rherb

My name is Ralf Herbrich and I am an Engineer at Facebook. I work on large-scale probabilistic models for ranking - the "stuff" that is used to determine how likely a user is going to engage with a story or ad.

I have worked for over 10 years at Microsoft Research before on large-scale problems, for example, the TrueSkill ranking and matchmaking system used in Xbox Live and the Halo series as well as ranking systems in Bing. I can honestly say that the current projects I am working on are professionally the hardest I worked on so far and it is amazing how much gets done by a very small team of some of the brightest and most talented people in the industry.

I echo Andrei's comments that the interviews were very difficult. I got no specific C++ or PHP question but more general questions to translate algorithms into working code (being able to pick any language). This IS very important when you work here and everyone at Facebook carries a lot of responsibility so having a high bar is the right decision.