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Meta Software Engineer Phone Screen Questions

609+ questions from real Meta Software Engineer Phone Screen rounds, reported by candidates who interviewed there.

609
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What does the Meta Phone Screen round test?

The Meta phone screen typically lasts 45-60 minutes and evaluates core Software Engineer fundamentals. Candidates should expect 1-2 algorithmic problems, basic system design discussion at senior levels, and questions about relevant experience. The goal is to confirm technical competence before bringing candidates onsite.

Top Topics in This Round

Meta Software Engineer Phone Screen Questions

2 Questions and asked to run test cases for both 1. https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array/ 2. https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-palindrome-ii/ Lot of follow ups for the 1st question around time complexity

Intro, 2 LC Question, 2 Behavioral Question https://leetcode.com/problems/k-closest-points-to-origin/ https://leetcode.com/problems/nested-list-weight-sum/ Some optimization question - Time complexity, Space Complexity Tips : It is a game of luck and lot of practice. 1) you need to...

Just had a phone screen with META for SWE (not sure what level) in the US First question was https://leetcode.com/problems/buildings-with-an-ocean-view/description/ Second question was https://leetcode.com/problems/top-k-frequent-elements/ I solved the first question pretty easily. But...

Asked these 2 questions. 1. https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-palindrome/ Follow up 1: if a specific charset needs to be matched (a,e,z) and exclude anything else. How would you do it? (Use a hashset for...

It\'s time to give back to the community. I had my phone screen today. I was asked an array variation of https://leetcode.com/problems/random-pick-index/description/ and https://leetcode.com/problems/find-median-from-data-stream/description/

Question 1: Implement a simple HashMap/Dict (note: there are different ways to implement hashmap, you can choose any) and implement the GET function which is expected to return a List<Friend...

Meta E4 Phone Screen

Binary Tree 2024

Question 1: https://leetcode.com/problems/find-common-characters/description/ Question 2: https://leetcode.com/problems/recover-a-tree-from-preorder-traversal/description/ I have solved the first one totally, and second question given the method and wrote the code but time is up while in middle of verification...

Facebook Phone Interview

Dynamic Programming 2021

2 questions: Q 1: 1. Daily public transportation pass costs $2. 7 days pass costs $6. Monthly (30 days) public transportation pass costs $22. given a sorted array[int] (31 > arr.length >= 0) where...

Facebook Phone Interview

Dynamic Programming 2021

Question: Given a list of intergers and a number (say total), find how many ways by adding \'+\', \'-\' or nothing can make the total number. Example: List : 1, 2, 3 Total :...

I got asked these following two questions - https://leetcode.com/problems/basic-calculator-ii/ - https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-vertical-order-traversal/ Hope this helps someone :) .

Contributing to make this a stronger community. Please consider the same if you are benifitted from leetcode. Interviewer was friendly. Overall good expereince. Q1. Design Problem: Design ordereddict I gave simple solution...

Question 1: https://leetcode.com/problems/balance-a-binary-search-tree/ Solve Question 1 but ran out of time so I didn\'t do Question 2... so prob an reject.. Good luck!

Position : E4 It was a quick 45 min interview where the interviewer and I introduced eachother in 5 mins and 20 mins for both the questions. Questions 1: Variation of...

Facebook Phone Interview

Binary Search 2020

Had a FB phone interview last week and these were the questions I got: 1) Variation of https://leetcode.com/problems/first-bad-version/ 2) Variation of https://leetcode.com/problems/subarray-sum-equals-k/

Just had my phone screen. These are the questions asked 1. TicTacToe (Modify move to get the result).https://leetcode.com/problems/design-tic-tac-toe/description/?envType=company&envId=facebook&favoriteSlug=facebook-thirty-days 2. Minimum remove to get valid Parantheses. I could not the answer the first question...

Remove consecutive characters similar to 1D candy crush. 1. abbba --> empty 2. abb ---> [a] 3. b ---> [b] 4. aabbba -->empty. I wrote stack solution but getting result "a" for 4th...

Facebook phone interview

Binary Search 2021

The first question was a version https://leetcode.com/problems/leftmost-column-with-at-least-a-one/ But instead of finding the left most it was the right one and the matrix were not the same side [[0,0,0,1], [0,0,1], [0,0,0,0,0,1], [0,0,0,1]] 2. https://leetcode.com/problems/word-break-ii/ \tIt was the...

given a number and do swap in place to find the nubmer larger than input for example input 3424861 output should be 3426148

Two questions: 1. Given an unsorted array, determine if there is any triplet that meets a^2 + b^2 = c^2. For example, if the array is [2, 5, 3, 4, -1,...

2 questions: 1. Find all permutations of string: simple recursive rotation - took only a few minutes to complete 2. Given a NxN map with walls and gates, calculate the minimal...

What to Expect in the Meta Phone Screen Round

The Meta Software Engineer Phone Screen round has a specific calibration purpose distinct from other rounds in the loop. Across 609+ verified reports on LeakCode for this exact round type, the consistent expectations: clear scoping of the problem before diving into a solution, explicit reasoning about complexity, structured handling of edge cases, and the ability to discuss trade-offs between two reasonable approaches.

Reports tagged with the Phone Screen round at Meta show recurring patterns in difficulty and topic distribution. The Phone Screen round is typically 45-60 minutes; the interviewer is calibrated against a specific rubric. The discriminator between candidates who advance and candidates who do not is rarely the final correctness of the answer. It is the path: did you clarify, did you verbalize your approach, did you handle edge cases, and did you communicate throughout.

How To Prepare for This Specific Round

Filter the questions below to the most recent reports (past 6-12 months). Questions tagged for this exact round type from this exact company at this exact role level are the highest-signal data available. Older reports may reference questions that have since rotated out of the company's pool.

Practice 4-6 representative problems from this set under timed conditions. The goal is not memorization (companies rotate questions); the goal is to internalize the patterns the interviewer typically reaches for and the depth of follow-up to expect. Reports on LeakCode also tag the typical follow-up depth at this round type, which is the discriminating signal between hire and no-hire calibration.

Phone Screen Round Timing and Format

The Phone Screen round at Meta typically runs 45-60 minutes. Use the first 2-3 minutes to clarify requirements; you should never start coding or designing without verifying the input/output format, constraints, and edge cases out loud. Use the next 5-7 minutes to verbalize your approach before writing any code. The middle 20-30 minutes are implementation. Reserve the final 10 minutes for testing with concrete examples and discussing optimization or trade-offs.

Time budget discipline is one of the most reliable senior-vs-junior discriminators in this round. Strong candidates verbalize where they are in their budget out loud ("I've used about 20 minutes, I have 15 minutes left for testing and one optimization"). This signals engineering maturity to the interviewer and creates positive feedback they can capture in writing.

Common Failure Modes in This Round

Reports tagged "no hire" at Meta Software Engineer Phone Screen commonly cite: coding silently without verbalizing approach, jumping to implementation before clarifying requirements, missing edge cases (empty input, single element, very large input), producing working code that the candidate cannot refactor when asked, and failing to test their solution with concrete examples before declaring done.

The single most predictive failure mode in 2025-2026 reports: not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers at all FAANG companies are explicitly trained to weight this dimension. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's notes.

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