Calculate time to first action per region
Last updated: January 2, 2026
Quick Overview
Write a query to compute time to first action grouped by user, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.
PayPal
January 2, 2026271
15
525 solved
Write a query to compute time to first action grouped by user, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.
PayPal asks this during the Take-home Project because data engineering skills are critical for the role. You should be comfortable with complex joins, window functions, CTEs, and performance optimization.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Use advanced SQL features: window functions, CTEs, subqueries
- Write efficient queries that avoid common performance pitfalls
- Handle complex data transformations with multiple joins and aggregations
- Discuss indexing strategy and query optimization
- Address data quality issues: duplicates, missing values, outliers
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Clarify the schema and expected output format before writing queries.
- Use CTEs (WITH clauses) to break complex queries into readable steps.
- Consider window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG, LEAD) for ranking and sequential analysis.
- Watch for NULLs, duplicates, and edge cases in JOINs and GROUP BY.
- For pandas, prefer vectorized operations over row-by-row iteration.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- Can you rewrite this without using subqueries?
- How would you handle this if the data was spread across multiple databases?
- What would you do if this query needs to run every 5 minutes?
- What indexes would you create to support this query?
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