I was solicited by FB recruiter through LinkedIn. I followed up given my perception of FB being fast pace and open culture. After PS, I went on-site which contains the standard 5 rounds: behavioral & culture fit; coding; coding; design; design.
I was never a fan of behavioral questions and never felt such questions are inspirational, FB is no difference. There was a quick 10-minute coding problem near the end of this round --- you have no time to think but just to code it up. The first coding problem is simple but a little tedious to write code. The second coding problem is medium difficulty with two parts. The first part is simple and I quickly code it. I had to think about the second part to identify the algorithm but had no time to implement it.
In both design rounds, despite the interviewer’s claim that the problem is opened-ended without perfect answer, and what’s important is the thought process, he didn’t really mean it --- a solution that perfectly matches what the interviewer had in mind is expected. The interviewer, graduated from school a few years back, does not have rich project experiences to handle deviations from his standard solution. The interviewer simply likes to move fast on the track of his solution. Any deviation from that track becomes a distraction instead of part of true problem solving process.
Overall I am disappointed with FB interview process. The FB interview loop obviously not really evaluate and identify true problem solving skills or experiences but just how fast you can write bug-free code for simple algorithm problem with little or no time to think. It effectively requires that you have coded the same or very similar problem very recently. I am confident on my coding and problem solving skills and like to present the daily true me instead of an interview-prepared me.
FB hires lots of young graduates and expect them to write fast code. Maybe coding fast and breaking things is fine for web pages, but I suspect how terrible their back-end infrastructure would be due to the code fast mentality.