And now it’s down to the finals. Earlier this month, nearly 3,000 coders from across the globe completed the online portion of {OpenBracket, billed as “the biggest coding competition in the littlest ...

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with William Orgertrice, a 29-year-old data engineer in Atlanta, about his Meta interview. It's been edited for length and clarity. I received an email ...