A recruiter reached out on LinkedIn and set up an interview after the initial typical screening. Following that, a phone call was scheduled, which was then rescheduled.

Facebook provides an excellent question guide (as do Google and others), so you know what to expect. Furthermore, all the questions for the Engineering Manager role are straightforward. If you have experience doing the job, they should not be a problem.

My first question was about the hardest time I had firing someone. In my case, it was a non-technical (sales) employee, which seemed to put the interviewer off considerably. He mentioned he had never managed a salesperson and was unsure about sales goals. When I attempted to explain or transition to a story about letting an engineer go, he moved on.

The next question involved architecting a scalable solution and the process. I may have made a mistake by discussing a slightly older solution. However, I personally felt it was highly relevant to the interview as it involved building a product on Facebook that Facebook now provides, designed for maximum scalability (though within the time constraints we had).

The interviewer seemed clearly put off by the time period. He asked for a bit of clarification about what we would have done next to continue the scalability and then moved on. My gut feeling was that he was not impressed with the answer. However, in the context of the question, you must also consider that we were a small startup under considerable time and money constraints, so the solution was based on what we had time for and could iterate on in the future if the product took off.

When it came time for me to ask questions, I inquired if the interviewer had any recommendations for continuing to pursue the role if I was not selected at this time. His recommendation was to obtain the same job at a large company that was similar to Facebook but not.

The interviewer was ten minutes late in joining the interview and stated we would be moving the first portion of the interview to the end, but ended up skipping it altogether. My impression throughout the interview was that he would not be making a recommendation to move forward.

Personally, as someone who has trained with both Facebook and Google's anti-bias resources, I felt that the interview was highly subjective and biased, likely weeding out a candidate who would have been a perfect fit at Facebook.

What was the hardest time you had having to fire an employee?

What's an example of a highly-scalable solution you designed and your team built?