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HP coding interview / online assessment, format and difficulty (2026 experience)

infra_ines · 6 replies

Went through HP's coding process twice in the past year (once for a frontend role, once for a full-stack position on a different team). The OA and live coding rounds are different enough that I'll break them out separately.

Online Assessment (OA)

The OA I got via HireVue came before any human conversation. It was timed, 90 minutes, 3 problems. Problem 1: easy warmup. Array manipulation, basically checking if you can write clean code. Mine was a variation of finding contiguous subarray sums. Problem 2: medium difficulty. Graph or tree problem. Mine was a shortest path variant on an unweighted graph. Nothing exotic. Problem 3: medium-hard. Second time I took it I got a dynamic programming problem (grid traversal with constraints). First time it was string parsing.

Language choices were broad: Python, Java, C++, JavaScript. I used JavaScript since I was applying for a frontend role and wanted to be consistent.

No behavioral questions in the OA, which was a relief. Some companies mix those in.

Live Coding Round (phone screen / virtual onsite)

For the full loop, I had two live coding rounds. One was collaborative (interviewer was chatty, gave hints, felt almost pairing-like). The other was more formal. Both were LeetCode medium in difficulty. I did not see a single LeetCode hard across either loop.

Topics I saw across both experiences: arrays, hash maps, binary search, BFS/DFS, basic DP. No system design in the coding rounds, no bit manipulation, no segment trees. Pretty classical.

Timing and format

Each live round was 45-50 minutes. About 5 minutes of intro, 30-35 minutes of problem-solving, 10 minutes of my questions. They used CoderPad both times.

One thing worth knowing: interviewers vary a lot in how much they guide you. One interviewer jumped in when I was stuck and gave a meaningful hint. The other stayed silent for a long time. I think it's the luck of who you get, not a consistent policy.

For prep: Grind mediums, get comfortable talking while coding, and know your time/space complexity cold. I think they filter more on clarity of thought than on whether you nail it in the first 10 minutes.

6 replies

bootcamp_bri

This is the most useful OA breakdown I've seen for HP. I'm prepping for a junior/associate SWE role. Is the OA the same difficulty level or do they adjust based on level? I'm genuinely scared of the DP problem tier.

frontend_fran

Honestly not sure they calibrate OA difficulty by level. I'd treat it as standard medium-range prep either way. For junior roles, if you can comfortably do LC mediums in your target language, I think you'll be fine. DP might show up but it won't be the worst DP problem you've ever seen.

mobile_mara

Did they let you use built-in language utilities? Like, could you import stuff in Python or were they being weird about it? Some companies get oddly restrictive about that.

frontend_fran

No restrictions that I noticed. Used standard libraries freely. Nobody said anything. CoderPad has an execution environment so I actually ran the code, which helped catch a dumb off-by-one on problem 2.

pivot_pat

Coming from a PM background and learning to code, I appreciate the breakdown of what topics actually appeared. Narrows down what to grind. Did any interviewers ask about object-oriented design or was it purely algorithmic?

frontend_fran

Purely algorithmic in the coding rounds. OOD stuff came up a little in the system design round but that was a separate slot. Keep the lanes separate in your prep.