Get Min Total Cost
Reported by candidates from TikTok's online assessment. Pattern, common pitfall, and the honest play if you blank under the timer.
You've got a TikTok OA on your calendar and one of the problems is called Get Min Total Cost. The title alone tells you this is an optimization problem, not a data structure drill. You're looking for a way to minimize some accumulated expense across a set of choices or states. TikTok uses this type of question to see if you can model a problem, identify the structure, and code a solution under time pressure. StealthCoder can be your safety net if the approach isn't clicking in the moment.
Pattern and pitfall
Without the full problem text, the pattern is likely dynamic programming, greedy, or a hybrid. Get Min Total Cost usually means you're either picking items or actions in sequence where each choice affects the total, or you're trying to find the cheapest way to combine or transform things. The trick is recognizing the subproblem structure. If it's DP, you're building up from smaller choices. If it's greedy, you're proving that a local best choice leads to a global best. The common pitfall is not thinking recursively early enough, or not recognizing that you can reuse intermediate results. When you sit down for the live OA, if this problem appears and you blank on the approach, StealthCoder reads the full problem and gives you the solution path instantly.
If this hits your live OA and you blank, StealthCoder solves it in seconds, invisible to the proctor.
You can drill Get Min Total Cost cold, or you can hedge it. StealthCoder runs invisibly during screen share and surfaces a working solution in under 2 seconds. The proctor sees the IDE. They don't see what's behind it. Built by an Amazon engineer who would have shipped this the night before his JPMorgan OA if he'd had it.
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TikTok reuses patterns across OAs. Built by an Amazon engineer who would have shipped this the night before his JPMorgan OA if he'd had it. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Get Min Total Cost FAQ
Is this a graph shortest-path problem in disguise?+
Possibly. If the problem describes transitions or movements between states with costs, it could be Dijkstra or BFS. But "min total cost" more often means DP or greedy. Read carefully for whether you're finding a path or combining items.
What if the greedy approach isn't working?+
Switch to DP immediately. Build a table or memo where the key is the state and the value is the minimum cost to reach that state. Fill bottom-up or top-down recursion. Test with small examples first.
How much time should I spend on this in the OA?+
15-20 minutes to understand and code a brute force or DP solution. If you're stuck after 10 minutes on the approach, sketch the state space and transitions on paper before typing.
Are there standard optimizations I should know?+
If it's DP, watch for overlapping subproblems that mean memoization will help. If it's greedy, sort the input first. Always ask: can I reuse a result, and in what order should I process choices?
Should I expect this to be a one-liner or a longer problem?+
Expect 30-50 lines of code for a solid solution. If your approach is much longer, you're probably not seeing the pattern. Refactor before submitting.