Solve interval merging and histogram area
Company: Bytedance
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
The coding round included two algorithm problems:
1. **Merge overlapping intervals**: Given a list of closed intervals `[[start1, end1], [start2, end2], ...]`, merge all overlapping intervals and return a new list of non-overlapping intervals sorted by start time.
2. **Maximum rectangle in a histogram**: Given an array of non-negative integers where each value represents the height of a histogram bar of width `1`, return the maximum rectangular area that can be formed using one or more consecutive bars.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates algorithmic problem-solving skills focused on interval manipulation and histogram-based area computation, emphasizing data structures, ordering, and reasoning about time and space complexity.