Tower Research Capital LLC SDE-2 Interview Questions and Answers

Find the minimum cost to reduce an array to one element by merging adjacent elements.

• Iterate through the array and merge adjacent elements with the smallest sum each time.

• Keep track of the total cost as you merge elements.

• Repeat the merging process until only one element remains in the array.

The Word Ladder problem involves finding the shortest transformation sequence from one word to another by changing one letter at a time.

• Use breadth-first search to find the shortest transformation sequence.

• Create a graph where each word is a node and edges connect words that differ by one letter.

• Keep track of visited words to avoid revisiting them.

• Return -1 if no transformation sequence is possible.

Count the number of islands in a 2D matrix of 1s and 0s.

• Use Depth First Search (DFS) or Breadth First Search (BFS) to traverse the matrix and identify connected groups of 1s.

• Maintain a visited array to keep track of visited cells to avoid redundant traversal.

• Increment the island count whenever a new island is encountered.

• Consider all eight possible directions for connectivity between cells.

• Handle edge cases like out of bounds indices and already visited cells.

Find the minimum time required to rot all fresh oranges in a grid.

• Use Breadth First Search (BFS) to simulate the rotting process

• Track the time taken to rot all oranges and return it

• If any fresh oranges remain after simulation, return -1

• Handle edge cases like empty grid or no fresh oranges

Output the person with the maximum earnings from each department

• Join the employee and department tables on department ID

• Group by department ID and find the max earnings for each department

• Join the result with the employee table to get the person with max earnings