Meta E5 Phone Screen + Full Loop | Passed
Summary
I successfully passed my E5 Production Engineer interview loop at Meta in London, UK, after a fast interview process and a total of three weeks of preparation.
Full Experience
Giving back to the community.
Phone Screen
Round #1 - Coding
- a) Easy-to-medium problem involving string manipulations. Not on LeetCode.
- b) A version of 489. Robot Room Cleaner with slightly relaxed constraints.
Round #2 - Troubleshooting
A typical troubleshooting round that tests my debugging skills in Linux-like environments.
Full Loop
Round #1 - Coding
- a) A classical one. 125. Valid Palindrome.
- b) A problem involving reading 2 CSV files, doing some calculations, and printing the combined output. Very similar to a classical problem involving dinosaurs. Not on LeetCode.
Round #2 - Systems Design
Design a CI/CD pipeline to upgrade the kernel version on a set of thousands of machines distributed across several data centers.
Round #3 - Behavioral
Standard behavioral questions with a twist at the end. For example: Tell me about a time you convinced someone to change their mind, and later you found you were wrong.
Round #4 - Operating Systems
Standard OS questions around memory management, processes and thread management, and VFS. 2nd part of the round was dedicated to troubleshooting questions.
Interview Questions (6)
Robot Room Cleaner (Modified)
Valid Palindrome
A classical one. 125. Valid Palindrome.
CSV File Processing and Aggregation (Dinosaur Problem Variant)
A problem involving reading 2 CSV files, doing some calculations, and printing the combined output. Very similar to a classical problem involving dinosaurs. Not on LeetCode.
Design a CI/CD Pipeline for Kernel Upgrades
Design a CI/CD pipeline to upgrade the kernel version on a set of thousands of machines distributed across several data centers.
Tell me about a time you convinced someone to change their mind, and later you found you were wrong.
Standard behavioral question: Tell me about a time you convinced someone to change their mind, and later you found you were wrong.
Operating Systems: Memory, Processes, Threads, VFS
Standard OS questions around memory management, processes and thread management, and VFS.
Preparation Tips
I only had a week of preparation before my Phone Screen and 2 weeks before the virtual on-site. The process was pretty fast - it took less than a week from the final round to the offer.