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Lesson 1 of 15

44. Design Ride-Hailing with Surge Pricing (Uber / Rapido)

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The interview prompt
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44.1 What do you ask first?
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44.2 How big is this, really?
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44.3 What are the doors?
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44.4 What do we store?
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44.5 What does the whole system look like?
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44.6 How are location updates handled?
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44.7 How does matching work?
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44.8 How does surge pricing work?
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44.9 How does the trip state machine work?
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44.10 What would you say in the last five minutes?
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Score yourself
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Variations to practise
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Sources
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Code lab
44. Design Ride-Hailing with Surge Pricing (Uber / Rapido)

The interview prompt

3 min read+10 XP

This chapter is a full interview round, played out step by step. The interviewer's lines are in quotes. At each step you'll see what a strong candidate says, the pushback the interviewer throws, and how to answer it. At the end, grade yourself with the rubric.

How to use this chapter

  1. Read only the prompt below. Then stop.
  2. Set a 45-minute timer and do the whole round yourself, on paper or a whiteboard, out loud. Use the framework from Chapter 1: READ, then Draw, Dive, Defend.
  3. Then read the walkthrough and compare. Score yourself with the rubric at the end.

Chapter 18 built the geospatial index; Chapter 17 the atomic assignments; Chapter 21 the live connections. This round puts them together into a system where things move: drivers, riders and prices all change by the second.

The prompt

"Design a ride-hailing app like Uber or Rapido: riders request a ride, the system finds a nearby driver, tracks the trip, and prices it, including surge pricing when demand is high."

Stop here. Start your timer.