Java Sorting logic and Identifying max of two objects

Question

The requirement is to find the latest employee objects (latest date) having group number 8 with department 2 and having group number 4 within department 2. Same way group number 8 within department 1 and group number 4 in department 1. I only need the latest one object of all the above in the final list.

The comparison logic written was to sort it on the required order and retain only the required object. But I am stuck as I cannot find a way to retain single object from the sorted list. Is there anyway i can achieve it? Ignore the Comparator logic, appreciate if you can suggest any ootb way using stream or other good implementation?

  SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-mm-yyyy");
    List<Employee> employees = new LinkedList<Employee>(Arrays.asList(
        new Employee("Emp1", df.parse("12-08-2020"),
            new EmpType("1", new Group(8))),
        new Employee("Emp2", df.parse("11-08-2020"),
            new EmpType("2", new Group(8))),
        new Employee("Emp3", df.parse("10-08-2020"),
            new EmpType("2", new Group(4))),
        new Employee("Emp4", df.parse("17-08-2020"),
            new EmpType("2", new Group(8))),
        new Employee("Emp5", df.parse("19-08-2020"),
            new EmpType("1", new Group(4)))));


    /* Sorting logic to sort by group number first then by department and then by date */
    Collections.sort(employees, new Comparator<Employee>() {
      @Override
      public int compare(Employee employee, Employee t1) {
        int val = 0;
        if (employee.getEmpType().getGroup().getNumber() < t1.getEmpType().getGroup().getNumber()) {
          val = 1;
        } else if (employee.getEmpType().getGroup().getNumber() > t1.getEmpType().getGroup()
            .getNumber()) {
          val = -1;
        } else {
          val = 0;
        }

        if (val == 0) {
          val = -(employee.getEmpType().getDepartment().compareTo(t1.getEmpType().getDepartment()));
        }
        if (val == 0) {
          val = -employee.getDate().compareTo(t1.getDate());
        }
        return val;
      }
    });

Answer 1

Instead of sorting, you could use Collections.max with the same Comparator you've implemented.

EDIT to address the discussion in the comments:
If I understand the data structure correctly, EmpType encapsulates the unique combination we want to find the "latest" employee for. Assuming it has a proper implementation of the equals(Object) and hashCode() methods, you could stream the list and collect it to a map from the EmpType to the latest employee:

Map<EmpType, Employee> latestEmployees =
    employees.stream()
             .collect(Collectors.toMap(
                          Employee::getEmpType,
                          Function.identity(),
                          BinaryOperator.maxBy(
                              Comparator.comparing(Employee::getDate))));