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Meta | Production Engineer Intern | London, Dublin | 2025 [Reject]

Round 1 (Recruiter Call)

Questions:

Candidate's Approach

No approach provided.

Interviewer's Feedback

No feedback provided.


Round 2 (Coding Interview - 45 minutes)

Questions: Question 1: Top n words in a file.
Given a text file (e.g., a book), print the top n most frequent words in that file.
Clarifications included:

Question 2: A slight variation of Friends Of Appropriate Ages.
A group of centaurs sends friend requests based on specific age conditions. Write a function that, given an array of centaur ages, returns the total number of friend requests sent.
Examples:

c = [120, 110] # 1 c = [120, 110, 99] # 1 c = [120, 45, 230, 400, 88, 300, 101] # 4 c = [101, 120, 230, 400, 88, 45, 55, 300] # 6 c = [100, 110, 120] # 3
Candidate's Approach
  • For Question 1, the candidate initially implemented a sorting solution instead of a heap for optimization. They later derived the time complexity.
  • For Question 2, the candidate used a brute force approach due to confusion with the problem statement and its conditions.
Interviewer's Feedback

The interviewer acknowledged the candidate's questions and provided positive reinforcement during the coding process.


Round 3 (Systems Interview - 45 minutes)

Questions:

Candidate's Approach

The interview focused on system design rather than operating systems, networking, and troubleshooting. The candidate felt confident due to prior knowledge in systems design and engaged in a conversational manner with the interviewer.

Interviewer's Feedback

The interviewer provided positive feedback, including remarks like "Good" and "Great!" during the candidate's responses. They guided the candidate when they struggled with a question.