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      Data Scientist Interview

      Sep 12, 2013
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Menlo Park, CA
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Sep 2013

      Interview

      Applied online and got an email the next day from an HR staff member. 1) Screening call with HR staff - just asking about my work experience and motivation for applying. Straightforward. The HR person gave me some information about the position, and plenty of information about how to prepare for the later interviews (below). 2) Preliminary interview (can choose to either do on-site 1:1 or phone with online shared-document for coding). I went on-site. My interviewer asked a series of basic stats questions (if X1 and X2 are normally distributed (and IID) with mu, sigma, and Y=X1+X2, what is the mean and s-dev of Y?). Then basic binomial stats question - I got a little tripped up due to the nervousness, but it wasn't bad. Then he asked me to conceptually explain how I'd check if two numbers in an array sum to X. Then asked for the algorithm's time-complexity, and then asked if I could do better. Eventually he asked me to code up the faster version on the white-board. He said that he was recommending that I come for the on-site interview despite my having a bit of difficulty here and there. Nice of him to give me the benefit of the doubt. And he gave me more details about the final interview process... At this point I got passed from the screening HR person to another one, and at the same time I got another job offer so I asked to accelerate the process. They were very accommodating, which was really nice. Final interview was scheduled for 3 business days later and I was told I'd know if I was going to receive an offer the same day as my final interview! About as quick a turn-around as I can imagine them doing. Very helpful. 3) Final on-site interview consists of 5 quick meetings (30min each) with different analytics team members and one Product Manager. Was coding on the white-board in 3/5 of the interviews. First one was dynamic/recursive programming focused (Python). Second one was database insight focused (SQL) that began with a description of a SQL table and a new feature and then asking what metrics you'd look at to diagnose the health of the feature/product. Then write those queries. He told me what numbers I would have seen from those queries, and then asked me what that would imply to me, and then he had me do another few queries to diagnose what might be giving the skewed numbers he'd given me. Third one started with a straight-forward Bayesian stats question (I realized it was most amenable to the Bayesian approach after flailing with frequentist stuff for a minute), then we moved to a few questions about Recommendation systems and any intuition I had around those. Fourth one started with an explanation of a "new feature" and a graph of adoption rates, then asked me to explain to a non-technical person what the graph meant/implied. Asked for any ideas I had around why the graph might be shaped the way it was. Last one was with a Product Manager who asked what products I was interested in - a few probing questions to make sure I'd done some homework on those products. Then some A/B testing questions where he explained another change they'd made to one of their products and asked me how I'd decide if that was a good change or not. Then some questions about how I'd diagnose why something wasn't working as expected. I felt like I did well - but I didn't nail the questions right away. I got the answers, but I'd bet that I flailed a bit too much on-route for the interviewers' tastes. Sort of a shame since I see a little bit of flailing around as an important part of the creative problem-solving process, but I could understand how it wouldn't inspire confidence in someone who already knows the answer and is just waiting for you to get there. And maybe they just want people who know all the answers already or never get challenged by anything. In any case, the whole experience was very professionally handled. I was very impressed by the transparency of their process. I had seen the Glassdoor interview feedback from a few unhappy previous interviewees and it was clear that (at least in my case) the HR team had seen the same complaints and had corrected things as much as they could. I was impressed - definitely a good interview experience.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      You're about to get on a plane to Seattle. You want to know if you should bring an umbrella. You call 3 random friends of yours who live there and ask each independently if it's raining. Each of your friends has a 2/3 chance of telling you the truth and a 1/3 chance of messing with you by lying. All 3 friends tell you that "Yes" it is raining. What is the probability that it's actually raining in Seattle?
      34 Answers
      45

      Other Data Scientist Interview Reviews for Meta

      Data Scientist Interview

      May 23, 2026
      Anonymous employee
      Menlo Park, CA
      Accepted offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA)

      Interview

      The Interview Process is very structured - First Tech Screening round - 45 mins (usually can extend a bit depending on the interviewer) - 2 SQL Questions ( Medium to Hard ) - based on Joins Full Loop - 4 rounds 45 mins each. - SQL - Behavioral - Analytical Execution - stats & prob, A/B testing, case study - Analytical Reasoning - Case study

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Questions on Bayes Theorem, Probability distribution, etc.
      Answer question

      Data Scientist Interview

      May 13, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Meta

      Interview

      Completed 3 rounds of the process, which includes the initial recruiter screen, technical, full loop, and team matching. Couldn't move past the full loop interview. The interview was very engaging, and I actually enjoyed working through the cases. No crazy questions.

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