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What to expect in the interview
This position is an engineering manager role, meaning you will be managing a team of engineers. An engineering manager’s day-to-day responsibilities include:
-Constantly making sure the team is meeting their goals
-Ensuring that engineering standards and best practices are being followed
-Annually planning, budgeting, and executing the engineering strategy for your company’s products and services
-Championing your team’s development priorities with stakeholders at all levels of the organization
-Facilitating constructive feedback from different groups of involved stakeholders to ensure products are meeting customer needs effectively
Write an introduction to an informative and factual blog post titled “How to Boost Motivation”.
Must-read resources on motivation:
-Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink
-The Progress Principle, by Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer (husband and wife research team on what makes us productive)
-The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything… Fast! (video/audio book by author: Josh Kaufman), explaining the brain’s “Why me?” and “Go for it!” switches
-10 Things Happy Learners Do Differently (blog post)
-Do, Discover, Dream (blog post)
How to prepare for the interview
Since implementation design is one of the core 3 pillars of Facebook engineering, be sure to review and understand Facebook’s software engineer interview process. In the interview process, there are 3 stages: written product design questions, mock or real implementation design (on the whiteboard), and an individual code review session. The amount of time given for each of these stages varies greatly depending on how long the interviewers feel would be necessary for you to demonstrate your knowledge and skills. Here is a breakdown of the stages:
Written product design questions: [3 to 10 minutes]
These written product design questions are designed to test your problem solving skills and ability to work through them. They are mostly examples of what you could expect during the product design portion of an interview, which is why they are so short. The format of these questions may seem strange at first, but they will become more natural after you solve the first few.
The interviewer will be sitting in front of the whiteboard, but you should stand. When answering questions, make sure to review them (printed out) before you go into the interview to ensure that your answer is right and also because each question might have different wording.
Mock or real implementation design (on the whiteboard): [10 to 15 minutes]
Questions that may be asked during the interview
What is an object? What is encapsulation? What is inheritance, and how does it relate to encapsulation? What are the three phases of software development? What is an algorithm? When do we say “class” versus “type”? What does agile development mean? How does one use a design pattern in everyday life? What is the difference between fact and opinion? Why would someone build on top of another’s code instead of writing their own from scratch
-Dr. John Walsh, the author of this post, provides interviews for many different types of positions. . See his website to see if he can help you.
Tips for acing the interview
Since the position is for an engineering manager, remember to have good managerial and interpersonal skills. Also, good communication skills are critical. If you don’t already have these skills, practice them well before the interview. Be familiar with Facebook’s code base, and be able to discuss your opinion on what it is that makes Facebook an awesome place to work. This can be done by reading a book, or doing some research. You may want to choose a book or article that is interesting to you, and relevant to the position. The interview will focus mainly on technical questions, so do not stress too much about this topic. Interviewers are interested in your theoretical knowledge, though you will be expected to master the technology itself. Also, keep in mind that the interviewer may have some problem with your past work experience if it does not match their expectations (e.g., experience at a startup). If you have past work experience, be ready to discuss it in detail. Also, if you do not have relevant work experience, this is not a big deal. If they want to chat with you, they will make sure that you will be qualified for the job.
Signature
-Julia Wong, Summer Intern at Facebook (2010)
“Facebook Engineering Manager Interview” : “Tips for acing the interview” [END ARTICLE]
Statement of Purpose: Why Your SOP Needs to be Well-Written and Compelling
