Meta | E4 onsite | Rejection

SWE, Infra

Phone Screen

1. https://leetcode.com/problems/custom-sort-string/
2. variant of https://leetcode.com/problems/top-k-frequent-elements/

Coding 1

1. Merging 2 intervals lists into a single interval list
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree-iii/

Coding 2

1. Something similar to : https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/380650/
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array/

System Design

1. System to store and search (query) through facebook status updates. These are text based updates.

Behavioral

1. What did you do when you had to work with a difficult teammate

2. Time when you received actionable feedback

3. When you couldn't meet a deadline

4. Few other basic questions

Verdict: Reject after 3 days

Did well in all the coding rounds and provided the optimal solution with time & space complexities. Slightly messed up the second question in coding round #2, but was still able to get to the heap solution. I did poorly in the system design as it was my first time giving a systems design interview and I think that caused my rejection. Sounded like the interviewer was expecting some solution around ElasticSearch but I wasn't comfortable with that and suggested an alternative using keyword extraction.

Experience: 2 YOE