Thursday, April 25, 2024

Cracking The Facebook Coding Interview

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Have Questions For The Interviewer

Cracking the Facebook Coding Interview The Approach

Some of mine :

  • How large is your team?
  • What does your dev cycle look like? Do you do waterfall/sprints/agile?
  • Are rushes to deadlines common? Or is there flexibility?
  • How are decisions made in your team?
  • How many meetings do you have per week?
  • Do you feel your work environment helps you concentrate?
  • What are you working on?
  • What do you like about it?
  • What is the work life like?
  • How is the work/life balance?

Phases Of A Coding Interview

Congratulations, you are ready to put your skills to practice! In a coding interview, you will be given a technical question by the interviewer. You will write the code in a real-time, collaborative editor or on a whiteboard , and have 30 to 45 minutes to solve the problem. This is where the real fun begins!

Your interviewer will be looking to see that you meet the requirements of the role. It is up to you to show them that you have the skills. Initially, it may feel weird to talk while you code, as most programmers do not make a habit of explaining out loud their thoughts while they are typing code.

However, it is hard for the interviewer to know what you are thinking by just looking at your code. If you communicate your approach to the interviewer even before you start to code, you can validate your approach with them. This way, the two of you can agree on an acceptable approach.

Preparing for a remote interview

For phone screens and remote interviews, have a paper and pen or pencil to jot down any notes or diagrams. If you are given a question about trees and graphs, it usually helps if you draw examples of the data structure.

Use earphones. Make sure you are in a quiet environment. You do not want to be holding a phone in one hand and typing with the other. Try to avoid using speakers. If the feedback is bad, communication is made harder. Having to repeat yourself will just result in the loss of valuable time.

What to do when you get the question

Starting to code

Tip #: For Interviewers Distribute Your Hints Thoughtfully

For interviewers, its tricky to decide when to give a hintand when to hold back. The goal is to make sure that you have the right type of question to ease that tension.

When youre choosing interview questions, try to choose questions that have different hidden levels in them. That makes it easier to transition from one step to the next. That way, its easier to give the candidate hints when theyre stuck. Just remember: youre trying to assess the best version of the candidate. If they get thrown off, its unlikely that youll get to see the full extent of their skill setso be patient.

Gayle has a few go-to interview questions that she suggests. One of her favorites?:

Given two strings A & B, find how many permutations of B exist in A as a contiguous sequence

The reasoning: theres a simple, naive brute-force solution to this problem. But theres also another level that involves some level of hashing. If you help guide the candidate effectively, you can learn a lot about their skill set based on how they answer the question.

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How To Crack Facebooks Data Engineering Manager Interview

Data Engineering manager interviews at Meta are truly challenging. They are thoughtfully structured with clear objectives for each round.

Three years ago, I was being interviewed for Data Engineering Manager and I didnt make it. I got a chance to apply for the same role again this year, and I nailed it. This article is to share my preparation and personal experience.

Note: No questions are shared because of Non-Disclosure Agreement with the company.

What People Are Saying

Cracking the Facebooks Machine Learning SWE Interview.
“I wish I had read this book 90 days ago. I wouldn’t have blown a great job that I really wanted. This book goes beyond the usual answers to questions likely to be asked. Instead of telling you what to think it teaches you HOW to think. If I had read this book first and knew what was coming I think I would have nailed it.”- J. Braun, Amazon.com
“Bought this book 3 weeks before interview. Read the book twice with careful hand-writing practice on each question. Got Amazon offer. The interview had 4 questions and one was in the book.”- Larry, Amazon.com “This book is a must-have for any interview candidate. Not only does it give practice problems and detailed answers, but it also gives you good advice about how to approach the problems as well as what to expect. I used this book to prepare for my interviews with Microsoft, and Gayle’s insight gave me a great idea of how to prepare and how to ace the interview. I recommend this book to anyone who has a coding interview in their future.”- Michelle, Amazon.com

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Ask Relevant And Thoughtful Questions

During the coding interview, you will write code, solve problems, and discuss this all with the interviewers. If there is any misunderstanding on your part, then ensure you ask questions. Nobody is perfect, and this shows you are confident enough to clarify things .before starting, which is essential as a coder.

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How To Pass Org & People Management

These interviews will revolve around the below areas:

  • How do you make hiring decisions
  • How do you set your team for success
  • How do you manage performance reviews
  • How do you manage top/bottom/average performers
  • How do you deal with Mediocracy

Google is your best answer. Even if you have amazing experience in this area, I would still recommend you to google and read upon how industry deals with these things. This will give you a good way of structuring your answers.

Again, you need to give them the answers they want to hear. Period. Do not leave it to chance. If you do not have relevant examples from your experience, do not mention it to the interviewer. Simply fabricate one. The best part about fabricating these answers is that you create a fictitious scenario and handle the situation as per the best possible way. While doing this, you will actually learn how things should be handled and also help you pass the interview.

