Stripe Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Two-Part Deployment Window Scheduler OA I Couldn't Finish

On 9/14 I applied to a mid-level role through a referral and got the OA right away.

Honestly it was long and a total slog. Even using Claude I couldn't get it done.

Problem background:

Stripe needs a scheduler to manage service deployment times. Time is represented as minute_of_week, in the range [0, 10079] (a week has 10080 minutes in total).

Input:

• part: "part1" or "part2"
• inputCsv: an array of strings

Part 1 format:

start,end,type          # type = "allowed" or "freeze"

Part 2 format (the first line is different):

utc_now,lead_time,min_continuous_minutes,k   # first line
start,end,type,timezone_offset               # subsequent lines

Part 1:

Return all deployable windows = allowed windows minus freeze windows.

Part 2:

Extra handling:

• Time zone conversion: utc = local - offset
• Only return windows that satisfy the conditions:
  • start time >= utc_now + lead_time
  • window length >= min_continuous_minutes
  • return at most k of them

Output a 2D array [[start, end], ...].

That's the original problem, attached above.