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Meta (Facebook) - 1 Month Prep Roadmap

For candidates with existing DSA foundation who need focused Meta-specific prep. ~3-4 hours/day | 6 days/week

Interview Format

Round Duration Details
Phone Screen 45 min 2 coding problems. Must solve both.
Onsite: Coding 1 45 min 2 coding problems (data structures & algorithms)
Onsite: Coding 2 45 min 2 coding problems (different topic)
Onsite: System Design 45 min "Product design" -- start with product reqs, then architecture
Onsite: Behavioral 45 min STAR format, Meta values: move fast, be bold, focus on impact

Week 1: DSA Core (Most Asked Topics)

Focus: DP + Sliding Window + Array (Meta's #1 and #2 topics)

Day Task Problems
1 DP fundamentals House Robber (asked 12x), House Robber II (5x), Climbing Stairs (6x)
2 DP - sequences + strings Word Break (6x), Longest Increasing Subsequence (6x), Coin Change (6x)
3 DP - grid + advanced Unique Paths (7x), Decode Ways (4x), Jump Game (5x), Jump Game II (5x)
4 Sliding Window Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters (10x), Sliding Window Maximum (7x), Minimum Window Substring (6x)
5 Arrays + Two Pointers Two Sum (8x), Subarray Sum Equals K (8x), Maximum Subarray (8x), Container With Most Water (7x)
6 Arrays + Prefix Sum Product of Array Except Self (6x), 3Sum (6x), Target Sum (7x), Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock (7x)

Course: DP Course | Mono Stack / Sliding Window

Day Task Problems
1 Graph BFS/DFS Number of Islands (9x), Course Schedule (8x), Rotting Oranges (5x)
2 Graph advanced Course Schedule II (6x), Word Ladder (6x), Clone Graph (3x), Alien Dictionary (3x)
3 Trees Binary Tree Level Order Traversal (6x), Validate BST (5x), Diameter of Binary Tree (4x), Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum (4x)
4 Trees + Heap Serialize/Deserialize Binary Tree (3x), Top K Frequent Elements (5x), Merge k Sorted Lists (4x), Find Median from Data Stream (4x)
5 Binary Search + Intervals Search in Rotated Sorted Array (8x), Find Min in Rotated Array (7x), Merge Intervals (7x), Meeting Rooms II (5x)
6 Stack + HashMap Largest Rectangle in Histogram (7x), Valid Parentheses (6x), Group Anagrams (6x), LRU Cache (4x)

Course: Graph Course | Tree Course | Binary Search | Greedy -> Intervals

Week 3: System Design + Backtracking + Strings

Focus: Meta System Design (Product Design) + remaining DSA gaps

Day Task Details
1 Backtracking + Strings Permutations (6x), Decode String (6x), Valid Palindrome (5x), Combination Sum (4x), Longest Palindromic Substring (5x)
2 Remaining DSA gaps Sort Colors (6x), Trapping Rain Water (4x), Longest Repeating Character Replacement (4x), Longest Consecutive Sequence (4x)
3 System Design: Facebook News Feed Fan-out on write vs read, ranking algorithm, caching, CDN, pagination. Think about product: What does the user see? How is content ranked?
4 System Design: Instagram / WhatsApp Photo upload + CDN + feed. Or: WebSocket messaging, delivery receipts, E2E encryption.
5 System Design: Notification System + Rate Limiter Fan-out, push/email/SMS, throttling, priority. Token bucket, sliding window.
6 System Design: Design X (practice) Pick from: Live Comments, Ads System, News Feed, Search. Practice the "product design" approach.

Course: System Design | LLD Course

Week 4: Mock Interviews + Behavioral + Gaps

Day Task Details
1 Mock DSA 1 2 problems, 45 min. Simulate Meta's round. Must finish both.
2 Mock DSA 2 2 different problems, 45 min. Focus on edge cases.
3 Behavioral: Prepare 5 STAR stories Meta values: Move Fast, Be Bold, Focus on Impact, Be Open, Build Social Value. Map stories to these.
4 Mock System Design Full 45-min mock. Start with product reqs, then architecture.
5 Gap review: Redo hardest problems Revisit any problem you couldn't solve in <25 min.
6 Final review: Top 20 problems Speed-run the 20 most-asked problems. Verify you can solve each in <20 min.

Problem Count

Category Count
DSA problems solved ~55
System Design practiced 4-5
Behavioral stories prepared 5
Mock interviews 3-4

Key Meta-Specific Tips

  1. Two problems per coding round, must finish both -- Speed is non-negotiable. If you can't solve a medium in 20 min, you're not ready.
  2. House Robber (12x) is the single most asked problem. Know DP cold.
  3. Edge cases are critical -- Meta interviewers will ask: "What if the input is empty? What about duplicates? Integer overflow?"
  4. System design is "product design" -- Think about product requirements first. Ask: Who uses this? What's the core use case? What makes this product special at Meta's scale?
  5. Solve top 100 Facebook-tagged problems sorted by frequency -- This is the highest-ROI activity for Meta prep.
  6. STAR format for behavioral -- Situation, Task, Action, Result. Quantify impact where possible.
  7. "If you haven't seen it, you're gone" -- Meta recycles problems heavily. The top 50 in our DSA list appear repeatedly.
  8. Code quality matters -- Clean variable names, proper functions, handle edge cases inline, no debug prints.
  9. Think out loud -- Meta interviewers are collaborative. Explain your approach before coding.
  10. Know Meta's scale numbers: 3B+ MAU, billions of messages/day, petabytes of photos.