Gusto Coding Interview Questions
25 Gusto coding interview problems with full optimal solutions — 8 easy, 12 medium, 5 hard. Every problem ships with multiple approaches (brute-force first, then the optimal), complexity tables for each, company-specific tips on what an Gusto interviewer values, and a FAQ section.
Showing 6 problems of 25
- #49mediumcommonly asked
49. Group Anagrams
Group strings that are anagrams of each other. Gusto asks this to test hash-map design and key construction — the sorted-string key is the canonical approach, but they may push you to the character-count key for O(n·k) without sorting.
- #139mediumcommonly asked
139. Word Break
Determine if a string can be segmented into words from a dictionary. Gusto asks this to test DP thinking — specifically whether you can define the right subproblem and build the table bottom-up without getting tangled in overlapping recursion.
- #198mediumcommonly asked
198. House Robber
Maximise the sum of non-adjacent elements. Gusto asks this as a clean introductory DP problem — they want you to derive the recurrence yourself and then compress the O(n) space solution to O(1) without being prompted.
- #200mediumcommonly asked
200. Number of Islands
Count the number of islands in a grid. Gusto uses this to introduce graph traversal in a 2D setting — they want to see BFS or DFS with in-place marking, and to hear you articulate why each approach is equivalent before choosing one.
- #207mediumcommonly asked
207. Course Schedule
Determine whether all courses can be finished given prerequisite constraints — which is a cycle detection problem on a directed graph. Gusto asks this to test topological sort and graph reasoning in a domain they understand well: dependency graphs in their payroll and benefits configuration.
- #347mediumcommonly asked
347. Top K Frequent Elements
Return the k most frequent elements. Gusto asks this to test frequency counting combined with efficient selection — they want to hear about bucket sort to get O(n) rather than defaulting to heap-sort at O(n log k).