Meta E6 Phone Screen

I had a one-hour phone screen interview with an engineering manager at Meta. The interview consisted of two parts:

Behavioral Questions (15 minutes):

• I was not expecting behavioral questions and was initially confused about the interview's one-hour duration instead of 45 minutes. Be prepared to discuss the impact of any project you mention.
• Discuss an accomplishment you are proud of, your role in achieving it, and its impact.
• Describe a time you faced conflict in a project and how it was resolved.

Coding Questions (40 minutes):

• A medium-level question about string palindromes. I solved it using a deque and iteration, comparing it to a recursive approach. The interviewer was interested in my reasoning and the trade-offs between the two methods.
• A medium-level question involving prefix sums and 2D arrays. I explained prefix summing in one dimension but did not find the optimal solution for two dimensions during the interview. However, I had a productive discussion about my solution and the potential for a more efficient approach to reduce time complexity.

A week later, the recruiter informed me that I passed the phone screen with strong coding marks, despite not finding the optimal solution for the second question. My onsite interview is scheduled for a couple of weeks. I will update this review with the onsite interview details.