For candidates building from scratch or aiming for a thorough preparation.
~2-3 hours/day | 5-6 days/week | Target: 200+ LC problems
| 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 |
Month 1: DSA Foundations
Weeks 1-2: Core Data Structures & Patterns
| Week |
Focus |
Problems (20/week) |
Course |
| 1 |
Arrays, Two Pointers, Sliding Window |
Two Sum (8x), Subarray Sum Equals K (8x), Maximum Subarray (8x), Container With Most Water (7x), Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock (7x), 3Sum (6x), Product of Array Except Self (6x), Sort Colors (6x), Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters (10x), Sliding Window Maximum (7x), Minimum Window Substring (6x), Longest Repeating Character Replacement (4x), Minimum Size Subarray Sum (5x), Trapping Rain Water, Max Consecutive Ones III, Find All Anagrams in a String, Permutation in String, Valid Palindrome, Valid Palindrome II |
Mono Stack / Sliding Window |
| 2 |
HashMap, Stack, Queue, Binary Search |
Group Anagrams (6x), LRU Cache (4x), Valid Parentheses (6x), Largest Rectangle in Histogram (7x), Daily Temperatures (3x), Search in Rotated Sorted Array (8x), Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array (7x), Capacity To Ship Packages (5x), Top K Frequent Elements (5x), Koko Eating Bananas (3x), Generate Parentheses, Min Stack, Asteroid Collision, Insert Delete GetRandom O(1), Design Hit Counter, Basic Calculator, Decode String, Valid Anagram, First Unique Character in a String |
Binary Search |
| Week |
Focus |
Problems (20/week) |
Course |
| 3 |
Graph BFS/DFS, Topo Sort |
Number of Islands (9x), Course Schedule (8x), Course Schedule II (6x), Word Ladder (6x), Rotting Oranges (5x), Clone Graph (3x), Alien Dictionary (3x), Pacific Atlantic Water Flow (4x), Number of Connected Components (3x), Is Graph Bipartite? (2x), Graph Valid Tree (2x), Making A Large Island, Evaluate Division, Network Delay Time, Open the Lock, Surrounded Regions, Max Area of Island, Shortest Bridge |
Graph Course Ch 1-3 |
| 4 |
Dynamic Programming |
House Robber (12x), Unique Paths (7x), Target Sum (7x), Climbing Stairs (6x), Word Break (6x), Longest Increasing Subsequence (6x), Coin Change (6x), Jump Game (5x), Jump Game II (5x), House Robber II (5x), Decode Ways (4x), Regular Expression Matching (3x), Unique Paths II, Minimum Path Sum, Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling, Maximum Product Subarray, Edit Distance, Longest Common Subsequence, Longest Palindromic Subsequence, Partition Equal Subset Sum |
DP Course |
Month 1 target: ~80 problems solved, core DSA patterns mastered
Month 2: Trees, Advanced Topics + System Design Start
Weeks 5-6: Trees, Intervals, Backtracking
| Week |
Focus |
Problems (15/week) |
Course |
| 5 |
Trees + Heap |
Binary Tree Level Order Traversal (6x), Validate BST (5x), Diameter of Binary Tree (4x), Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum (4x), Maximum Depth of Binary Tree (4x), Merge k Sorted Lists (4x), Find Median from Data Stream (4x), Serialize/Deserialize Binary Tree (3x), Kth Smallest in BST (3x), Lowest Common Ancestor (BST + BT), Invert Binary Tree, Same Tree, All Nodes Distance K in Binary Tree, Construct from Preorder/Inorder |
Tree Course |
| 6 |
Intervals + Backtracking + Linked List |
Merge Intervals (7x), Meeting Rooms II (5x), Permutations (6x), Combination Sum (4x), Subsets (3x), Word Search (3x), N-Queens (3x), Letter Combinations of a Phone Number (3x), Add Two Numbers (3x), Linked List Cycle (3x), Insert Interval, Non-overlapping Intervals, Reverse Linked List, Copy List with Random Pointer, Reverse Nodes in k-Group |
Greedy / Intervals |
Weeks 7-8: System Design Fundamentals
| Week |
Focus |
Practice |
| 7 |
System Design foundations |
Study: Scalability, load balancing, caching, CDN, databases (SQL vs NoSQL), message queues, consistent hashing. Practice: Design a URL Shortener, Design a Rate Limiter. |
