Hello,

I was recently interviewing with FAANG and in one of the interviews, the interviewer asked me the run time complexity of a specific operation. I told him it is O(n) and he was not happy with my answer. He grilled me a couple of times and then he finally asked me whether I know about amortized run time? Obviously, I didn't know what it meant exactly at that point, so I told him so.

From my experience interviewing with other companies, I've always mentioned the worst case run time and it was never a point of discussion. So, I was taken aback when this was a discussion point in this specific interview. Please advise what I should answer if i am grilled on the same topic in future interviews.