Interview questions · Instacart
Compute immediate delivery percentage
This interview question evaluates algorithm design, data structures, correctness, complexity, edge cases, and implementation details in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer for Compute immediate delivery percentage states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.
LeetCode 1173. Immediate Food Delivery I – Write an SQL query to calculate the percentage of immediate (same-day) orders, rounded to two decimals. Follow-up (LeetCode 1174. Immediate Food Delivery II) – Extend the query to compute the percentage of immediate first-ever orders for each customer.
https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-i/description/ https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-ii/description/
What a Strong Answer Covers
- A clear algorithm with the right data structures and enough pseudocode or code-level detail to implement it.
- A correctness argument that explains why the algorithm covers all required cases.
- Time and space complexity, plus at least one alternative approach when relevant.
- Focused tests for normal cases, edge cases, and failure modes.
Follow-up Questions
- How would the approach change if the input were streaming or too large for memory?
- What invariants would you assert in production code?
- Which tests would catch off-by-one, duplicate, or tie-breaking bugs?
Solution
Solution Alignment
The prompt asks for an implementation-level answer. The safest way to present it is to define the state, maintain clear invariants, then walk through complexity and tests.
Problem Restatement
Question LeetCode 1173. Immediate Food Delivery I – Write an SQL query to calculate the percentage of immediate (same-day) orders, rounded to two decimals. Follow-up (LeetCode 1174. Immediate Food Delivery II) – Extend the query to compute the percentage of immediate first-ever orders for each customer. https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-i/description/ https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-ii/description/
Recommended Approach
Start with a brute-force baseline to confirm correctness, then identify the repeated work or ordering property that enables a better data structure such as a hash map, heap, stack, queue, two pointers, prefix sums, BFS/DFS, or dynamic programming. Write the implementation around a small invariant and test that invariant directly.
Correctness
The implementation should maintain an invariant after each loop or operation that directly matches the problem statement. At termination, that invariant implies the returned value has considered every valid candidate exactly once, or has preserved the required data-structure state after every API call.
Complexity
State the baseline complexity and the optimized complexity. For most interview constraints, justify why the optimized approach meets the expected input size.
Edge Cases and Tests
Empty and singleton inputs, duplicates, ties, invalid inputs, boundary values, and tests that exercise the main invariant.
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