Software Engineer Interview Experience - Palo Alto, California
Process
They had a booth at my college job fair. I gave them my resume and had a one-on-one interview at my college the day after.
They called me that night to tell me I had made it through the first interview and that they wanted to see me again. It went well, so they invited me to Palo Alto for an on-site interview.
It was my first interview, so I might have been too stressed to think straight, but I feel like some questions were pretty hard. The first interviewers (there were two) asked me easy questions, but the second (he gave no feedback at all) and the third interviewers asked hard questions.
The last interviewer asked me to define a function that computes log2(). I gave him the Taylor expansion and a Newton's method approach, but he wanted something else. He wanted me to use sqrt(). I'm not sure whether he was assessing my skills at finding a solution given a weird constraint (e.g., use sqrt()), or if there is an obvious solution that I missed.
Questions
Write a function to prettify JSON objects.
Given a list of n objects, write a function that outputs the minimum set of numbers that sum to at least K.
FOLLOW UP: Can you beat O(n ln n)?
Write a function that computes log2() using sqrt().
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 78 interview experiences for the Meta Software Engineer role in Palo Alto, California.
Success Rate
Meta's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in Palo Alto, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having good feelings for Meta's Software Engineer interview process in Palo Alto, California.
Meta Work Experiences
- 2.0Trending towards bureaucracySoftware Engineer • Current EmployeePalo Alto, California, United StatesMay 24, 2011Pros: - Free food - Reasonably good compensation - Reasonably flexible hours - Lots of smart, capable people - Work can be excitingCons: Working on product teams is trying because of the micromanagement of Zuck and other upper management. Many projects get delayed because they ask for random changes. Working on backend teams doesn't have that problem, but they are typically second-class citizens and don't get as much respect as frontend teams. Facebook is very large now and the bureaucracy is starting to accumulate quickly. It used to be that engineers could just do stuff, but now almost every change requires a great deal of pointless discussion or overhead. For instance, you now have to fill out a form just to log some data. Very strong focus on some of the "hot" product teams means that the rest of the company doesn't get preference with respect to product managers, designers, etc. Most frontend work is boring, mundane PHP. The only challenge comes from poorly-designed legacy systems. Managers will often ask you to work on something you don't care about just because it's a priority for the company. This goes against the claimed philosophy of Facebook, but it's the way things are trending.
- 3.0Fight For Pay, Poor WlbSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeePalo Alto, California, United StatesAugust 13, 2025Pros: If you want to fight, you might get a better salary.Cons: WLB is not ideal, and politics exist.
- 2.0Overhyped Lifelong HackathonSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeePalo Alto, California, United StatesMarch 2, 2011Pros: Good pay, if you negotiate aggressively. Good food. Good benefits. Location is good; California is a nice place to live, although expensive. Lots of exposure.Cons: Management is constantly pushing you. You don't work at your own pace; you have to work at everyone else's pace. You need to stay after work every day and go to work on weekends. People are very egocentric, and their ego is entirely tied to how much code they write. I'm afraid of getting fired every single day.
Meta Interview Questions
