Facebook Software Engineer interview: recruiter screen, LeetCode loop, and no offer

After a recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn, I had a scheduled screen about my background and what I wanted from a new role. It was clearly a gate: if the alignment looked right, I would move forward.

The technical sequence followed a familiar pattern, starting with a phone screen and then an onsite that mixed coding, behavioral questions, and system design. The coding questions were LeetCode-style, so I had to explain my approach while writing code. Some were strongly BFS-based, including a matrix pathfinding problem where I needed to get from one corner to the opposite corner.

I was not successful. What stayed with me was how much the loop expected a strong grasp of specific tagged LeetCode patterns. When I did not meet the bar across the rounds, the process ended without an offer.

Location: London, England. Overall feedback: Neutral. Offer status: No offer.