I was referred by a former colleague and was immediately contacted by the recruiter, who was extremely nice. He asked 20 basic questions involving coding, networking, and systems. Then there were 3 phone interviews, each technical, consisting of coding, systems, and networking.

The coding interview was straightforward, and it was clear that this was a necessary skill, but not as important as the others.

The systems interview was where I personally had the biggest issue. Not because of the material, but because of the content and the interviewer. The interviewer was the stereotypical Silicon Valley "nerd bully" who even warned me before we started that he comes off "a little duchey." The moment he said that, I knew the interview was not going to go well. He would not clarify any of his questions. He would assume that my sub-questions revealed a lack of understanding or knowledge. The questions were ridiculous, down to how certain flag options affect the output of certain commands. I understand that a production engineer must know these details, but it is extremely stupid and unrealistic to think that these details cannot be looked up.

Long story short, I feel like they didn't even test how much I actually knew about how Linux works, just how to look for certain arcane items that vary from distro to distro.

Following this disaster, I was informed by the recruiter that they were "not able to offer me the position," as well as "not able to share feedback." It left a very bitter taste in someone's mouth who had been studying and preparing for weeks, sometimes at the expense of my current job, just to be told "no" with zero accountability as to why.

Oh wait, but there is more. After a long weekend of sadness and self-reflection, I was called again by the recruiter to say that "they actually want to continue the process to the networking interview, due to the fact that there are many PE teams that deal a lot more with networking than with systems." Naturally, I was ecstatic, seeing as how I am currently in the networking field and would be able to crush any interview regarding networking.

The networking interview came along, which I aced completely. I was contacted the next day and told that they were "not able to offer me the position" and "not able to share feedback"—again. It was very weird and ridiculous considering the fact that they called me specifically to test my networking knowledge, only to ask super-basic networking questions, have me get them right, then tell me no, and waste yet another week of my time and energy.

The recruiter at Facebook was fantastic; the overall experience was not. All of the interviewers were fantastic, except for the systems one. All it takes is one egomaniac who thinks only the worthy should have the chance to work alongside them.

Big, attractive companies get away with a lack of accountability in the interview process and literally do not care at all about providing legitimate reasons as to why they think you can't do a job that you know you can do.

20 questions

Coding: Counting things in a logfile, basic algorithms.

Systems: Literally know every single detail of what could arise in a system and how to fix it exactly. Hope and pray they ask you something that you have memorized.

Networking: Super basic. What's your favorite protocol? Questions about DNS.