Meta E5 Full Loop

Initial Call

I got the initial screening call and was asked to schedule my phone screen ASAP. I scheduled it a month out from when I got the initial call, thinking I'd have enough time to get well practiced. Other things took priority so, as I've documented below, I only spent about ~21 hours of proper practicing over those intiial four weeks.

Phone Screen

Prep time: ~21 hours total

https://leetcode.com/problems/diameter-of-binary-tree
- Solved pretty quick, no issues. Got asked about the space complexity and I probably got it wrong.

https://leetcode.com/problems/the-maze
- Explained solution, did not have time to code it out (expected to fail at this point)

Surprise, two days later I got the email that I was invited to the full loop. Again, I booked this loop out as far as possible (about four weeks) to try and get more time to study. I spent ~40 hours grinding LC over these four weeks but it was just not enough.

Full Loop

Prep time: ~40 hours total

Product Architecture

Design Online Judge (Like Leetcode)
- Think I did well here, followed helloInterview's process and was able to get into two deep-dives once the initial implementation was designed.

Coding Challenges

https://leetcode.com/problems/range-sum-of-bst
- I hadn't seen this problem before but understand tree traversal well so was a non-issue. Solved this one pretty fast, no problem. I gave $$O(N)$$ complexity considering the worst case, but I got asked about the best case, which I couldn't remember off the top of my head for binary trees- it's $$O(logN)$$ btw

And a variant of:
https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-intervals
- Somehow despite all the prep I've done, haven't seen this problem or variants and didn't prep for it, so basically froze trying to think of an implementation. Nerves always get to me in these interviews. Found the problem on LC, and looked at the solution and am kicking myself at how striaghtforward it is.

I pretty much gave up after this- stopped prep, stopped practicing, stopped reviewing anything, and just figured the rest of my loop will be a good practice interview set.

For scheduling reasons, I had a full week between my Day 1 and 2 interviews. I could have spent this time sharpening up but I was discouraged and so I just essentially gave up.

Day 2

Behavioral

Most folks skip over these but I thought they might be valuable. I think I did okay on them but my morale was super low so my responses were pretty low effort.
- Tell me about a result you achieved for your team that you are most proud of.
- Can you tell me about the most difficult working relationship that you’ve had?
- Can you tell me about a time where you faced pushback regarding your approach on a project?
- Can you tell me about a time where you needed to act quickly on something but didn’t have a clear idea of how to proceed?
- Can you tell me about a time where you faced a significant setback that forced you to re-prioritize your work?
- Can you tell me about a time a peer or manager gave you specific, actionable feedback for improvement?
- Can you tell me about feedback you’ve given to a more junior engineer or peer?

Coding

https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-palindrome-ii/
- Forgot the recursive solution and just fumbled around something super messy until the interviewer stopped me for the next problem.

https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-word-abbreviation/
- Managed to get a solution written and started testing it, after the interview I found a few bugs in my code. Seriously ready to just kms at this point.

Product Architecture

Design CamelCameCamel
- Again, probably did okay here, got through the initial design and into a couple of deep dives. Honestly I was just ready for the whole thing to be over at this point.

In summary, I'm glad it's finally over. I definitely didn't invest enough time in prep, and I knew that going into the loop, so set myself up to fail. I've got a newborn, a full-time job, and I'm in the middle of getting my Masters degree, so there was really no way I could devote enough time to this. Not feeling too bad about it, definitely not expecting an offer.

Good luck out there, see you in about a year when I get my yearly callback.