Morgan Stanley OA problems
Question Details
Problem Statement: A clothing company wants to start a new line of clothing made from recycled clothes. The company wants this line to consist only of words formed from letters \'a\'...
Full Details
Problem Statement:
A clothing company wants to start a new line of clothing made from recycled clothes. The company wants this line to consist only of words formed from letters \'a\' to \'z\'. The creative team is facing challenges as they need to use a similar patch multiple times to achieve the desired design. To address this, the product team needs to find the sequence in which they should use the patch to get the desired words on the clothing.
Input:
The first line consists of a string patch, representing the patch.
The second line consists of a string designerWords, representing the words to be printed on the clothing.
Output: Print N space-separated integers indicating the sequence in which the patch should be used to obtain the desired words. If there is no possible way, then print -1.
Note: If multiple possible sequences exist, print the smallest permutation.
Example:
Input:
ab
aab
Output:
0 1
Explanation:
The patch needs to be used in the following way to create the desired word:
Place the first patch at index 0 to get "ab".
Place the second patch at index 1 to form "aab".
The requirement states that the second patch \'b\' of the first patch overlaps with \'a\' of the second patch.
Input:
yz
yzzz
Output:
2 1 0
i have a greedy approach for this but how to get the smallest permutation ?
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a morgan stanley interview for a swe role during the oa round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Backtracking, Greedy, Strings .
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About Morgan Stanley Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Morgan Stanley. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Morgan Stanley are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Morgan Stanley interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Morgan Stanley reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Morgan Stanley Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Morgan Stanley reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.