OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Brand-New Rectangle Coding Question and a Grid System Design

I just finished my OpenAI interview and wanted to share today's experience.

Unfortunately, the coding round gave me a brand new question I had never seen before. The topic was Rectangle.

Roughly, you maintain a 2D board, and requirements get added step by step:

• add rectangle
• remove rectangle
• undo
• after that there were follow-ups like removeAt / batch remove

The whole thing was multipart, adding one piece at a time on top of the previous one. The first few parts went okay for me, but around the 5th follow-up I ran out of time and could not fully finish the last part.

The problem itself is not really an algorithms problem. It is more data structure + state management + progressive requirements. If you have not seen it before, it really tests how you react on the spot, especially how you design undo/history, and how you keep extending the existing structure once new requirements come in.

System Design was Grid.

Overall I feel pretty sad after this one. I prepared for a long time and the coding round happened to hit a new question. I think I'm probably getting the 12-month cooldown 😂

Hope this helps a bit for anyone interviewing at OpenAI later. Good luck everyone.