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As someone who just went through the FB E5 interview process and got an offer, this is largely incorrect. Or, doesn't reflect how my E5 interviews goes and doesn't match up with what I've heard from friends. This is all anecdotal of course and based on personal experience.

1) DDIA is way too deep for E5, system design or product design. In general, the book is just too deep for any interview. It's a fantastic book but it's dense and too detailed for a 45 min interview.

2) The system design interview is largely around communication and thought process, not spouting techniques and flexing. I feel like candidates have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the system design round is and why it's used. It is not simply a time slot to rattle off design concepts.

3) The big elephant in the room are the coding questions. 2 med/hard per coding round, and you need to nail it all. Not only that, but expectations are higher. So no bugs, test all your code, perfect one shot solutions in optimal time complexity. This is very difficult to do under pressure.

4) At E5 level, I found the system design portion fairly easy. If you've been through the sys design interview before or currently work as a senior, it won't be a big deal. I think people are blindsided by it because they are trying to up level themselves from L4 or E4, and then hit the "senior wall".

5) Behavioral is really important. Unfortunate to not see this being mentioned.

tldr, E5 is hard because of the coding, not the system design. The system design at FB was similar to design questions and depth for all the major tech companies (MS, Amazon, Goog, Apple etc)




Re 3 really seems over kill an unrealistic for an interview, and maybe some times you don't need optimal time complexity.

And TBH with a background in real technical computing I would probably look at buying in any required algos in from people like NAG.

Your not really testing for those that can think outside the box in this style of interview.


That's what I thought too, but I've heard from friends that didn't get offers that not getting the optimal solution is a reject. Even things like O(n) to O(log n). I don't agree with it at all, just communicating what my experience has been (and people I know that have gone through it).

Obviously this is completely anecdotal.




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