12 ms·
They should only keep the engineers that remember how to solve leetcode hard problems /s
by brentmitchell25 4y ago
They should only keep the engineers that remember how to solve leetcode hard problems /s
- nobleach 4y agoHave you ever interviewed with Facebook/Meta? They don't do leetcode problems. Say what you want about them as a company, but I've done quite a few interviews in my career and their process was one of my favorites.
- bagels 4y agoI have. They definitely ask leetcode type of problems.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoThey are notorious for wanting their engineers to spit out memorized solutions of leetcode hards
- nice_byte 4y agoI have interviewed with them more than a single time, and this is simply not true.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThis thread leaves me wondering if, perhaps, interviewing differs within the organization. Lots of confident "nuh-uh"s on both sides.
- nice_byte 4y ago
- nsenifty 4y agoThey don't ask leetcode questions for Front-end engineers AFAIK. It's mostly practical Javascript/DOM/browser questions. Funnily enough though, I heard once you join as a Front-end engineer, you are pretty much a regular SWE and can join any team and work on any tech, even backend/systems.
- tempsy 4y agoit probably depends on the role and team. to say they don’t have leetcode style interviews at any stage for any candidate is “simply not true”
- nice_byte 4y agoI mean, they do ask algorithmic problems, but first, they're not "leetcode hard" (leetcode hards can get just insane, it's impractical to ask those in an interview setting), more like mediums, and second - out of 6 or 7 interviews maybe 2-3 will be those. Domain-specific / system design ones are more important. Though that depends on the level they're hiring for, I imagine fresh grads get more "write code on whiteboard" types of questions.
- tempsy 4y agothe claim was that they don’t do leetcode questions, not that they do easy and medium ones but not hard ones.
- loeg 4y agoBoth upthread claims specifically say "hards," which is not true in the last few years. (In fact, LC "hards" are explicitly proscribed.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025573
- athorax 4y agoFacebook is notorious for using leetcode problems verbatim. Your singular experience does not invalidate that fact.
- nice_byte 4y agoyou're forgetting that it's leetcode pulling their problems from the companies' question pool, not the other way around.
- sh4rks 4y agoIt doesn't matter. At the end of the day, all leetcode "style" questions fall into a particular bucket. Two pointers, graphs, etc. It's not like the company is innovating new types of problems. It's just the same problem reworded.
- m00x 4y agoThis has been my experience as well, same for Amazon. I didn't practice that much since I hate wasting time on useless tasks, and the interviewer literally told me to just leetcode and read the interview book. I asked him a bunch of web questions and he had no fucking clue, all he did was leetcode and interview every year.
- loeg 4y agoLeetcode-style problems yes; "hards" specifically, no.
- lifeisgood99 4y agoThey definitely did when I did a loop a few years ago. Maybe things changed or you got lucky?
- nobleach 4y agoMaybe? 2020 for me. The first wave had me write code to solve a problem.... pretty far from Amazon's rebranded HackerRank/Leetcode nonsense. I was talking to a human being the entire time. They were great about making me feel like they WANTED me to succeed. Next round was more conversational/System Design stuff.
- arduinomancer 4y agoI think you're confused, when people say "they ask leetcode questions" they don't mean they do automated tests The questions the human is asking you come from a big question bank and a lot of it is listed on LeetCode under the meta company tag because people leak them. People use Leetcode to practice for those interviews, they don't use the leetcode site in the interview
- nobleach 4y agoI guess I am just saying I didn't feel like herded cattle like I did with Amazon's automated leetcode/hackerrank rebranded system. I mean, now I'm just here to watch the downvotes pile on....
- matai_kolila 4y agoIDK why this is so contentious for folks, it probably varies by team, role, or something else.
- twelve40 4y agoI have, and it was straight up leetcode. But that was a few years ago.
- axg11 4y agoHave you ever interviewed with Meta? They are _the_ FAANG company that places the highest weighting on leetcode problems.
- bitL 4y agoFrom my experience they place most weight on system design. They allow you to get 1-2 neutral flags from leetcoding and still get an offer.
- dominotw 4y agoleetcode is a standin for all thing you can memorize and vomit out in in interview. Designing url-shortner is no different than edit distance.
- matai_kolila 4y agoMeh, I can do a URL shortener in my sleep, but I'd have to study to beat a leetcode test.
- dominotw 4y agoits the opposite for me :D
- tw20212021 4y agoWhen I did the system design interview the guy told me that zuckeberg created memcached. Not sure if he meant used or invented, could have just been a language thing. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't pass.
- typon 4y agoCompletely not my experience. All the questions I got were word-for-word Leetcode problems. At least Amazon goes through the trouble of disguising them as "Amazon Deliver Trucks going from house to house" instead of "an array of numbers"
- darth_avocado 4y agoI got rejected on an obscure leetcode hard last year in the telephone screen, which was ridiculous considering I had enough practice to destroy leetcode hards. Though it worked out for me in the end, but I was definitely annoyed for a day or two.
