Google 2026 New Grad Early Career OA: Split and Sort plus Minimum Absolute Sum

Role: Software Engineer, New Grad / Early Career
Result: Passed the OA
Report time: November 2025
Application: Referral

The candidate applied with a referral in early October, received the OA near the end of October, and had one week to complete it. The pass notification arrived three days after submission, followed by scheduling for one coding and one behavioral interview.

Question 1: Split and Sort

Split an array into two non-empty parts, sort each part, concatenate them, and count the cuts that make the result nondecreasing.

Practice: Split and Sort

Question 2: Minimum Absolute Sum

Optionally negate at most one array element and minimize the absolute value of the final sum.

Practice: Minimum Absolute Sum

The original author linked these exact FastPrep questions directly and described both as previously repeated OA problems with moderate difficulty.