Write a query to find retention rate from products
Last updated: August 15, 2025
Quick Overview
Write a SQL query to calculate retention rate from the products table, considering nulls and duplicates.
HubSpot
August 15, 20257
5
4,919 solved
Write a SQL query to calculate retention rate from the products table, considering nulls and duplicates.
HubSpot asks this during the Phone Screen 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
- How would you validate the correctness of your query results?
- What indexes would you create to support this query?
- How would you optimize this query for a table with 100 million rows?
Sharpen Your Skills on Codemia
Practice similar problems with our interactive workspace, get AI feedback, and track your progress.
Practice SQL ProblemsSample Answer
Problem Understanding
The task is to calculate the retention rate from the products table, which likely contains information about customer purchases and product usage. The retention rate is typically defined as the perc...
Approach
- Identify Unique Users: Use a Common Table Expression (CTE) to select distinct users along with their first purchase date.
- Calculate Retained Users: Create another CTE to identify users w...
Submit Your Answer
