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Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

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Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#41

Post by pisarzp »

proksoup wrote: post #11
gaylemcd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking "how would you estimate the number of cars sold in a year?" is not a brainteaser. It's an estimation / market sizing question. You can deduce a reasonable estimate from the population size and other assumptions. A brainteaser is something like "A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?" That's a brainteaser -- and nothing Google would ask.

"How would you estimate the number of cars sold in a year?" This boggles my mind. Where? For what purpose? Is the expectation that the candidate googles that question? I would google lots of different things until I found some answers (car manufacturers sales reports from car magazines, news articles that may have the answer, literally for the phrase "number of cars sold in a year" etc, etc). If you want me to talk t…

The purpose is to see how you break down the problem. It's all about applying MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) methodology.

Usually for this type of questions you don't really even need to say the numbers, just clearly outline your though process.

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#43

Post by gohrt »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #22

I had dinner with 4 googlers, one of whom was very proud to ask the Prisoner's Dilemma to lots of interviewees. Sorry but this article is false.

The prisoner's dilemma is a basic game theory concept (with a lot of interesting math inside it). It isn't a brainteaser and there isn't even an "answer"

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#44

Post by rajksarkar »

Market estimation questions are primarily asked in non-engineering interviews at Google like PM, PMM etc. I think market estimation question is a very good way to test how a person thinks. There are no right or wrong answers, mostly the candidates are being tested on their thinking abilities in ambiguous situations, which happens in your real job all the time. For example, you are trying to launch a product in a new market and you have to estimate sales/marketing dollars/headcount the 1st year - how do you go about it? Are you asking the right questions?

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#45

Post by asnyder »

pisarzp wrote: post #37
morpher wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you account for the Dunning-Kruger[1] effect when asking your "How do you rate yourself?" question? I would guess that answers in the range "6 or 7" could span a really wide range of actual knowledge. Does that agree with your experience? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I understand that he just asks real question on that level to calibrate your answer. It's just faster to start from some reference point.

Right, even if someone miscalibrated we can quickly get to the proper calibration. Though, I stress ten as being the creator of said technology. For example, in the case of PHP ten would entail actually being able extend PHP via C/C++. In my experience most people calibrate pretty well initially or after an initial miscalibration.

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#46

Post by brg »

diminoten wrote: post #14
sharkweek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you answer that question? -- I honestly don't understand what possibly could be drawn from asking that. Deductive reasoning? Logical thought pattern? Creative thinking? Seems like there are a lot of better ways to find out if someone is capable of such things

Using a swimming technique to push off the air the bug could either gain momentum by using the bottle's sloped bottom as a kind of half-pipe, or start moving in a circular path until sufficient speed were built up that the bug would begin moving up the bottle's side. Alternatively, the bug could fly out if it's that kind of bug. Or it could knock the bottle over by rocking it. Clearly I'm Google material because of m…

The bottle can be tipped to its side, and the bug can hop over the lid.

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#48

Post by ChuckMcM »

gohrt wrote: post #39
Pwnguinz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by 'difference the license plate numbers'?

Chuck is assuming (reasonably) that license plate numbers are assigned in sequential order to all new cars. So if 1000 cars are sold in a year, maybe he'll see plate #267 from Year 0, and plate #1796 from Year 2. 1800 - 300 / 2 = 750 cars per year, close enough.

Exactly, in California private plates are of the form /[0-9][A-Z]{3}[0-9]{3}/ you can think of it as three digits base 10, and three digits base 26, one digit base 10. There are letter combos they don't use like SUX or FUX etc but each of those only reduce the pool by 1000 vehicles for each banned letter sequence so overall a relatively small hit on the estimate. My wife pointed out you can be more accurate if you include the month of the renewal in the registration (its on the plate as well) to get total months in your sample.

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#49

Post by jerrya »

I was definitely asked a "cutting the cake" brain teaser question when I interviewed. Cut a cake fairly into X pieces using Y slices.

And it was a reasonable question that may or may not have knocked me out of the job, as long as by reasonable you think it's "fair" to serve some people the bottom half of a cake and other people the top half of a cake.

But I of course don't know if that's what knocked me out.

Re: Google Hasn’t Changed Their Interview Questions

#50

Post by mdisraeli »

jerrya wrote: post #49

I was definitely asked a "cutting the cake" brain teaser question when I interviewed. Cut a cake fairly into X pieces using Y slices. And it was a reasonable question that may or may not have knocked me out of the job, as long as by reasonable you think it's "fair" to serve some people the bottom half of a cake and other people the top half of a cake. But I of course don't know if that's what knocked me out.

If you were interviewing for a software engineering position, that question makes sense - that reads to me like an algorithm problem (albeit a three-dimensional one). There's also a couple of other roles for which it would make sense.

The big problem with that question is "cake". Mappings change our entire perception of a scenario (The mass-grave-filling problem of Tetris being a classic example). Cakes have tops, bottoms, fillings, decoration, and so on. This makes a perfectly reasonable question into something much more nasty

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