- uncletaco 4y agoI got rejected and then when they inevitably called me up the next year the recruiter pulled up the feedback from my interview and I wasn't recommended because I rewrote a function to be easier to unit test, after being asked "how would you test this?". By rewrote I mean I added a parameter to take in a fictional db client, rather than instantiate directly. I told her no thank you and hung up.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoGood to hear that it's changed if they're not. When I interviewed with Facebook, they asked a leetcode problem, had me come back into the office for a second one because I got strong feedback from all the other sessions, then rejected me with a suggestion that I should come back in 6 months when I'm better at tree traversals.
- thereare5lights 4y agoThis is so false. They absolutely do leetcode problems
- dekhn 4y agoUm, when I interviewed, there were two leetcode problems administered by junior engineers to me. A recruiter contacted me recently about a role and I asked if they still ask leetcode questions... got crickets in response.
- tristor 4y agoI had a radically different experience. The worst interview I've ever had was with FB about 9 years ago. I got an offer and it was significantly (like more than 2x) what I was being paid at the time and I turned it down because the interview experience was so awful I couldn't imagine working with the people who had conducted my interview. Even setting aside other ethical concerns, I've added FB to my permanent blacklist of companies I will never work for sheerly because of how shit their interview process is.
- bitL 4y agoTheir interview process improved significantly and they had it arguably better than any other FAANG in recent years.
- ProAm 4y agoI'm interested in any evidence about this. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing its just a extremely general statement about 5 companies with no facts behind it and would be interested to see whats different between all 5 companies in 2022 in the talent acquisition department.
- tomrod 4y agoEh, must have failed to push it organization-wide.
- bitL 4y agoWell, a friend of mine was invited to an on-site interview at Google once, flew a few hours there, then arrived at the reception, waited for 7 hours, then they told him they forgot about him and he can go back home. Some people have bad experiences for many different reasons (shrug)... Pity it happened to you.
- subsubzero 4y agoI interviewed with them 12 years ago, it was a long time ago but I remember all the interviewers felt like they had come from a funeral, everyone was absolutely miserable. I knew right then and there I could never work at a company with such negativity, also they wanted me to skip my honeymoon to start with them which I was not about to do so overall a terrible company and experience. And after I started learning about their shady business dealings I put them on a permanent blacklist to this day.
- mattnewton 4y agoI just joined Meta this year and had to solve leetcode-style problems, not sure what you mean? Maybe that they aren't literally taken from leetcode or taken on leetcode.com?
- dessant 4y ago
- systemvoltage 4y agoA friend that joined Meta's AI team: Blue pill: I am passionate about connecting people Red pill: Money is nice, good people and low stress job
- colinmhayes 4y agomoney...
- filoleg 4y agoI legitimately cannot see this question in the current context as anything but being made in bad faith. Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons for why someone would want to work for Meta? Something like "high pay, interesting/difficult challenges and problems to work on, large scale rarely found elsewhere, and lots of learning opportunities (including loads of great engineers to learn from)" never crossed your mind? Not saying that those were the reasons OP used to make their choice, could have been plenty others. But given there are so many obvious possible reasons, the question in the context of the original comment feels just off. P.S. I am neither current nor a former Meta employee. It is just jarring to see reddit-tier flamebait discourse in HN threads.
- dessant 4y ago> Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons for why someone would want to work for Meta? Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a harmful company as Meta. People usually don't land there because of a desperate need for money, which would probably be one of the very few acceptable reasons for joining that company. And why should my question be in good faith? Why should we not call out people who cheerfully join organizations that pose a threat to our future, and show no civic responsibility?
- suresk 4y agoI had a recruiter reach out to me about some ML positions there earlier this year, and I was sort of interested in it for a bit. They have an applicant portal where they literally have you practice leetcode problems, and are pretty open that you're going to be asked those kinds of questions in the interview.
- EddySchauHai 4y agoI had to navigate a dynamic maze involving teleports and boulders to show my leet graphing abilities to join as a test engineer :) Suffice to say I failed. I build test frameworks, manage test network infrastructure, and deploy CI/CD pipelines (and think I'm pretty good at it). I just really suck at leetcode. Edit: In fact thinking back, they even sent me tips on how to improve my leetcode skills in preparation for the interview! The whole process was completely guided by it.
- MattGaiser 4y agoI spoke to a Meta recruiter a few months ago who offered to send me helpful algo resources for the interview.
- pyler 4y agoWilling to share them?
- MattGaiser 4y agoThey ghosted me, but it was in the initial call.
