Friday, morning. I had a talk with my former co-worker and he told me how he was been interviewed with Facebook (Production Engineer role), about the screening process, technical interviews and so on and so forth. Finally, he was invited to come to Menlo Park for the last interview sessions.

A few weeks later I got an email from Facebook’s recruiter. It goes without saying you understand what was the content inside. So we arranged the first screening with the recruiter which itself was very easy, then scheduled a coding interview with one of the Facebook engineers. Here I was rejected because the exercise was a lit bit confusing and the interviewer was not much willing to communicate.

Okay, time flies and after half a year I got another email from Facebook. The process was the same, first screening - easy, second technical interview about networking and engineering stuff, third - coding interview. After this marathon, I was invited to come to onsite interview. So, here comes the most interesting details.

Next day, a recruiter told me H1B visa processing window ends on April 1, we are cutting it very close currently. Hence, getting onsite is highly important even if it is this week (Tuesday). We talked more about this and finally decided to not continue on the hiring process because new H1B visas are just stopped processing for half a year…

One week later I got another email from Pinterest. I asked in advance if it’s not a problem for H1B visas right now? Got an answer “shouldn’t be a problem”. Alright, looks good ;-) We arranged the technical interview with one of the Pinterest engineering lead, everything went smooth. A few days later I got an answer from the recruiter:

The team is in urgent need of support as soon as possible, and we're actively interviewing other candidates. While you have a great skill set and experience, we wouldn't be able to begin employment until October (if the H1B is approved, that's the earliest we could start), which appears to be too late for our needs, unfortunately. :(

Conclusion

• Interviewing process in most cases is boring (first stages);
• New H1B visas are not processed until September/October 2017;
• Big companies are losing talents ;-)