Decompose: help an Uber Eats driver decide which orders to accept, using historical and live data, including past tips
A live-reported Palantir FDSE decomp with a built-in twist: after you design for the driver, the interviewer flips you to Uber's side. The expected-value-per-hour model, the tip-prediction ethics trap, and how to survive the flip.
Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
A live-reported Palantir FDSE decomp with a built-in twist: after you design for the driver, the interviewer flips you to Uber's side. The expected-value-per-hour model, the tip-prediction ethics trap, and how to survive the flip.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
