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Community Question Bundle

The Three Questions That Tanked My Onsite

Three problems from a senior backend onsite I failed in 2024. A median-of-stream I overcomplicated, a string compression where I missed a case, and a queue-with-min I never finished. Plus what I should have written.

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Question Bundles

The Three Questions That Tanked My Onsite

Three problems from a senior backend onsite I failed in 2024. A median-of-stream I overcomplicated, a string compression where I missed a case, and a queue-with-min I never finished. Plus what I should have written.

Question Bundle
Python
3 questions
interview-prep
onsite-interview
algorithms
sanjayward

By @sanjayward

April 17, 2026

·

Updated May 18, 2026

782 views

21

4.4 (13)

Round 1: design a data structure that supports add(x) and median() on a stream of integers. I jumped to a balanced BST and ran out of time. The interviewer wanted two heaps.

What I actually wrote at the board

I started sketching an AVL tree with order statistics. Forty minutes in I had insertion working and no median; the interviewer politely moved on.

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