set question, described like this:
There is a nested list, which is a list of integers or lists, each integer should be weighted according to the depth of its sum, the top depth is 1, the more nested the deeper the higher the weight.
Our trainee, assisted by Programhelp online, read the questions while synchronizing with us to understand the logic, and quickly identified key points such as:
Depth starts at 1;
Empty list to handle;
To use recursion.
Our real-time voice reminds us, "Watch out for base case and deep pass references," and he obediently puts the dfs(nestedList, depth) The interviewer didn't even ask for a dry run. The interviewer didn't even ask for a dry run.
second question
This question is a balanced bracket check: enter a string of () respond in singing [] Mixed characters to determine if the structure is legal. The rules are very fine, for example:
- Empty strings are legal;
(A)respond in singing[A]All legal structures;- AB Splicing is also legal.
We knew at first glance that this was the classic question from Leetcode. But the interviewer is particularly concerned about space complexity.
With our prompting, the trainee first wrote a standard O(n) solution using a stack, which was simple in logic and satisfactory to the interviewer. The interviewer was satisfied with the simple logic. But then he asked: Is there a way to write the solution in O(1) space?
We guided him by voice to recall the solution of forward + backward traversal and hinted, "You have to use lists for python string immutability." Sure enough, the interviewer got stuck for a second and asked:
"Did you create this result? Isn't that O(n) too?"
We immediately reminded the voice: "He wants an in-place solution, or you can rewrite the list." The trainee converts the string to a list operation on the spot and explains it:
"Because Python string immutable, it must be changed to a list to avoid extra space."
The communication was very fast-paced, and Programhelp's voice reminders helped him lock down the key logic and answer the questions in a way that didn't leak. At the end, the interviewer asked:
"Your line of work
for i in range(len-1, -1, -1)How is the empty case handled?"
Trainee replied, "This is best practice for python reverse traversal, and the EMPTY case can be handled." The interviewer actually complimented, "This is exactly how we think."
Round 2: System Design + Second Follow-Up
The second round is system design, designing a ticketmaster-like ticketing system.
We prepared user flow diagrams and module diagrams in advance before the game, and after the opening, the students directly opened the whiteboard to draw architecture diagrams, and the interviewer took a look at the very smooth, and started to ask questions:
- What about large numbers of users grabbing tickets instantaneously?
- How is unpaid timeout processing designed?
- How will I be notified when tickets are sold out?
- How can I be sure that I will get my ticket after I pay?
- Is there a waitlist mechanism? How to prioritize notifications?
That's when we voice prompted him in real time not to forget to mention it:
- Distributed locking: ticket-grabbing concurrency control;
- Redis + TTL: Locked seats & expired releases;
- Kafka / SQS: Handles asynchronous confirmation of payment success;
- Priority Queue: waitlist Queuing mechanism.
The whole system design process was tightly paced, but every follow-up was predicted in advance, especially when we mentioned the waitlist + priority notification strategy, the interviewer nodded frequently and said, "This is exactly how we think."
Interview Summary & Advice
To be honest, Meta's interviews are not exactly "sea of questions", but they are fast-paced, with lots of follow-up questions and tricky details. Our student summed it up very aptly: "Being able to write code is the foundation, but being able to tell the trade-off and scalability behind it is the winner."
A few suggestions for students preparing for Meta:
Algorithm questions don't just brush up on solutions, practice expression + dry run habits. It's more important to be able to speak clearly on the spot than it is for you to be able to write fast;
Prepare several module combination templates in advance for system design (the typical combination of cache + queue + database must be familiar);
Don't be afraid to ask questions, the key is to structure your response to the question, for example, you can divide the answer into three categories: "Function Points", "Scalability" and "Stability";
English expression is not required to be advanced, but to be logical and clear, the students rely on "drawing diagrams + step-by-step ideas" to stabilize the pace.
Special note: Meta's interviewers like to follow up to see how flexible your thinking is, especially when it comes to system design. Being asked a question, and then being able to counter it at three levels is what we have been trained to do in Programhelp online voice assistance.
Programhelp: It's not a proctor, it's your interview think tank!
We at Programhelp offer a "no-trace, no-fault" interview assistance system:
Full online voice alerts: Can't read the topic? Logic stuck? We will real-time voice prompts to help you think keywords to help you stabilize the pace;
Practice questions in advance to predict follow-up questionsIn this case, we prepared the "asynchronous notification + Redis TTL + waitlist mechanism" in advance for the student's system design question;
English answer expression template trainingWe'll help you practice sentences like "In terms of scalability, I have two strategies..." over and over again;
Remote online + real-time screen sharing without any local traces: Adaptation to Karat, CoderPad, Codesignal, HackerRank and various other platforms;
One-on-one previews + mock Q&A before each round of interviews, not only content preparation, but also the tuning of mental rhythms.
So, if you are: brush a lot of questions but do not dare to really on the field; follow-up question response is always very weak; want to find a team that understands the process, understands the system design, but also can help you escort the English expression;
Then contact us directly and let us be your hidden hangout on the way to your SDE landing.
