applied via referral, recruiter reached out pretty quickly (honestly one of the smoother processes i’ve had). first was the recruiter phone screen - mostly background, why meta, if i knew what the role really meant (managing engineers across different crafts, career growth, xfn collab etc). then came the initial call with another EM, about 45 min, covered people management, technical design, and motivation. onsite was the real deal - 5 rounds in one day, exhausting lol. 2 system design/arch rounds (think designing a real-time commenting system, or how to tweak newsfeed and measure success), 1 project retrospective (deep dive into a technically hard project you drove, what tradeoffs you made, how you scaled), 1 coding (leetcode medium type, eg product of array except self), and 1 people + xfn management (toughest part tbh… questions like how do you deal with underperformers, or how you keep difficult stakeholders aligned). honestly, the interviewers were fair but expected structured answers and clear leadership signals. prep-wise i’d say grokking system design and lc mediums for coding, but also a couple of mocks on prepfully helped me refine the people management part (those really make or break you at EM level). overall, long process but supportive recruiters, and felt like they actually want you to succeed if you show breadth + depth, and sound authentic lol