| 8 |
Meta-specific System Design |
Design Facebook News Feed -- Fan-out on write vs read, ranking, caching. Design Instagram -- Photo upload, CDN, feed. Design WhatsApp -- WebSocket, delivery receipts, E2E encryption. |
Course: System Design
Month 2 target: ~150 problems solved, System Design foundations built
Month 3: System Design Deep Dive + Mocks
Weeks 9-10: Advanced System Design + More DSA
| Week |
Focus |
Practice |
| 9 |
System Design deep dive |
Design a Notification System -- Push/email/SMS, fan-out, throttling. Design a Distributed Cache -- Consistent hashing, eviction. Design a Live Comment System -- Real-time, fan-out, moderation. Design Facebook Privacy System -- Access control, policy engine. |
| 10 |
Advanced DSA + Linked List + Matrix |
Hard problems from the priority list: Longest Palindromic Substring (5x), Trapping Rain Water (4x), Longest Consecutive Sequence (4x), Longest Common Subsequence (4x), Burst Balloons (2x). Spiral Matrix, Rotate Image, Set Matrix Zeroes. Harder sliding window: Subarrays with K Different Integers, Count Number of Nice Subarrays. |
Weeks 11-12: Mock Interviews + Behavioral + Final Review
| Week |
Focus |
Details |
| 11 |
Mock interviews |
2 full DSA mocks (2 problems each, 45 min). 2 System Design mocks (45 min, product design approach). Focus on time management -- must finish 2 problems in 45 min. |
| 12 |
Behavioral + Final review |
Prepare 5 STAR stories aligned to Meta values: Move Fast, Be Bold, Focus on Impact, Be Open, Build Social Value. Speed-run top 30 most-asked problems. Review System Design notes. |
Course: System Design | LLD Course
Final Stats
| Category |
Target |
| LC problems solved |
200+ |
| System Design practiced |
8-10 |
| Mock interviews completed |
6+ |
| Behavioral stories |
5 |
DP problems: ~40 (Meta's #1 topic -- 204 posts)
Sliding Window/Array: ~35 (Meta's #2 topic -- 136 posts)
Graph problems: ~25 (Meta's #3 topic -- 114 posts)
HashMap/Design: ~15 (Meta's #4 topic -- 103 posts)
Binary Search: ~15 (Meta's #5 topic -- 96 posts)
String: ~15
Trees: ~15
Heap/PQ: ~10
Backtracking: ~10
Intervals: ~10
Stack: ~10
Linked List: ~5
Matrix: ~5
----
Total: ~210
- Solve top 100 Facebook-tagged problems sorted by frequency -- This is the single highest-ROI activity. Meta recycles problems heavily.
- Two problems per coding round, must finish both -- This is the defining constraint of Meta interviews. You cannot afford to get stuck. Practice solving mediums in <20 min.
- Edge cases are critical -- Meta interviewers specifically probe: empty input, single element, all duplicates, integer overflow, off-by-one errors. Build the habit of listing edge cases before coding.
- System design is "product design" -- Unlike Google or Amazon, Meta wants you to start with the product: Who are the users? What are the core interactions? What makes this product special? Only then move to architecture.
- STAR format for behavioral -- Meta values: Move Fast (bias for action), Be Bold (take risks), Focus on Impact (measurable results), Be Open (transparency), Build Social Value (mission-driven). Map your stories to these.
- House Robber (12x), Longest Substring Without Repeating (10x), Number of Islands (9x) -- These are the 3 most frequently seen problems. Know them cold.
- DP is king at Meta -- 204 interview posts mention DP. This is more than any other company's top topic. Invest heavily here.
- Clean, bug-free code -- Meta values code quality. Use meaningful variable names, modular functions, handle edge cases inline. No debug prints, no commented-out code.
- Know Meta's tech stack: TAO (social graph), Memcached, MySQL (sharded), Kafka, Haystack (photo storage), React, GraphQL, Thrift.
- Think out loud -- Meta interviewers are collaborative. Explain your approach, discuss trade-offs, and ask clarifying questions before coding.