Interview with Facebook

DatabaseHead

Anyone have any insights when interviewing with Facebook?

dizzy_kitty

This is what I found on Glassdoor :


Interview


One HR interview, one takehome data challenge, one shared screen with SQL and one onsite with several 1:1 interviews. They check your coding skills and product sense via the takehome, your sql skills via the shared screen interview and machine learning theory as well as product sense during the onsite.
They let you choose the language for the takehome and onsite there is no coding on the board. So you just…
Show More


Interview Questions


Data challenge was very similar to the ads analysis challenge on the book the collection of data science takehome challenge, so that was easy (if you have done your homework).


SQL was: you have a table where you have date, user_id, song_id and count. It shows at the end of each day how many times in her history a user has listened to a given song. So count is cumulative sum.
You have to update this on a daily basis based on a second table that records in real time when a user listens to a given song. Basically, at the end of each day, you go to this second table and pull a count of each user/song combination and then add this count to the first table that has the lifetime count.
If it is the first time a user has listened to a given song, you won't have this pair in the lifetime table, so you have to create the pair there and then add the count of the last day.


Onsite: lots of ads related and machine learning questions. How to build an ad model, how to test it, describe a model. I didn't do well in some of these.

---

Overall it seems that interviewees found the interviews to range from average to difficult.
There are more examples provided: https://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Facebook-Interview-Questions-E40772.htm

LeBroke

PM me.

I had a few interviews with them, though that died down since I'm not able to work in the US until I finish my degree.

I can send you study material their internal recruiter sent me.

DatabaseHead

Thanks for the feedback.

This is for a data scientist position within the company. It's going to be a tough one I already know.

Tonight I am relaxing and getting prepared and for the next 7 days or so I am going to be nose to the grind stone.

Thanks LeBroke.

Ertaz

DatabaseHead wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback.

This is for a data scientist position within the company. It's going to be a tough one I already know.

Tonight I am relaxing and getting prepared and for the next 7 days or so I am going to be nose to the grind stone.

Thanks LeBroke.

Good luck man! The smart money is on you....

mzx380

Databasehead
I've spoken to you on many threads and can attest to your acumen on several subjects. I'm sure whatever happens, you'll do well in the interview.
Good luck

EnderWiggin

Emphasize the fact that Facebook servers are owned by the company, and that they should be able to legally do whatever they want with the information on those servers. If people willingly write information to Facebook's hard drives, then that is implied consent to the data being given to whomever Facebook desires.

Instahire!

DatabaseHead

Appreciate the kind words

I requested 2 - 3 weeks to prepare waiting for the reply. A lot of review on statistics and then pivoting into KPI's for website performance and of course products/services that are currently deployed and in use.

I have a massive whiteboard at home I broke out and placed back on my office wall for notes, mappings etc...

Let's see what happens. If I crash and burn at least I tried.

the_Grinch

Good luck! I know you'll knock it out of the park!

scaredoftests

Good luck! I know you will do well.

DatabaseHead

Received a reply back from HR and they said they need at least 3 weeks to get the lab and interview set up for me. I am going to push for a month.

This will give me a year at my current position which means something to me and enough time to review all the action items required to make it to the final round.

Thanks for the support, great community.

stark4

DatabaseHead wrote: »

they said they need at least 3 weeks to get the lab and interview set up for me.

3 weeks to setup your lab? wow they are not playing.

cyberguypr

Plot twist: lab runs on a 486 DX2-66 4MB RAM and 540 MB HD machine so they need to be very selective on what they put there.

shimasensei

Nice, good luck!

Blucodex

cyberguypr wrote: »

Plot twist: lab runs on a 486 DX2-66 4MB RAM and 540 MB HD machine so they need to be very selective on what they put there.

Not that selective--just press the turbo button.

networker050184

I interviewed with them once for an automation role. Pretty standard stuff. Speak to recruiter, a couple phone screens and an interactive coding interview. It was my first and only coding interview and I bombed, but that was no fault of theirs and I thought they were very fair and helpful even though I was struggling with some of it.

DatabaseHead

networker050184 wrote: »

I interviewed with them once for an automation role. Pretty standard stuff. Speak to recruiter, a couple phone screens and an interactive coding interview. It was my first and only coding interview and I bombed, but that was no fault of theirs and I thought they were very fair and helpful even though I was struggling with some of it.

My living the last 6 years has been coding SQL, so hopefully I'll be in good shape.

LeBroke

IDK I think they're more likely to do an OOP language interview (Python, Ruby, Java, whatever). More likely than not they want SWEs who can do SQL and math, as opposed to the other way around.

Good luck!

PersianImmortal

That's awesome!!! Good luck with your interview!!

TechGromit

EnderWiggin wrote: »

Emphasize the fact that Facebook servers are owned by the company, and that they should be able to legally do whatever they want with the information on those servers. If people willingly write information to Facebook's hard drives, then that is implied consent to the data being given to whomever Facebook desires.

I don't know about this, there are various privacy laws the company must comply with, but I'm also puzzled why the public is making a big deal out of this, data mining is nothing new. It's been used to advertise and sell goods and services for years, why suddenly people feel there privacy has been violated makes no sense. It might be Trump related, many people do not like Trump, if they feel their information was used in some way that helped Trump get elected may be one of the reasons they are outraged.

Moldygr33nb3an

TechGromit wrote: »

I don't know about this, there are various privacy laws the company must comply with, but I'm also puzzled why the public is making a big deal out of this, data mining is nothing new. It's been used to advertise and sell goods and services for years, why suddenly people feel there privacy has been violated makes no sense. It might be Trump related, many people do not like Trump, if they feel their information was used in some way that helped Trump get elected may be one of the reasons they are outraged.

Facebook, legally is in good shape. Every data harvesting app was third party and the users GAVE direct consent for the third party app to access their personal information. The senate hearing is a charade from the United States (pretending to do something) and Zuck trying to earn the trust back from the people who appear to be leaving FB at record rates.

I'm sorry but I don't feel sorry for people. Failure to read or do your due diligence requires no sympathy on my part. Every single one of those apps used plain language and yet you allowed it, just so you can find out if you're smarter than a 5th grader.

Well buddy, one: You're not despite what the app said and two: now you know.

the_Grinch

Gotta agree these hearings are shams. I especially enjoyed when one of the Senators said that if you opted to not get advertising you would have to pay, why should I have to pay for that? Um because it cost money to provide the service? If they aren't getting paid from advertisements then the users will have to pay or they'd cease to be a company.

All that said I'm pretty sure Facebook was losing a lot of people way before all of this. Most of my feed is memes, people hawking their Multi-Level Marketing crap or political posts. It's strayed so far from what it was meant for that I doubt it will ever get back there.

Mooseboost

Good luck on the interview! I have no doubt you will do well.

Just curious - did you apply or did they reach out to you? Is there a certain aspect of Facebook that makes you want to work there?

DatabaseHead

@Moose

They reached out to me. They like the fact I use stats in my current position and previous ones, along with my 6+ years of SQL, ETL and reporting.

With that said it's a long shot but I have ~4 weeks to study up on my gaps.