Ask HN: Facebook Interview Preparation

4 points·JBerlinsky··3 comments

So, I'm a freshman in college, and I have an interview with Facebook this week. I have been reviewing all kinds of algorithm work, but this will be my first technical interview, and I'm not really sure what (specifically) I should be reading over and familiarizing myself with. I suppose this can be generalized into a "what should I know for a technical interview" question, as well.

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I recently interviewed with Facebook and here are a couple of the questions they asked me:

1) how do you find the square root of a number using only basic operations?

2) how do you position a button over the bottom right corner of an image using only css?

I spent a lot of time reviewing my linked lists and other basic data structures, but that ended up being wasted time. In my case, I knew the answers to both, but let my nervousness ruin my responses. So my biggest advice is to just relax and trust that you'll be able to figure it out. Good luck!

Did you interview for the software engineering position, or a general web development one?

I wasn't really interviewing for a specific position. They reached out to me and I thought it would be interesting to see what they would offer. I did two interviews, but didn't take it any further than that. I mentioned I was good at front end stuff which was why I was asked the CSS question.

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