What is Digg?95 Comments
- p9s50W5k4GUD2c6, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24Digg never lets me down for my daily dose of comedy - great digg!
Some of the blogged responses to the nickle-blender question are hilarious - samples below:
Stonicus' response: "I quickly realize that even if I get out, I am only the size of a nickel, and will probably never get laid again, so I place my neck on the blade and close my eyes till my 60 seconds are up." LOL
Ksquared's response: "I guess I should have answered, "I do nothing, because I will shortly implode and die from unbearable tensile forces." ;)" Damn true!
MagicScript's response: "I'm confused, if you're the height of a nickel and you're thrown into a blender, wouldn't the fall kill or seriously injure you?" Hummm... Problem solved.
ObeH's response: "The right answer is "Hang on, lemme check google." :)
Pinacolada's response: "Bah, I don't think merely staying alive in the blender is the way to go. You have no idea when or if the blender will ever be turned off. In fact, the fact that you've been placed in a blender in the first place implies that there is a malicious entity involved, someone who wants to see you minced." - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -14/+35Q: "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"
First, I would be pissed that I was the height of a nickel. Second, I would commit suicide.
Q: "How would you find out if a machine's stack grows up or down in memory?"
Attach a debugger and watch the stack pointer.
Q: "Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew."
Have you ever seen a dictionary? Same thing.
Q: "How many gas stations would you say there are in the United States?"
According to http://answers.google.com/ the answer is 213,317.
Got anymore stupid questions? When do I start? - Walking.Dude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21The gas station question used to be a standard M$ question. I interviewed for a staff aug position at Microsoft once. The guy asked me one of these silly questions: "How would go go about building an airport?". My answer: "First thing I'd do is go out an hire someone who knows how to build an airport."
- darb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14As an interviewer for Google (Yes, I'm a Google Employee) - I'll do my best to provide our reasoning's for these questions and what we expect. However, I must do so in a way that does not overstep my NDA.
--
For each question asked, there are three (3) key factors:
1. How did the applicant go about reasoning (or logically deriving) that answer.
2. How well was the applicant's response communicated?
3. What was the answer relevant to, and how is it categorized.
Let me break it down:
1. We can understand one of the processes of human thought, by how one reasons - or derives their answer from a given question, or question set. When the applicant answers a question, their answer tells very distinct and definitive characteristics about that person, and their ability to reason.
Just as many of you have varied your answers, and argued over what would be a "correct" answer - you can see variations in how each and everyone of you reasoned.
Without going into a whole lesson in psychology, this method of reasoning that the applicant (or you) select - can tell us (the company) very key characteristics about you.
2. Does the applicant have the ability to think analogously? Only 15% of the population can think, and/or understand analogies. 10% of those 15%, can immediately derive an analogy from a question such as "How do you describe a database to your..." - this presses for analogous thinking.
We're also seeking how well that answer was communicated. Others must force, or pressure themselves into coming up with a solid analogy. Some, can just relate it at the snap of a finger.
Also - how well was that answer communicated. Did the applicant deliver it with a powerful force, confident and fully backing their decision? Or, was it communicated with a twinge of doubt?
Obviously, you can derive there are many other things we're searching for in how it was communicated. Tone, diction, presentation. Etc.
3. This is the trick. Is it relevant? If you're applying for a position for Marketing, your answers should show that you're tying it all together. You should be expressing your strengths, in marketing, within these difficult and open-ended questions.
If you're applying for a programming position, you should be weaving your answers with what that position entails. It shows that you're thinking about the necessities of the position.
Also, how is that answer categorized? Vague, Detailed, Over-Detailed, Creative, Un-Creative. Etc. Often, we assign three (3) categories to a particular answer. If you're too vague, or too detailed - you've missed the point of the question.
--
Hope this clears up some of the "Why the nutty questions" responses.
