Failing interviews

Published 2025-12-26 on Farid Zakaria's Blog

My blog has been a little quiet. I recently accepted a new role at Meta and it’s been keeping me busy!

Once the onboarding phase is done I hope to get back to my Nix contributions.

Accepting the position at Meta has had me reflecting on my journey to this current role. People often share their highlights of accepting a new role but rarely their lowlights.

I wanted to share a brief look at what interviewing might be like in the software industry. People are often discouraged by failure but it’s part of the process.

I remember having done interview training at Google where they discussed most interviewers decide on the outcome of the interview within the first-five minutes. That story is not to totally discourage oneself from the process but rather to demonstrate there is a portion that is out of your control.

Going through my emails to get an accurate accounting is challenging, however I found threads as early as 2011 interviewing for Facebook. I am actually sure I had interviewed ealier through my co-ops at University of Waterloo, but I don’t have access anylonger to those emails. 😩

Some rough dates I had found: 2011, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023*, 2024, 2025.

* This interview round was long and was for 3 distinct roles.

Across those years, the level I interviewed at was different and sometimes the role too (IC vs EM).

Don’t be discouraged from failure.

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