Lyft Software Engineer interview experience

What caught me off guard—in a good way—was that the interview asked me to design a driver-rider matching service. I’d recently practiced the kind of complexity that comes with indexing live driver locations and handling high write rates, and I was able to walk through the tradeoffs with confidence.

After that, I moved into a virtual onsite that included two coding rounds and a system design question, along with behavioral interviews. Even though I appreciated the chance to show how I think through a product-like problem, the day felt intense. I ultimately didn’t take the offer, but it wasn’t