Good Day! - loftx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Complete list of questions at:
http://mediablog.mail2web.com/sully/blog/entry.html?id=343 - strcmp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10If your interviewer says "interesting" in response to any of your answers, you're probably screwed.
- noph44, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12That was a very intriguing question set. Good to hear that some companies out there care about something other than the normal "academia" repetoire. Ohh yea and by the way, absolutely amazing answers, especially considering they were on the spot answers over a phone. Way to go man.
- joshv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The gas question station is meant to be an order of magnitude approximation problem. The poster of the interview questions went in to a bit too much detail. You know there are about 300 million people in the US. Are they driving 10^9, 10^8 or 10^7 cars? 10^9 is crazy, 10^7 seems low, there are probably that many in California alone - 10^8 it is. Most of these cars fill up once a week on average. How many cars does the average gas station serve a week? 100? 10^3, or 10^4. 100 might be OK for rural America, but this is an average, including interstates and busy cities that might serve hundreds of cars a day. On the other end, 10^4 seems high for an average, even a very busy gas station would have to push through well over 1,000 cars a day to accomplish this. Doable, but not realistic as an average. So 10^3 cars per week it is.
So each gas station serves 1000 cars a week, each car fills up about once a week, and there are 10^8 cars. 10^8/1/10^3 = 10^5 gas stations. Which is the correct order of magnitude of the actual number. - GREGMON, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I put a nickel in my Oster brand blender, and the lower blades will hit it, so hanging out and waiting for the thing to overheat would not work. Then I plaved the nickel on top of the blades, at the vortex, and turned the thing on. Not having safety glasses, I looked away, but the nickel did indeed fly out after a bit of banging noises. Which dimension of the nickel are we talking about anyway?
- Kestral, on 10/12/2007, -10/+16Am I the only one that thinks these questions are stupid? I know that it's "in" to "think outside the box" but this is just ridiculous.
- incognegro, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10I highly doubt that guy came up with the gas station answer on the phone like that. Either he had something in front of him and was reading it or he was furiously googling and calculating. Unless this guy is a professional orator, there's no way his response was that smooth. I call BS on that. However, the first couple of answers were fairly mediocre, which I would expect from a forum mod at "gamedev.net".
- mastercheif, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11 Lol, Microsoft and Google have something in common! Really hard interviews.
- CrumbleBeeHaHa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I recently interviewed at Microsoft and got asked real programming and problem solving questions, and was kind of expecting the well-known "puzzle questions" like the ones Google asked this guy. I asked one interviewer toward the end why they don't ask those type of questions anymore and he gave a good response, "It doesn't really tell us much about how well you can write software. And everyone has already heard all the good ones.". He also added, "But since you asked..." and gave me a riddle question which luckily I was able to solve (sure would have been embarrasing otherwise).
My interview was a live interview (lots of coding, diagraming, designing on the whiteboard), and a lot of the questions would have been really hard to answer over the phone so had it been a phone interview perhaps i would have been asked more questions like these. - udubnate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I got only technical questions for my google IT Tech interviews
- kkaitan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Hi all. I'm the author (k) of the original article who was interviewed, a moderator of GameDev.Net and sometimes-poster to http://www.jsqrd.com/blog .
First, wow! That post is more than a year old now; it's funny that it's been dug(g) up after all this time. If you're planning on interviewing with Google (or already have) in the near future, I'd be wary about using this as some kind of reference point. And with the questions now on the Internet, it's probably a safe bet that they're not going to use them anymore.
Second, everything I said has been paraphrased. I was writing down all my responses at the same time I was giving them, so I had to reconstruct what I actually said from my notes. But I adhered strictly to the spirit of things; everything I wrote is more or less everything I said. I made sure to get the exact wording of the questions, so what you read there is more or less verbatim. So if my responses seem a little polished, that's because they are, and I wrote as much in the very first paragraph of that post: "Any intermediate questions that I asked for clarification or otherwise have been omitted."