- oblio 4y agoLeetcode problems doesn't mean leetcode.com problems in a narrow sense (aka copy paste). It means reasonably complex algorithmic and data structure problems you're supposed to solve by coding under pressure, quickly, in interview conditions. And if you think that's not happening, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
- nobleach 4y agoI suppose I AM confused then. I don't mind someone asking me complex algorithmic problems as long as we're WORKING toward a solution together. To me, leetcode means, "you have 45 minutes to solve these 2 or 3 problems... I'll watch". Algorithmic thinking is kinda what I do. So solving those problems doesn't feel like a bad proxy for how I might perform on the job.
- oblio 4y agoYeah, we all solve problems using algorithms. However, how often do you come up with high performance, close to optimal algorithms, on your own, within 45 minutes? How often do you implement heaps and such as part of your day job, versus using standard libraries or common ones?
- jfrbfbreudh 4y agolol. meta literally has their own leetcode style training platform for you to practice questions on when you apply for SWE positions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- burai 4y agoI interviewed for them. Questions were Front End related. One of the questions were "how could you find a node in an hmtl by id", to which I answered "using the DOM api, a querySelector would do a good job". The interviewer started hypothesising that the querySelector is not available, so we had to start discussing a whole binary traversal algorithm. If that's not leetcode I don't know what qualifies as it
- throwawayhtml 4y agodocument.getElementById??
- int_19h 4y agoThat's the DOM API.
- randomdata 4y agoIt was hypothesized that querySelector was not available, not that the entire DOM API was not available. However, if we suppose that the entire DOM API was not available, there would no way to access the HTML nodes so no algorithm is going to save you anyway.
- morelisp 4y agoBasic tree traversal is considered "leetcode" these days? No wonder software is shit.
- ilickpoolalgae 4y agoI previously worked at Facebook/Instagram for ~10 years and conducted over 1800 interviews (got the t-shirts and hoodie to prove it). leetcode style problems are at the core of the "ninja" interviews. In fact, a lot of leetcode problems are sourced from what Facebook asked before leetcode even existed. That being said, guidance is to ask 2 medium difficulty questions as opposed to 1 hard one.
- cloverich 4y agoHuh, I had an interview at Meta a few months back (which I backed out of) and the (very nice) interviewing prep instructions they provide very clearly stated you should be able to do leet code style questions, preferably two mediums, in an hour. Their interview process felt very organized and prepared overall, although I backed out before actually interviewing with folks.
- myth_drannon 4y agoI was wondering if there is a correlation between hiring engineers who spend their lives memorizing leetcode hard problems and a company's ability to innovate and execute? Did they really optimize for hiring the top 0.001% of engineers or it's just that the fish is rotten from the top.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoIt seems to me that the selection process favors Indian and Chinese engineers who are used to cramming for rigorous entrance exams to top universities.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoAnd also Eastern European or ex-USSR countries where highschool STEM curriculum is more difficult than in the west and participation in STEM competitions and olympiads is encouraged for kids. We had to solve binary and hex division and multiplication on paper for exams and study Dijkstra's algoritm and binary tree traversal in highschool CS. Ugly stuff for a bunch of 16 year olds who just wanted to make Flash games. Really made me hate CS.
- foobarian 4y agoThis was poked fun at in ex-YU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmrJQaj8sIo&t=240s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmrJQaj8sIo&t=240s (sorry, no translation; tl;dr: CS without computers)
- Tade0 4y agoEastern European here. From the mentioned I had binary division, but that was it. I was solving leetcode-adjacent problems for the entire last year of high school in preparation for the final exam though.
- BeetleB 4y ago> We had to solve binary and hex division and multiplication on paper for exams This is not ... hard. It's the same logic as decimal multiplication/division on paper. > study Dijkstra's algoritm and binary tree traversal in highschool CS That's more like it!
- loeg 4y agoThey haven't asked leetcode hard problems for years, at least.
- dominotw 4y agoI got 3 hards only 6 months ago. How do you know what they are asking 'for years' do you have access to their questions or something.
- loeg 4y agoI am familiar with Meta's interviewing policy, which proscribes LC "hard" type problems. I don't know the contents of every single interview, obviously. Your interviewer(s) violated explicit policy if you were given LC hards.
- dominotw 4y agoyour interviewers gone rogue theory is hard to accept. Many many people have consistently been getting 'LC hards `for years`.
- google234123 4y agoIn a way does it matter? The interviewers aren’t making the final decisions and the actual hiring committee aren’t stupid and should be able do some basic normalization.
- loeg 4y agoI think it probably matters to the individual interviewees and also matters to the hiring committee because it reduces the quality of the hiring signal.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoThe problem with companies the size of Meta - and even down to 1/10th the size - is that there's just so many moving parts, it's a day job just to try and figure out how things work and where to implement a change. It's no wonder that - at least for a while - Google was churning out new products left and right. It allows people to build new stuff instead of have to maintain existing stuff.