Traba Phone Screen Interview Experience USA – Cache Design Question
Question Details
Had phone screen for Traba. Their company website is <a href="https://traba.work" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="text-emerald-400 hover:text-emerald-300 underline">https://traba.work</a> if you want to learn more ## The exercise Your job is to implement a cache as per the below requirements: -get(key: string)`
Full Details
Had phone screen for Traba. Their company website is <a href="https://traba.work" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="text-emerald-400 hover:text-emerald-300 underline">https://traba.work</a> if you want to learn more ## The exercise Your job is to implement a cache as per the below requirements: -get(key: string)-set(key: string, value: string, priority: int)-evictCache` Eviction policy: - Remove the key/value pair with the highest priority number - If there is a tie, remove the least recently accessed key/value pair
Followup Any opportunity to improve the time complexity of evictCache. I had a linear time complexity and needed to discuss how to improve it ## My reflection Not too bad of an interview problem! The best part was that the interviewer does not expect working code. In fact, for my approach, I was allowed to stub out some of the functions but I talked through the mechanics. Fingers crossed for a pass
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a traba interview for a swe role during the phone screen round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Strings .
Topics
About Traba Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Traba. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Traba are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Traba interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Traba reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Traba Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Traba reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.