Binary Searchmedium45 minSoftware Engineer

Editor Minimum Feasible Throughput

Name: ProdMatch.ai
Availability: InStock

Software Engineer signal: binary search on answer + monotonic predicate in a collaborative editor context. This is a ProdMatch-owned software engineer drill, framed as a March 2026 Microsoft Creation Tools simulation, not a copied platform question.

Company context

Microsoft · Creation Tools

Freshness

March 2026

Product surface

collaborative editor

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

Question

For collaborative editor, choose the minimum processing rate so all operations 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

invariants
API correctness
graph modelling
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?

Your rating tunes when this problem shows up again.

Common Mistakes

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

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