Capital One OA, rejected after Q3 and Q4 ran out of time

Capital One OA, rejected after Q3 and Q4 ran out of time

Just did the Capital One OA, 1 round, rejected a few days later.

70 minutes on CodeSignal, camera and mic on, full screen share required, had to upload an ID photo before it even let me start.

Q1: given a number, split into digits, return product minus sum. easy warmup, done in maybe 5 minutes. Q2: reorder a string alternating first, last, second, second to last and so on. easy medium, took a bit to get the indexing right. Q3: city groups thing, if source and destination are in the same group any ticket works, otherwise you return empty. description was long and I burned too much time just parsing what they wanted. Q4: matrix broken into concentric border layers, sort each layer clockwise and write it back starting from the same corner. barely got the first layer working before time ran out.

Prompt said O(n^2) is fine for at least some of these, still didn't matter tbh since I couldn't finish Q3 or Q4 in time.

Got an email a few days later, rejected. No score shown, just the decision.

6 month cooldown before I can apply again apparently.

For context this was a general SWE OA, not tied to a specific team as far as I could tell from the email.

If you're prepping for this, spend more time on reading comprehension than on algorithms, the questions themselves aren't that hard once you actually understand what they're asking. There are prep threads online with a bunch of past OA questions if you look around.

Anyone else feel like the C1 OA is more of a reading test than a coding test at this point.

Capital One rshah22 2d

did you try Q1 to Q2 to Q4 to Q3 order, heard that helps with time

Capital One arjunmehta97 OP 2d

no I didn't think of that, went straight in order, might try that next time

Capital One benhe98 1d

city group one got me too, spent way too long just understanding the rules

Capital One chloewang01 1d

same, felt like the prompt itself was the hard part not the logic

Capital One noahdavis1998 20h

rip, 6 month cooldown is brutal for a coding test

Capital One priyapatel95 18h

camera and full screen requirement is so annoying ngl