Indeed. Meta conducts most SWE/PE/SE interviews over VC (Zoom or similar) using CoderPad (which supports all sorts of languages), with unofficial prep using HackerRank. The language for the interview is set in advance by the candidate because the code is never executed directly but is mentally-parsed by the interviewer. (CoderPad is used only as a shared text editor.) Picking a random, obscure programming language would be frowned-upon and not possible. Also, the bootcamp process lasts longer than a week and it would neigh impossible to be fired before that without doing something really egregious because, by that point, each party would have too much time and money invested to simply call it quits randomly.

Maybe instead of making up creative falsehoods, they could just speak simply without whipping the village idiot for approbation.

In this economy, I wouldn’t judge anyone who takes an offer at Meta if it means they can secure a home and a financial future for themselves. That’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for most people.

I have worked in all kinds of fields and you might be surprised to hear that the most openly psychopathic leadership I have ever experienced was in EDU

Meta may draw a certain type of person, but let’s not kid ourselves that they have a uniquely terrible culture. Just maybe one of the more influential.

I didn’t flag it, but I can see how a number of people might’ve taken the title seriously and felt it was kind of clickbait. If it had been clearly labeled as satire, I wonder if it would’ve been flagged (and if as many people would’ve read it).

Some can't detect humour and sarcasm.

Well, it's not believable at all, so the other option is just "lying"?

The idea that you could blackmail an Meta interviewer for the crime of using Meta’s own product, at work, for work purposes was a bit of a stretch

Then the whole thing came apart entirely when they were able to do anything productive at all in their first week at a huge tech company. I’d be shocked if they could even get access to the source code during onboarding.