Meta

Hi all

I justed interviewed with Meta and failed it although my solutions were right. I ran out of time and was not able to code the 2nd problem well. I would like to ask for experience of the community of how to manage time and strategies to do it more optimally.

In my interview the first problem took me 30 mins. I was able to do it within 30 mins because I had solved it before. then I had 30 mins for the 2nd. This is a medium hard problem and unfortunately I had never seen it before. it took me around 10 mins to find a solution. (I already thought out oud). and then I tried to explain my solution to the interviewer but it took us more than 15 mins to discuss back and forth as he did not understand the solution. And finally he told me to write the code when I had only 5 mins left which was definitely not enough for me to write even a helper function.

I am thinking I wasted 15 mins to discuss with the interviewer because in the end what he assessed was that I could not write the code.

I am thinking next time I would immediately request the interviewer to let me write the code and I will explain the solution after the code is done. Even I won't have time to explain he will still be able to assess my solution if it passes all test cases. It will be much better. What do you think?

Also can you share experience how you distribute time when you have only 30mins for a problem you have never seen before? Thanks