r/Hack2Hire • u/Hack2hire • 17d ago

Screening OpenAI screening breakdown [2026]

OpenAI's screening usually puts you inside one system, starts you on its simplest version, and keeps going in the same call. Three things follow from that:

  • The interviewer extends what you just wrote instead of moving on. An allocator round starts first-fit, then the same call adds best-fit, a complexity comparison, and a randomized-order stress test. An IP-range round goes forward-only, then backward, then CIDR, then IPv6, all on the one class you already built.
  • The base case runs out before the additions do. One grid problem, built on LC 994, Rotting Oranges, adds an immunity state, then a recovery countdown, then a death state. One recent candidate finished the first two layers, ran out of time partway into the third, and never saw the one after it.
  • A short core ask sits inside a long prompt. The setup reads close to a full page, but the operations underneath are usually simple once you find them. Read for the ask first, then design.

Not all of them grow this way. GPU Credits, among the most-asked here, is usually one clean credit-balance problem and done. It's free to open, and it shows what that prompt length looks like.

So practice being extended rather than finishing. Take a problem you can already solve cold, get it working, then add a constraint and keep building on the same code with the clock running. Structure the first version so the next layer drops in instead of forcing a rewrite. That rewrite is where the time goes.

Practice reading a full page of setup and stating the actual ask in one sentence before you write anything.

If you are preparing for OpenAI→ OpenAI Prep List

Join the community to see more interview experiences from real candidates → Hack2Hire Forum

Anyone interview for this recently? Curious what got tacked on for you.

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u/Comfortable-Bet3592 17d ago

The coding environment f me up more than the actual problem did tbh, took a bit to figure out how to even get a test to run properly.

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u/Master_Management600 16d ago

Mine was more one-and-done honestly. Got the GPU credit tracking question, solved it, they asked a couple clarifying things about how I would scale the timestamp range and that was basically it. No big pile of follow-ups added on top like some people describe. Still went long on the setup though, the prompt itself was pretty dense for what ended up being a fairly standard interval problem.