
My Facebook Interview - edw519
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:MwcxYG4je_EJ:reza.lotun.name/entries/12052007a.html+reza+facebook+interview&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
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ChadB
My Google interview a few years ago was very similar. No matter how confident
you are, it's amazing how nerves can cause you to stand there at the
whiteboard babbling like a newborn.

Google actually had me do two on-site interviews (one in my hometown and one
in Mountain View). The first one went very well. I had a great rapport with
the (single) interviewer, and had fun solving the (single) problem he gave me.

The Mountain View interview went more or less like the one described in the
article. Marathon style. Had good rapport with some of the interviewers, less
so with others. Once you start stumbling your confidence starts to fall apart,
and it can really hurt you for the rest of the day (the interview lasted all
day).

I also didn't exactly end up with the job. They offered me a testing position
with "fast-track" promotion to engineering. I passed on that.

Good advice in the article though: practice problems on a whiteboard at home
or with friends. Especially fundamental problems that you learned in your
first algorithms class and the like.

~~~
nihilocrat
Yeah, when was the last time you wrote code on a whiteboard when you WEREN'T
in an interview? Definitely good advice, but I would caution that it's just an
interview skill, and only serves to improve your performance rather than your
content.

Also, you should remember from your test-taking skills that time asleep is
more valuable than time studying. Thus, as pointed out, you should really make
sure you're well-rested.

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Hexstream
Reading the technical questions made me realize how crappy a programmer I am,
algorithms-wise.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Reading the technical questions made me realize how crappy a programmer I am,
algorithms-wise"

The good news is that this is very fixable.

I could answer the questions in the article without effort but this is a very
different situation from about 3 years ago when I wouldn't have been able to
answer even one of these.

I really started hitting the Algorithm books(Skiena, Cormen, if anyone is
interested ) about three years ago and am now comfortable with thinking
"algorithmically" - at least for sequential algorithms.

Studying algorithms to a fair degree of competence is very feasible even for
non CS folks - I have no degree in CS and am entirely self taught. The tough
part was working through proofs - As I was reading about unit tests for the
answers , either in the original article or the reddit comments, I forget
which - I was thinking it might be better to write down a formal proof that
the algorithm works.

If I face tough questions on parallel/concurrent algorithm, I'd probably take
a while to answer or fail completely - I need to look into parallel/concurrent
algorithms in the coming year.

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tsetse-fly
Here's the discussion from the last time this was submitted:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21795>

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babul
With all the institution name dropping, somehow I suspect a weaker candidate
from a big(ger) brand name university would be hired over him and his main
chance was to measurably prove he was better at programming, which sadly he
failed to do. We all have our bad days.

Also, I really dislike the fact that FaceBook have yet to reimburse him, even
after having >1year to do so and especially considering they have $MM and he
was a student at the time! It reminds me of an interview I had at MXTelecom
years ago, a company with ~40 employees that generated >$120M each year, which
refused to reimburse interview expenses until "after" the interview process
_for them_ (read several weeks) was complete and which never did. Moral of the
story: always be clear about payment of expenses before attending interview
(especially if you are a student - do not be afraid to clarify and if need be
force the matter), and chase up what you are entitled to.

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mynameishere
_didn't at first want to work for facebook because he thought it was a toy,
but was eventually persuaded and now loves it_

...

 _Apparently he's responsible for the "Gift" feature in facebook (you know,
the hole-in-a-box/heart/pantie/etc. little graphic you can gift to people?).
He was the sole person responsible for that._

Fight fiercely, Harvard. It amazes me that code-up-a-copycat-in-a-weekend
websites like facebook think that they need 1st rate engineers.

"It was either the little graphic gift heart, or control systems for
helicopters..."

~~~
vecter
Facebook scalability is quite impressive. I think you do need first rate
engineers for that.

~~~
mynameishere
It's a glorified CRUD app. If they had written the DBMS or Apache or
Memcached, then I'd give them credit for the scaling.

~~~
kalvin
They're actually responsible for a lot of improvements to Memcached.

Here's a list of things you should give them credit for:
<http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php>

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dustineichler
Really good read. Only thing, I hate excuses...

White board problems are killers, no matter how well you know your stuff. I
definitely advocate this too.

I'm interested if anyone else here has interviewed at fb, I'd love to hear
more about this as I'm working out solutions to their programming puzzles too.

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ErrantX
Facebook definitely sounds like a decent place to work. Them and Google are
places I hope to take influence from if I ever make it to having an actual
physical office space :P

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rokhayakebe
BTW Worio returns decent results for search queries.

