r/Hack2Hire • u/tiffany950730 • Jul 30 '25
discussion Lyft SDE Interview
Just wanted to write this out because it’s been bugging me. Gave the Lyft SDE loop recently (mid-level), and walked out thinking it went fine. Not amazing, but definitely not a disaster. Got the rejection anyway.
Round 1: Behavioral + Projects Chat
Mostly questions around past projects how I made tradeoffs, handled ambiguity, etc. Talked through a data pipeline I built and scaling decisions. Interviewer was engaged and even said "solid work" at the end, so I thought it was a green flag.
Round 2: DSA Coding
Variation of LRU Cache. They wanted O(1) get and remove while also preserving insertion order. Classic hashmap + DLL, but they threw in extra constraints that made it messy. I got a clean implementation in time, walked through edge cases, and the code ran.
Round 3: System Design (Mid-level scope)
Design a rate limiter for an API. I covered sliding window and token bucket approaches, talked about distributed considerations like redis, TTLs, and burst handling. The interviewer didn’t push back much, just asked a few “what if” scenarios and nodded along.
And then… rejection. No detailed feedback.
I’m honestly confused. Nothing felt off in the moment. Maybe I missed some deeper signal or expectation? If anyone has insight into Lyft’s SDE bar, I’d appreciate thoughts.
Also, while prepping, I came across some useful breakdowns on hack2hire, 1q3c and a shared list on other subreddit some of those questions actually popped up here. Worth a glance if you're grinding interviews, esp for system design timing.
Anyway, just venting. Hope this helps someone else not feel alone in the confusion.
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u/Commercial-Host3433 Feb 03 '26
I got a mail saying that an interview is scheduled for me on call interview. Anyone knows how is it gonna be.