Solve two grid problems (islands + min-cost path)
Company: TikTok
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Quick Answer: This pair of problems evaluates grid-based algorithm competencies, specifically connected-component detection and translation-invariant shape recognition for distinct-island counting, plus shortest-path/graph-search reasoning under unit-change costs for the directed-grid minimum-cost path.