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If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

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Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#101

Post by skrebbel »

dudul wrote: post #11
desireco42 wrote: post #5

This is epic :). I can imagine how interviewer would be pissed off if you come this prepared. They love those koan type questions but don't like when you turn the tables on them.

I'm so pissed at these stupid questions during interviews that now I start doing that. The last one was "how many tennis balls could you fit in the Empire State Building?". I spent maybe 10 minutes asking idiotic "clarifying" questions before the interviewer realized I was messing with him (e.g. "can I use any color for the balls?" "Do I have a crew to help me?" "Can I try to crush them?" etc). He got pretty upset ye…

"Do I have a crew to help me?" had me laughing out loud.

Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#102

Post by barrenko »

bishnu wrote: post #47
cableshaft wrote: post #3

I was expecting something a little different, where they passed on him because he didn't give the 'right' answer (what the interviewer had preconceived and/or looked up online).

100%. The answer wouldn't be "join our marketing team", it would be "you aren't a culture fit".

Ye, they really don't like people who think at marketing departments.

Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#103

Post by giantg2 »

rcpt wrote: post #90
cableshaft wrote: post #3

I was expecting something a little different, where they passed on him because he didn't give the 'right' answer (what the interviewer had preconceived and/or looked up online).

You know how police have to take an IQ test and get denied the job if they score too high? Like that, but for tech interviews.

I think it's a rare practice right?

"... the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training."

I must be a genius. I'm sooo bored at my software dev job.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#105

Post by nomel »

grumpyprole wrote: post #66
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never seen that before, that's excellent! The original PDF is at https://www.unz.com/PDF/PERIODICAL/SaturdayRev-1968dec21/62/ , which is includes a nice drawing of the student speaking with a building superintendent while holding a barometer, but to say more would be to spoil the punchline. Here is the text: > Angels on a Pin By ALEXANDER CALANDRA SOME time ago, I received a call from a colleague who asked if I w…

It sounds like the original question was just badly worded. It should have read "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building using only a barometer.". The other answers, while not incorrect, do assume the availability of additional items such as rope and watches.

> using only a barometer

But the pressure of a vacuum is 0, so unconventional means would be required, if it were worded that way.

Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#107

Post by BoxOfRain »

gorwell wrote: post #68

It is rather remarkable how unenlightened and vulgar our interview questions used to be. Manhole is the language of the savage from an age long ago, isn't that something? Thank Ford our omniscient DEI Controllers replaced it with Personhole! As a result our species thrived as never before.

Brave New World doesn't really work well as a tool to criticise "woke", this is a bad angle. If we lived in Brave New World, people wouldn't fight for their ideas about social justice because they'd be hypnotically conditioned to love the social status quo and their place in it from birth. A huge part of Huxley's premise is that social change can't happen in his dystopia because nobody feels any need for it despite the obviously dystopian underpinnings of the supposedly "happy" world.

Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#108

Post by geoduck14 »

datad wrote: post #97
okareaman wrote: post #75

How many ping pong balls would it take to fill a 747? Why do you ask? What problem are you trying to solve? We want to understand your thought process I'd think it was stupid to fill a 747 with ping pong balls and think about something else

An unladen 747?

African? Or European?

Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#109

Post by jerf »

jfengel wrote: post #82
988747 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, it has nothing to do with programming. Also, nothing to do with time management, people skills, or anything else that programmers do on their job.

It's an estimation problem, and programming is full of estimation problems. How many servers will I need? Will I be able to fit this in RAM or do I need an on-disk solution? How long will it take to go from 10 users to 10 million users, and will I be able to scale the design? You don't need the exact value, just a rough order of magnitude. That's the whole point of the big-O notation. A problem like that is lighthear…

I agree with you, and as such, I suggest simply asking such an estimation problem set in the computing world. It also has the advantage that you can get into discussions of things relevant to computing, like finding out how much they understand about orders of magnitude time like socket communication times to various distances, speeds of disks, etc.

One of the reasons I don't like "how many ping pong balls" etc. is that you're wasting valuable interview time. Interview time should be treated as very valuable to all concerned. Asking about ping pong balls just to find out estimation skills is a waste of time because it doesn't raise any other interesting questions, vs asking an estimation question that raises all kinds of other things you can pick up that are actually relevant in addition to testing estimation skills.

Re: If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)

#110

Post by RHSeeger »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #100
RHSeeger wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If none of them are correct, then - pepsi is coke or random - coke is pepsi or random - random is coke or pepsi If you want Coke and you start with Pepsi, you'll get back Coke (1/2 + 1/2x1/2) or Pepsi (1/2x1/2). However, you could pick it and get back Pepsi 10 times in a row. If you start by picking Random, you get back Coke (1/2) or Pepsi (1/2). If you get back Pepsi, you know 1. Random = Pepsi 2. Coke = Random (sin…

If you hit the Pepsi button and get Pepsi, you know it's random, so the random button has to be Coke (and Coke gives Pepsi). So picking the Pepsi button first still works in two tries - you either get a Coke all the time, get it randomly on the first try, or figure out which button gets you Coke.

Whoops, good point.
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