Meta Production Engineer Phone Screen
- Result
- Rejected
- Posted
- 22 Sept 2025
Summary
I recently interviewed for a Production Engineer role at Meta, encountering both a coding challenge involving file processing and a system troubleshooting scenario. Despite my efforts, I was ultimately rejected.
How it went
I recently had a phone screen for the Production Engineer role at Meta. The interview consisted of two main rounds. The coding round involved two questions. One was a difficult 'Battleship board variant' that I don't recall the exact details of, but it was beyond what I had practiced, requiring strong DFS/BFS skills. The second coding question asked me to write a program to read multiple files and identify common words, along with the files they appeared in. The troubleshooting round presented an open-ended scenario: given standard system metrics (I/O, disk, CPU), what additional information would I gather for a frequently crashing site? I felt I performed around 8/10 in coding and 10/10 in troubleshooting. However, the recruiter informed me that my performance wasn't satisfactory in either, which felt disheartening, as if they had already decided not to move forward.
Questions asked (2)
- 01
Common Word Across Files
Data Structures & Algorithms
Multiple files were given, and I had to write a program to read those files and print the common word(s) along with the file(s) they belong to.
- 02
System Troubleshooting Metrics
System Design
If all the standard metrics (I/O, disk, CPU, etc.) are already provided, what additional information would you gather from the system for a site that frequently goes down?
How they prepared
My preparation involved thorough practice of DFS and BFS algorithms. However, I found that relying solely on LeetCode's 'Meta' tagged questions was insufficient, as the problems I faced, particularly the file-handling ones, were quite unique and unpredictable. My advice for others would be to expand beyond common tagged questions and focus on a deeper understanding of fundamentals and diverse problem types.