Meta E4 Infra Experience
Summary
I recently had an interview experience at Meta for an E4 Infra role, where I navigated through screening and onsite rounds, encountering various LeetCode problem variants and a System Design question.
Full Experience
I recently interviewed at Meta for an E4 Infra position. The interview process consisted of a screening round followed by several onsite rounds, including both coding and system design. During the screening, I encountered two coding problems: a variant of 'Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock' and 'Minimum Remove to Make Valid Parentheses'.
For the onsite rounds, I faced several more coding challenges, all of which were variants of well-known LeetCode problems such as 'Diameter of Binary Tree', 'Basic Calculator II' (with an O(1) space constraint), 'Shortest Path in Binary Matrix', and 'Simplify Path'. The System Design round focused on designing a Game Leaderboard.
Interview Questions (7)
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock (Variant)
A variant of the classic 'Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock' problem. The core idea is to find the maximum profit by buying and selling a stock, possibly with modified constraints or additional conditions not specified in the base problem.
Minimum Remove to Make Valid Parentheses
Given a string s of '(' , ')' and lowercase English characters. Your task is to remove the minimum number of parentheses ( '(' or ')' ) so that the resulting parentheses string is valid and return any valid string.
Diameter of Binary Tree (Variant)
A variant of the 'Diameter of Binary Tree' problem. The standard problem asks to find the length of the longest path between any two nodes in a binary tree. The variant might involve additional constraints or slight modifications to the tree structure or definition of 'diameter'.
Basic Calculator II (Variant with O(1) space)
A variant of the 'Basic Calculator II' problem, specifically requiring an O(1) space solution. The standard problem involves evaluating a simple arithmetic expression string containing non-negative integers, '+', '-', '*', '/' operators and empty spaces. The variant likely imposes the strict space complexity constraint.
Shortest Path in Binary Matrix (Variant)
A variant of the 'Shortest Path in Binary Matrix' problem. The original problem asks for the length of the shortest clear path in a binary matrix from the top-left to the bottom-right cell. The variant might introduce different obstacles, path rules, or start/end points.
Simplify Path (Variant)
A variant of the 'Simplify Path' problem. The original problem involves simplifying an absolute path for a Unix-style file system. The variant might add complexities such as different path components, additional special directories, or edge cases.
Design a Game Leaderboard
Design a scalable system for a game leaderboard. Consider aspects like storing scores, retrieving top N players, handling updates, and ensuring low latency and high availability for a large number of users and games.
Preparation Tips
I prepared for the coding rounds by focusing on variants of common LeetCode problems, leveraging resources like @CodingWithMinmer's videos. For the System Design interview, I found the HelloInterview Premium subscription to be immensely helpful for a month.