Is Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs easy or hard?

This problem is classified as Hard because it combines combinatorial search with optimization. Efficient solutions require pruning strategies, careful state management, and sometimes binary search over the answer space.

Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs Python/Java solution

Typical implementations use DFS backtracking with pruning. Maintain a workloads array of size k and recursively assign jobs while tracking the current maximum load. The same logic works in Python, Java, and C++ with minor syntax differences.

How to solve Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs in O(n)?

An O(n) solution is not possible because the problem requires exploring combinations of job assignments. The optimal strategies use backtracking with pruning or binary search combined with DFS feasibility checks. These approaches significantly reduce the exponential search space but still have exponential worst‑case behavior.

What is the best approach for Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs?

Backtracking with pruning is the most widely used approach. It assigns jobs to workers recursively while pruning branches where the workload already exceeds the current best answer. With symmetry pruning and job sorting, the exponential search space becomes manageable for n up to around 12.

Is Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs asked at Google/Amazon/Meta?

Problems involving job scheduling, workload balancing, and minimizing maximum load appear frequently in interviews at companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta. Variants of this problem test backtracking, pruning strategies, and optimization techniques such as binary search on the answer.

What data structure is used in Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs?

The core data structure is an array that tracks the current workload of each worker. During recursion or feasibility checks, this array is updated as jobs are assigned. Some variations also use bitmasks to represent subsets of jobs, linking the problem to bit manipulation and dynamic programming techniques.

What is the time complexity of Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs?

The worst‑case time complexity is O(k^n) because each of the n jobs can be assigned to any of the k workers. Practical implementations run much faster due to pruning and sorting optimizations. Space complexity is O(k + n) for recursion and worker workload tracking.

Description Hints 1 Solution Video 14:00

1723. Find Minimum Time to Finish All Jobs

Hard46.7% acceptance5 companies

You are given an integer array jobs, where jobs[i] is the amount of time it takes to complete the i^th job.

There are k workers that you can assign jobs to. Each job should be assigned to exactly one worker. The working time of a worker is the sum of the time it takes to complete all jobs assigned to them. Your goal is to devise an optimal assignment such that the maximum working time of any worker is minimized.

Return the minimum possible maximum working time of any assignment.

Example 1:

Input: jobs = [3,2,3], k = 3
Output: 3
Explanation: By assigning each person one job, the maximum time is 3.

Example 2:

Input: jobs = [1,2,4,7,8], k = 2
Output: 11
Explanation: Assign the jobs the following way:
Worker 1: 1, 2, 8 (working time = 1 + 2 + 8 = 11)
Worker 2: 4, 7 (working time = 4 + 7 = 11)
The maximum working time is 11.

Constraints: