On-callMediumoc-g076

Subject Third party downLevel Mid–Senior~30 minCommon in Concurrency · Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Technology, Software development

Question

You consume webhooks from a payment provider to mark orders as paid. Around 13:00 merchants report orders stuck in 'pending payment' even though customers were charged. Dashboards: your webhook-receiver endpoint shows almost zero inbound webhook traffic for the last 30 minutes (a cliff, not a decline); your service health is green; the provider's status page notes 'delayed webhook delivery' on a degraded component. Charges themselves are succeeding via the synchronous API. How do you triage and mitigate?

What a strong answer looks like

Stop the bleeding first (mitigate), then form hypotheses from real signals. Separate root cause from symptom, communicate status as you go, and close with what prevents a repeat.

Learn the concepts

Diagram & narrate the incident

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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.