Instacart interview notes, page 6 of 13

“Went straight to a max-heap and sorted by total duration per worker.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“I had a decent story ready but I spent too long on the diagnosis part and barely got to what actually changed because of it.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at Instacart, Hiring Manager Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“I started with a plain hash map keyed by account ID and that part was fine.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“The SQL pivot part was fine, conditional aggregation with CASE WHEN is pretty standard.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“The CRUD part was fine, just a dict keyed by task_id and you're mostly done.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“This is basically a full case study crammed into one question and I underestimated how much they wanted on the validation piece specifically.” The rest of the author's notes on Data Scientist interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“Sorted by arrival time first, then simulated a current-time pointer to track when the chef finishes each order.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“This one took me a minute to even parse.” The rest of the author's notes on Data Scientist interview at Instacart, Onsite - Cross-functional / Panel round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“This one tripped me up because the instinct is to get excited about higher order volume and rationalize the rest.” The rest of the author's notes on Data Scientist interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“The core logic isn't hard but I almost tripped on the empty query case.” The rest of the author's notes on Backend Engineer interview at Instacart, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.