The 3-year old anecdote is a bit pointless. It literally could have been a bad day. I've burnt myself out on a problem the night before and absolutely bombed simple interview questions, too. Or it just happened to be the least competent engineer at Meta. It doesn't give much information on their average employee, though
replyOh totally. In general I don’t think you can conclude anything about anyone, really. Yesterday they were someone. Today someone else.
replyWe had the same experience with Meta engineers. One candidate had been with Meta/Facebook for seven years and had nothing to show for it. They had an incredibly hard time articulating what work they actually did. It was something related to storage, but pretty much every answer was "well, actually someone else does that part". Also same experience with basic coding, no actual skills, yet somehow manages to have a CS degree.
replySomeone has to be doing the actual work at Meta, but that might not be the people who are seeking out new jobs. So we get this false impression that their engineers are a bit... not good, because those are the ones actually leaving.