Hi5 SDE used to get asked the "How Strong is an Egg?"/"Drop Two Bowling Balls from a building" question.
Not sure how this proves anything.
Google Interview Questions
11–20 of 37 posts
Re: Google Interview Questions
#12I'm having difficulty seeing how these questions would help find people who can build great software or solve problems creatively: a) I'm not sure there's a strong causal link between "being good at brain teasers" and "writing awesome code". b) I suppose they could be viewed as measuring creativity, but it's in a stressful situation. When you're trying to solve actual problems at work you aren't going to be trying to…
I think there are two ways to look at (b). I'd agree that generally the problems we all solve are not particularly time critical, when you're working on something over a week or month, there's not going to be anything which needs doing in ten minutes. On the other hand, when you're supporting live systems, there can be times when being able to diagnose and fix a problem in a few minutes, under pressure, can be a valuable skill. It's at times like that that you need people who can solve problems quickly in stressful situations. I'm not particularly saying that these types of questions will help you find those people, but if it's something you want to test for then they may be useful.
Re: Google Interview Questions
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was skeptical reading these questions, because when I did phone screen at Google, I got very practical questions about map reduce and skip lists. I do know that many companies still use riddles like these, however.
What companies? In internship interviews at MS, Google, Fog Creek, others, I've never been asked a question anything like these. (thank god)
I was asked a "crossing a river with a box and two locks" question when I interviewed for a full time database development position (database engine, that is). The question was related to public key encryption... which was something the position never even came close to requiring.
Re: Google Interview Questions
#14I got the 5 pirates one when I interviewed at Trilogy.
Re: Google Interview Questions
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
What companies? In internship interviews at MS, Google, Fog Creek, others, I've never been asked a question anything like these. (thank god)
I was asked a "crossing a river with a box and two locks" question when I interviewed for a full time database development position (database engine, that is). The question was related to public key encryption... which was something the position never even came close to requiring.
And creating your own encryption protocols from encryption primitives is easy to get wrong, even after you figure out something that seems to follow the rules, because of all sorts of gotchas.
Re: Google Interview Questions
#16I love the "Boys and Girls" question, because most people get it wrong first pass, most computer science folks would get it after a few minutes of work, and a Bayesian would immediately nail it.
Plus, it's seems so simple we could pose it to our (non-Dilbert) moms.
Now if only getting this was correlated with good programming...
Re: Google Interview Questions
#17These are all interesting but don't prove you're a good software guy. I don't like the way how some companies try to look "cool" and do the opposite of corporates where you have to get your certifications and grades right opposed to your Brain Academy or the like highscore.
It's an interesting exercise but I think the questions should be focused around what the company's needs are for that role in particular not to test your "genius". f you're a genius and have the good attitude you already created something great that speaks for you.
Maybe it was the case, don't know.
Re: Google Interview Questions
#18The "Is my husband a cheat" riddle is actually very well known. It's just the Blue Eyed Islander puzzle in disguise: (http://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html) also known as the Muddy Children puzzle. Discussed here too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)
and here: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/the-blue-eyed-islan...
In fact, a whole book has been written about it and related issues:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...
It's a fascinating riddle because it introduces the subtle concept of "what somebody knows about what someone else knows about what someone else knows about X".
But such a well discussed and complicated puzzle therefore also makes a bad, or at least "unfair", interview question. If you've heard it before, read that book, read Terence Tao's post on it... etc.. you'll easily ace this riddle.
If you haven't heard of it before, it's going to take you way longer than just a few minutes to get your head around it.
So as an interview question, it's testing what you "know", not how well you think.
Re: Google Interview Questions
#19Hi5 SDE used to get asked the "How Strong is an Egg?"/"Drop Two Bowling Balls from a building" question. Not sure how this proves anything.
just wondering for this question("how strong is an egg"), i think binary search will be the minimum tries, so its quite useful.
Re: Google Interview Questions
#20I got the 5 pirates one when I interviewed at Trilogy.
I hate that one. It seems to rely on these "pirates" being hardcore mathematical logicians and rule-followers. Can you imagine a pirate, one out of five, "suggesting" that a good distribution was him 98, two of the others 1 each, and the other two zero? WTF? I'd cut off his head on pure principle!
A better "real world" solution would be 40 + 30 + 15 + 10 + 5 or something.