Binary Searchmedium45 minFrontend Engineer

Timeline Minimum Feasible Throughput

Frontend Engineer signal: binary search on answer + monotonic predicate in a social timeline context. This is a ProdMatch-owned frontend engineer drill, framed as a March 2026 Yellow.ai Consumer Web simulation, not a copied platform question.

Company context

Yellow.ai · Consumer Web

Freshness

March 2026

Product surface

social timeline

ProdMatch interview simulation based on product-team patterns; not a claim of a real company question.

Question

For social timeline, choose the minimum processing rate so all cards finish before deadline. Each worker can process rate units per minute, rounded up per item.

Input

Work item sizes and deadline minutes.

Output

Minimum integer rate.

Constraints

1 <= items.length <= 200000
1 <= item size <= 1e9
Deadline is at least items.length.

Concepts

render scheduling
state graphs
virtualization
binary search on answer
monotonic predicate

sizes [3,6,7,11], deadline=8 -> 4

Approach

Try framing your own approach first. The 30 seconds you think before peeking is where learning happens.

Clean Solution

Reveal the approach first.

How well did you understand?

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Common Mistakes

Use low + (high - low) // 2 to avoid overflow.
The predicate must be monotonic or binary search is invalid.

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