I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta in Nov 2018
Interview
A recruiter reached out to me through email for a data scientist position. I was not sure if I wanted to work at fb at the beginning. So the recruiter let me join a facebook hosted event where I could talk to some team members, which is nice. However, I didn't like the people I talked to. For some reason I get the impression that they are not very friendly and they don't seem to provide much mentorship at work. Anyway, I still decided to start the interview process.
First round is a phone interview with a data scientist. She asked me some sql questions. I would say it is medium level difficulty. Then one programming exercise, which is like leetcode easy level question.
Then I went to the onsite interview.
1st round: Interview with 2 data scientist. Mostly sql questions. It covers topic like row_number, case, joins. Then follow by simple data analysis questions where you need to check the data distribution.
2nd round: interview with another data scientist. 1 medium to hard level sql questions. Then she started to ask me some ab testing questions. I told her that I never did any ab testing at work, but I guess she thought I should have known it. Well I tried my best to tell her my answer, then she started to told me something like "oh you need to read your book. You didn't prepare at all". I was like okay sorry I didn't know the answer. Even though I didn't want to take it personally, but that is a really hostile comment.
3rd round: coding exercise with 2 data scientist/ engineers? They asked me 2 questions. 1 for array partition and 1 for counting the word frequency in a file. Not too difficult. But you need to ask for details on the requirement.
Then I had lunch with recruiter at noon in campus.
4th round: interview with hiring manager. Mostly business questions and behavioral questions.
5th round: interview with product manager. All he asked was behavioral questions. I had to say those are the most weird questions I got asked. One question is like "do you have any experience where your job is completely different than in the job description". I told him sometimes I will work on different projects. Then he said "oh I am asking do you have experience of working on a completely different role". This sounds like a red flag to me. I mean if you hire a data scientist but she ends up doing PM or developer work, that is not a good thing. I cannot imagine why a company will want to do that. But it sounds like this is something that happened in facebook based on our conversation. I really don't understand what is the intention of this question.
Overall, I don't like facebook's culture. I know people in facebook are very smart, but I don't think I will ever want to work at facebook. Not a very friendly work environment.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Lots of sql questions and data distribution questions.
Conversation with recruiter in email. Technical screening round where they ask about SQL and product sense. Onsite-Loop with four rounds. They ask about SQL, Product Sense, Statistics, Behavioural questions. The difficulty is average.
The technical round kicked off with a design question about A/B testing for Facebook Reels, which I found engaging. Then, I tackled a SQL query on user comments and how to account for novelty effects in ongoing experiments. Thankfully, I had prepared with the company-specific questions on PracHub, and it made a real difference in my confidence. The entire process felt smooth, and after some behavioral questions, I received an offer that I happily accepted.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Design an A/B test for a Facebook Reels ranking change and describe how you would interpret the results
Total 7 rounds: first round for resume screening, second for technical screening, then for on-site virtual with 4 interviews back to back, then hiring manager round after team matching and then salary negotiation with HR
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Meta’s evaluation rubrics focus heavily on "Product Thinking over Fancy Math". Interviewers want to see if you can operate like a product owner with an analytical mindset, navigating messy scenarios affecting billions of users