How should I practice Employee Hierarchy Cycle and Depth Analysis?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Microsoft phone screen problems in FastPrep.

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Employee Hierarchy Cycle and Depth Analysis

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Problem statement

An organization has n employees labeled from 0 to n - 1. The array manager describes the direct manager relation:

manager[i] = -1 means employee i is the root of the organization.
Otherwise, manager[i] is the employee who directly manages employee i.

Exactly one employee has manager -1. Every other entry is a valid employee index. The reported relations may still contain a directed cycle disconnected from the root.

Return a two-element array:

If any management cycle exists, return [1, -1].
Otherwise, return [0, maxDepth], where an employee's depth is the number of manager edges from the root to that employee and maxDepth is the greatest employee depth.

Function

analyzeHierarchy(manager: int[]) → int[]

Examples

Example 1

manager = [-1,0,0,1,1,3]return = [0,3]

No cycle exists. Employee 5 is reached along 0 -> 1 -> 3 -> 5, so the maximum depth is 3.

Example 2

manager = [1,2,0,-1]return = [1,-1]

Employees 0, 1, and 2 form the management cycle 0 -> 1 -> 2 -> 0.

Example 3

manager = [-1]return = [0,0]

The only employee is the root, whose depth is 0.

Constraints

1 <= manager.length <= 2 * 10^5
Exactly one entry of manager is -1.
Every other entry is an employee index in [0, manager.length - 1].