Find K-th Largest and Longest Vacation
Company: Meta
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Solve the following two coding problems.
1. **Find the k-th largest element**
Given an integer array `nums` and an integer `k`, return the element that would appear at index `k` if the array were sorted in **descending** order.
Assume `k` is **0-indexed**, so:
- `k = 0` means the largest element
- `k = 1` means the second largest element
- and so on
**Example:**
- `nums = [5, -3, 9, 1]`
- `k = 0` -> `9`
- `k = 1` -> `5`
- `k = 3` -> `-3`
2. **Maximize the longest vacation using PTO**
You are given a calendar year represented as a character array containing only:
- `H` = holiday
- `W` = workday
You are also given an integer `pto`, representing how many workdays you may convert into vacation days by using Personal Time Off.
Your goal is to maximize the length of the **longest consecutive vacation streak**, where a vacation day is either:
- an existing holiday (`H`), or
- a workday (`W`) that you choose to cover with PTO
Return the maximum possible length of such a consecutive streak.
**Example:**
- `calendar = [W, H, H, W, W, H, W]`
- `pto = 2`
- Output: `5`
**Explanation:** By using PTO on two appropriate workdays, you can create a longest contiguous vacation block of length 5.
Quick Answer: This pair of problems evaluates array manipulation and algorithmic problem-solving skills, specifically order-statistics for selecting the k-th largest element and maximizing consecutive sequences under constrained transformations for the vacation streak problem.