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Meghalee Goswami Completed Her Post Graduation From Waseda University Tokyo Source: Meghalee Goswami

3. How did you manage to get a scholarship from the Japanese government?

I wanted to go abroad for studies, and banking on finances from my family was never an option. The only way around this was to get a scholarship to study abroad that would cover my living expenses too. I narrowed down my priorities 1) get a scholarship 2) go somewhere with comparatively cheaper living costs and choose a course that allows me to work part-time. I researched all kinds of scholarships. WeMakeScholars helped me narrow down scholarships. Theres a lot of content around this nowadays on Youtube, too. But everybodys situation is unique and so are the challenges. There were a lot of deadlines and I remember having a huge calendar where I marked all the scholarship deadlines and worked accordingly. Each scholarship was unique and had separate requirements so I had to tailor what I was doing accordingly. Courses in Japan are research based and I dont think I paid any money to apply to the colleges, unlike other countries where you have to spend money to apply to colleges. I needed a good research proposal that would be liked by a professor and therefore accepted into a university. Without the professors consent, the research wont be accepted. I made a list of all universities that were doing areas in research I was interested in.

4. How did you manage to get such a high-paying part-time job in Japan?

Elements Of Programming Interviews

How I Passed Coding Interviews at Facebook, Google, Lyft, Bloomberg

This is one of the excellent books on Programming interviews by Adnan Aziz, Tsung-Hsien Lee, Amit Prakash, who have already authored a couple of books like Algorithm for Interviews, which is aimed to prepare programmers for the most robust programming job interviews with the likes of Apple, Uber, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

This book covers all the essential topics a programmer needs to go through to pass the coding interview like Data Structure, Algorithms, Dynamic Programming, Bit Manipulation, etc

Here is the link to buy this book â Elements of Programming Interviews

In short, this is one of the best books to prepare for onsite, face-to-face coding interviews, which might require you to code on the whiteboard. If you need a course to go along with this book take a look at the JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Masterclass course by Colt_Steele son Udemy.

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Getting Prepared For A Negotiation

Overall, make sure youre prepared for the discussionand be ready to talk about the compensation you expect for the role. Look up comparables online through resources like Glassdoor or Levels.fyi, but take them with a grain of salt. Published salaries arent always aligned with what people are getting, since some calculate salaries differently than you may, depending on the unique components that make up their compensation. The best way to gauge an appropriate salary is once again to ask your friends in similar roles. It can be uncomfortable, but if you admit its awkward, and explain your reason for asking, most friends are willing to share.

Its also important to know that in New York, California, and many other states in the US, law prohibits employers from asking about your salary history. And if you ask for a salary range for the role, theyre required to provide you with that information. Understand your state law and know your rights going into the conversation.

If youd like to watch the full session recording, tune in here. Go forth and crack the coding interview from anywhere!

Think Carefully About Languages

And when it comes to languages: try not to cling to one language alone. Instead, plan to go into the interview focusing on one or two languages that you already know well. For backup, plan to have a few other familiar options in your back pocket. The language you master does matter to some degree .

But instead of focusing only on what you already know, in the interview, its important to stress that you can continue to learn more languages over time. Dont identify yourself by the language youre most familiar withlike calling yourself a Java engineer. If theres a gap in your language proficiencies, make it clear that, given a month, you should be able to add any language to your arsenal.

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Cracking The Top 40 Facebook Coding Interview Questions

Nowwww.educative.io

Crackingcoding interviewcodingCracking the Coding Interview

Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions is a book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell about coding interviews. It describes typical problems in computer science that are often asked during coding interviews, typically on a whiteboard during job interviews at big technology companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.New content will be added above the current area of focus upon selectionCracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions is a book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell about coding interviews. It describes typical problems in computer science that are often asked during coding interviews, typically on a whiteboard during job interviews at big technology companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook and Palantir Technologies.

  • Number of pages: 500
  • Genres: Computer Science · Science · Technology · Reference · Non-fiction · Business · Coding · Programming · Computers · Software · TechnicalNew content will be added above the current area of focus upon selection

System Design Scalability Data Handling

Coding Interview Questions and Answers

You can expect system design questions if you have 4+ years of experience.

  • Scalability and System Design are very large topics with many topics and resources, sincethere is a lot to consider when designing a software/hardware system that can scale.Expect to spend quite a bit of time on this
  • Considerations:
  • Distill large data sets to single values
  • Transform one data set to another
  • Handling obscenely large amounts of data

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Cracking The Coding Interview

After being rejected from Facebook after my internship, my goal for the 3rd semester in my masters was to back a full time at Google. Stupid me I wanted to take revenge from Facebook, like Facebook cared. That semester apart from backing a job at Google, I got to travel to 6 states for interviews and backed 7 full time opportunities in well known companies, Amazon, Microsoft, LinkedIn amongst the top known. Here is my mantra to cracking a coding interview.

