I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Mar 2019
Interview
Recruiter reached out to scout for interest - he was extremely helpful, informative, and encouraged me to take my time to prepare with thorough material. FB wants you to be as prepared as possible with no surprises/tricks to the interview to pick out those who are not only the most qualified but also the best prepared. Scheduled the initial interview around ~2.5 months out.
Video Interview - 45 minutes with a Data Scientist. He opened with a quick rundown of my background and why I want to work for Facebook, but the bulk of the interview was technical - the first half being SQL on Coderpad and the second being product interpretation. I passed and received confirmation that I would advance to the onsite on the same day.
On Site Interview - 4 30-minute rounds testing various topics surrounding applied data, product sense, probability & statistics, and SQL (or Python/R), with a 45 minute lunch in between with a data scientist who is there to help you answer any questions (not part of the interview. Zero questions on behavioral or anything regarding my background. I was not extended an offer and was communicated the rejection shortly after.
Overall, a very pleasant experience - FB is a top notch company with best practices, though of course, individual experience can and will widely vary. For on-site, it's very important that you map and diagram your thoughts on the white board. Most questions appear as though there is a specific answer in mind that they are looking for, though the way you get there might be flexible. The best way to prepare is to think through the different scenarios and products and figure out a way to build a business case around measuring some metric or improving the product. Expect lots of pushback with detailed, probing questions during your answers.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Suppose FB wants to launch feature X on product Y - how would you assess whether or not this is a good idea? How about when standard AB Testing does not work?
Given a table of users, dates, statuses, etc. - calculate the ratio X grouped by Y on day Z. Call out edge cases - don't assume anything about the data without clarifying.
Given a scenario X - figure out the probability of A, probability of A given B, etc. Draw out the distribution of users in scenario Y - figure out what the mean, median, and xth percentile is.
Recruiter screening which is short, recruiter basically asked about background and technical skills, then shared a bit more about the interview process.
Then a video interview about product and coding. The SQL question is not difficult, but I feel like the interviewer is looking for an exact same response with the correct answer rather than letting you make some mistakes along the way and then correcting it. Product questions are around whether you will launch a feature or how to improve a product, again, even if it is claimed that they are looking more at your thought process than the actual answer, I feel like the latter is what they care about in the end of the day. I guess it is understandable given that so many people are applying for the position which is not too technical, their bar needs to be high.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Feb 2019
Interview
I received an unprompted email from a recruiter and after learning what the position was I agreed to interview. The first step was a 45 minute video interview where I was asked to write SQL code and answer a few case study type questions related to their products. The recruiter suggested I use R or Python instead of SQL for this step, but when I was asked the interview question it was very clear that SQL was the best choice of coding language to use. After this step I was brought on for an onsite which consisted of 4 different 30 minute interview rounds, each of which had a different focus (statistics, technical product sense, business product sense, and a SQL whiteboard coding interview). Recruiters were incredibly useful in providing information and preparing me for the interview. In hindsight I did not take enough advantage of the recruiters and the information they provided. I was treated really well throughout the process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Draw a sample distribution of average daily views by users for Instagram.