Facebook(Meta): Production Engineer Internship
Can we skip to the good part?🥳Intern at (DUBLIN)
Recently, actually not so recently (Feb 2022), I had interviews with Facebook regarding the Production Engineering Intern role at the London(Dublin) office.
The Process
On 21 January 2022, a recruiter from the Emerging Talent Recruiting Team for APAC at Facebook, Singapore approached me through Linkedin asking if I am interested in their Production Engineer Intern at Dublin and they would love to proceed further.
Key details: This is a 12-week program and it started on 20 June 2022. The internship was in-person, based in Dublin.
What is Production Engineering@Facebook?
Production Engineering at Facebook is a hybrid between software and systems engineering; it keeps Facebook running smoothly and scaling efficiently. The Production Engineering team works within Facebook’s product and infrastructure teams to make sure their services are reliable and scalable.
Sooooo, a person like me (or whoever wants to give the best shot every time) could not deny this offer.
I said “Yes” to them for the further process.
Then on 25 January, they send me a Linux assignment to complete within a given time. The exercise contains a combination of 20 multiple-choice questions based on Linux commands and OS. The questions are mostly based on basic Linux commands( like grep, find, mount, etc.), file permissions, environment variables, process handling(signals), etc.
And after 2 days of preparation, I submitted that with a strong belief of getting an interview call.
On 1 Feb, I got the mail of getting selected for the interviews. The process is divided into three phases:
- Coding Interview
- Systems Interview
Coding Interview
This round is quite different from that of other programming interviews you might have taken or heard of before. They won’t ask you complex algorithmic questions. The questions are designed to check your understanding of basic algorithms and data structures. It will also focus on how well you can use your skills to solve sophisticated problems involving string manipulation, File I/O, threads, pipes, memory, or other systems-related stuff.
First question — There is an array, I have to divide it into two parts such that the sum of both arrays is equal.
Second Question — Not remember, but it was based on hashing.
They also provided me with some helpful resources-
- Coding practice:
- http://qa.geeksforgeeks.org/questions
- http://www.careercup.com/page
- https://leetcode.com/
- https://www.hackerrank.com/
Systems Interview
I found this round of interviews very challenging and interesting at the same time, yet the most intriguing. This round is designed to check your familiarity with the various sub-systems in Linux and their workings. Generally, two different categories of questions can be framed for this round of interviews.
Internals (Theory)
Believe me, when I say, you must be thorough enough with the internals to be able to build a simple prototype if asked. Though they would never ask you to build it, questions would be enough to judge your knowledge.
The discussion would start at a reasonably high level, but it would go deeper until you break and surrender.
Troubleshooting
Here, you would be given a practical systems issue, and you would be asked to troubleshoot errors.
For practice, you might want to work on some projects. It would help you in understanding things better! Some of the projects you can work on:
- You can start by implementing some essential Linux utilities like grep, cat, and zip/unzip in C.
- Code your own UNIX like a shell: this would be of great help!
If interested, more projects can be found here: https://github.com/remzi-arpacidusseau/ostep-projects
I would recommend Advanced Linux Programming (even if some recent system calls are not covered, but then you’ll read syscalls.
Another question you’re likely to be asked somewhere along the line is, “Why are you interested in Facebook?” So, it’s worth thinking through your reasoning in advance of the interview.
So Finallyyyyyy, after some days, I got an email from my recruiter, the best mail for someone who is aiming for MAANG.
But, due to the recession and college, my offer got rescinded.
But still, the best ever experience interviewing with them. I never experienced this smooth process.
#meta #interview