If you are completely new to programming, I would highly recommend reading Cracking the coding interview by Gayle Laakmann

Cracking A System Design Interview

System design questions are more vague and higher level. The purpose of the interview is to understand how well you can gather requirements, and constraints and how you design them.

  • Gather requirements and constraints: Ask clarifying questions to the interviewer. Come up with assumptions and constraints and share them with the interviewer. Decreasing the scope of the vague statements makes it easier to come up with a design in 60 minutes time. Limit the features you want to work with.
  • Give a higher level design segregating different components DB, Backend and frontend being the simplest components. Draw boxes/UML diagram wherever you can. Define clear inputs and outputs to each components.
  • Deep dive into one of the components and get into intricate details of it.
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    How To Pass Full Stack Interview

    This round is the same as technical screening but difficult. For Engineering Manager roles, this round is not difficult. You will not be tested on your algorithms, so no need to practice trees, graphs etc. Stick to basic and you will do just fine.

    The key difference between technical screening and full stack round is that in the screening interview, you will be asked very directed and easy problems to solve. For example, count the number of words in a string, or checking if a word is a palindrome or not. In full stack round, you will be solving real scenarios using language of you choice. The sequence will still be same, where it starts with data modelling followed by SQL and then programming.

    For example, how will you define a function that takes below input and calculates average overall score:

    { Langauge:)

    If you look at this example, this is a simple case of traversing through a dictionary and list object with basic math functions. The actual scenario will also include two or three data structures working together.

    To clear this round, try doing some easy and medium Leetcode questions just to practice problem solving with basic data structures. In my opinion, doing hard problems and algorithm type questions are not much use here, stick to basics and practice as much as possible. Also, you will not find any questions on GlassDoor, so you can save that trouble.

    Contents Of Cracking The Coding Interview

    Practical Guide to LeetCode | How I Passed Facebookâs Coding Interviews
    • Chapter 1. Arrays and Strings.
    • Chapter 2. Linked Lists.
    • Chapter 3. Stacks and Queues.
    • Chapter 4. Trees and Graphs.
    • Chapter 5. Bit Manipulation.
    • Chapter 6. Math and Logic Puzzles.
    • Chapter 7. Object-Oriented Design.
    • Chapter 8. Recursion and Dynamic Programming.
    • Chapter 9. System Design and Scalability.
    • Chapter 10. Sorting and Searching.
    • Chapter 11. Testing.
    • Chapter 15. Threads and Locks.
    • Chapter 16. Moderate.

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    Practice With Mock Interviews

    The steps mentioned above can be rehearsed over and over again until you have fully internalized them and they become second nature to you. A good way to practice is by partnering with a friend and taking turns to interview each other.

    A great resource for preparing for coding interviews is interviewing.io. This platform provides free and anonymous practice interviews with Google and Facebook engineers, which can lead to real jobs and internships. By virtue of being anonymous during the interview, the inclusive interview process is unbiased and low risk. At the end of the interview, both the interviewer and interviewee can provide feedback to each other for the purpose of helping one another improve.

    Doing well in mock interviews will unlock the jobs page for candidates, and allow them to book interviews with top companies like Uber, Lyft, Quora, Asana, and more. For those who are new to coding interviews, a demo interview can be viewed on this site. Note that this site requires users to sign in.

    Another platform that allows you to practice coding interviews is Pramp. Where interviewing.io matches potential job seekers with seasoned coding interviewers, Pramp takes a different approach. Pramp pairs you up with another peer who is also a job seeker. The two of you take turns assuming the roles of interviewer and interviewee. Pramp also prepares questions, and provides solutions and prompts to guide the interviewee.

    Everything Coming To And Leaving Netflix This December

    One person she shed from her life was clearly a big love, as it inspired her to write break up track In The Kitchen. While it cuts to the core grief of a romantic break up, Renée insists it was written as a means of fighting back against her own heartbreak.

    It was very hard to write in a very cathartic way, she tells GLAMOUR. I love a comeback. No matter how hard someone hits me upside the head, I am coming back ten times stronger. Im so f*cking stubborn and competitive. So I got out of a relationship and I was like mother f*cker, you think youre gonna beat me?

    Renée adds that writing a break up track has to be in service of herself, not anyone else. I never want to write a break up song or a song, period thats in service to another person. I dont want to give anybody that power, she says.

    The Sex Life Of School Girls has returned to the US for a second season this month with a UK release date TBC. In the much-loved teen drama Renée plays Leighton, a closeted bisexual who struggles to come to terms with her sexuality.

    In The Sex Life Of School Girls Renée plays Leighton, a closeted bisexual who struggles to come to terms with her sexuality.

    Looking back on playing Leighton in season one, Renée describes her experience as scary as f*ck. Things were complicated in her own life she was in a relationship with a man, while grappling with her own bisexual identity.

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