I was interviewed previously for the same role in September 2020 but didn't receive an offer. I was advised to wait a year before reapplying.

I did so and first needed to clear two preliminary coding interviews, each lasting about 45 minutes. I was told that sometimes only one such interview is needed, but sometimes two are required—as in my case—to generate sufficient "signal". After this stage, I was invited for an "onsite" interview. This was still physically remote from the office but was an all-day interview, similar to one that might be conducted in person.

Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to prepare adequately for the onsite at the proposed time and asked to postpone. I ended up postponing for many months but did eventually reschedule the onsite. Despite the delay (initiated by me, not Meta), I was not required to repeat any of the preliminary steps and went directly to the onsite. I was told this was possible because it was still a bit less than a year since we initiated the process.

The interview consisted of six individual rounds:

• Two were further coding rounds.
• Two were behavioral interviews (focusing on how I'd handled past challenges, more on a human rather than technical nature).
• One focused specifically on machine learning.
• One focused on systems architecture.

At the end of the day, my sourcer said I would hear more within about 48 hours. I did indeed hear back more quickly, but unfortunately, the news was negative.

The biggest concern was that significantly less feedback was provided this time compared to when I interviewed previously two years ago. It's not that I expect specific feedback when turned down for a job—I know every company is different. However, much more constructive feedback was provided in September 2020 compared to September 2022. This seemed a step in the wrong direction and leaves me less enthusiastic about trying again a third time. Again, this is a different reaction than I had in September 2020, when the constructive feedback at that time left me enthusiastic about trying again as soon as I got the chance.

Overall, not a bad experience, but the lack of constructive feedback this time turned what was an overall "positive" experience into one I'd deem merely "neutral".

Find the k-th largest element of a list of integers.

Design a machine learning algorithm to recommend videos to a user.