> Isn't this quite paradoxical that those kind of companies have hard interviews where you have to almost prove that P=NP in front of 5 people that judges everything you do
Interview process at Meta isn't that hard. Mostly medium leetcode questions (in front of single interviewer), not particularly tricky. With enough preparation, it's doable by any reasonably good undergrad. Google was slightly harder though. Similarly, system design can be prepared.
The hardest part is to get the interview in the first place. But if you do, it's just a matter of preparation. You want to be able to nail these questions.
That's quite the qualifier. I could not regularly pass these interviews when I had done 200+ LC problems. It's only when I got to 1000+ LC problems and had done hundreds of technical interviews that I was able to regularly pass a lot of these interviews. Even now, it still requires me to prepare a lot because how often am I really thinking about suffix tries? It's an arms race. It has happened in universities as well. An arms race between the professors trying to make sure a lot of students still fail their classes while every student needs a 4.0 to get an internship/job now.
It will get higher and higher as time goes on because we're mostly focused on H1B candidates who come from a similarly culture of grinding for exams. You can see this lifestyle is very normalized on the LC, 1point3acres, etc. Cheating is also seen as completely fine too. At this point, I feel like it's almost unfair to not be cheating due to how many people are. Your competition doesn't care about some sense of ethics (nor does the hiring manager - they cheated to get in too!).
I've met with multiple folks at FAANG and such where these practices of grinding + a little "magic" get you in. You talk to someone and they'll say, "oh yeah, I have like three guys I went to high school with in [country] in my house. Once one of us got accepted, it was easy for the rest of us."
It's a bit like a sport, you can have the skills and yet still have an off day or perform worse under pressure, so it's not just a matter of preparation.
From my experience on the Meta side of the interview process, the questions are designed to account for "a bad day".
Also, the follow ups are designed to eventually lock the candidate, since is not enough to pass the low bar, they want to know what your high bar is too.
Interview process at Meta isn't that hard. Mostly medium leetcode questions (in front of single interviewer), not particularly tricky. With enough preparation, it's doable by any reasonably good undergrad. Google was slightly harder though. Similarly, system design can be prepared.
The hardest part is to get the interview in the first place. But if you do, it's just a matter of preparation. You want to be able to nail these questions.