Software Engineer · Phone Screen · Coding

Rippling — Software Engineer ❌ Failed

Level: Unknown Level

Round: Phone Screen · Type: Coding · Difficulty: 5/10 · Duration: 60 min · Interviewer: Unfriendly

Topics: Algorithms

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Interview date: 2026-01-21

Got offer: False

Summary

I had a phone screen interview. I was given a problem involving calculating payments for DoorDash employees.

Details

The coding question I received was:

You're given a list of DoorDash employees who make a certain amount per hour, along with how long they work.

Part 1: Create a function to compute the total amount of money all the dashers make.

Part 2: You now want to pay these DoorDashers by the hour. Add a new function so you can pay people hourly. I.e., if I'm working 12-10pm and we want to pay all dashers that have worked before 5pm, this dasher's pay should be included up until 5pm. Also, consider how you can cache this info instead of repeating the calculation.

My approach:

1. First, I calculated total amount of money all dashers make.
2. Then I added a function to pay the dashers hourly considering the cache.