Third, some people have written in to ask me about the terms of the NDA. As it turns out, I never had to sign one. I know other people who have interviewed with Google have had to do so; I'm not sure if my particular case is different because of the nature of the position, or my status as a college student, or some other ancillary factor. (To be honest, I never asked.)
Some people also wrote me to ask what I'm doing now. I did get offered a position with Google, and while I'm sure it would have been an excellent learning experience, I ultimately wound up picking something closer to home yet equally challenging so that I could stay near UVA. I'm originally from NY, and that California heat would have killed me in the summer (yes, I'm a big wuss).
Happy digging! - yurian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5In response to the blender, you simply jump out. As you are scaled down, the ratio of muscle mass to total mass remains the same.
Potential energy is given by E = mgh. So, if E/m is unchanged (where E is the energy expended in expanding your leg muscles, and m is your mass), then h is unchanged. Mini-me jumps as high as me.
This is the reason why grass-hoppers can jump about as high as people. - 3Den, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you were shrunk to the size of a nickel, well
Muscle strenght is proportional to the cross-sectional area of the muscle. Mass is proportional to volume... therefore as you shrink, your relative strength increases, geometrically (I think). This is why a flea can jump many times it's own height, and why humans aren't 30 feet tall.
You should be able to just jump right out of the blender, even if you were kind of out of shape. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If I was stuck in a blender I would write an AJAX application to get myself out using drag-and-drop on a webpage. There would be no "back" button, for obvious reasons.
- gluon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4LOL, these are easy questions.
1) From the inside, put both hands and your head firmly against the glass. Plant your feet firmly and begin to rock the blender back and forth - like when you are rocking your car out of a snowbank - and gradually build up the momentum until you topple the blender over on its side. You have over 60 seconds to build up enough momentum to knock it over. Walk out.
2) Most people will say delcare two stack variables in a single function and compare their address but this is wrong because it's largely compiler dependent! A better answer is to have Func1() declare a local 'foo' variable and pass its address to Func2() that declares a local 'bar' variable. Compare the address of 'foo' with the address of 'bar'.
3) A database is exactly like your mother. If she sees me make a mistake, then ten years later if you ask her about it again, she will remember every detail of the mistake I made and will be able to tell you everything about it. You can also ask her for a list of other mistakes I have made in the past six months and she will be able to provide you with that as well. This will let them know you're not completely dull and have a sense of humor and can answer the question at the same time.
4) They want to know how good you are at estimating. I'd estimate 100/300 million people in the US drive. I'd estimate 25/100 million people in the US own their own car. I'd estimate a single gas station services 100 different customers a year. Deivie 25 million by 100 and you get 250,000 gas stations. I just googled the real answer - around 200k - so I wasn't that far off :). - rolandog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I expected the Google interview to go something like:
"Do you have a PhD?"
-"Why, yes. I do."
"That's all we needed to know. You're hired." - trip9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You make it seem like you could do better. I found all his answers to be amazing. To even make it to the phone interview seems to imply that he is smart enough to come up with gas station equation.
- fogster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I wonder if these questions weren't asked more to judge reactions. If I were asking the question, I'd be more concerned with your demeanor while answering the blender. If you seemed intrigued by the question, you're probably the sort of person that loves solving unexpected problems. If you seemed annoyed that I was asking you to answer something unexpected, you're probably not someone I'd want working for me.
I like the database comment too. I know far too many people whose explanations would have involved tables, foreign keys, and SQL. I think they're looking at how effectively you can communicate outside your 'circle.' - EEMeltonIV, on 10/12/2007, -11/+14"dumb" questions, perhaps -- but, it seems to work well for Google.
- mobbydick, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6they don't seem to have luck with this hiring method, if you look at their products that get ignored by everyone, and their confusing business strategy
- Braxo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The one comment to the last gas station question was hilarious:
"Hang on, lemme check google." - Azmodan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I live in a 17,000 inhabitants town. I'd just count the number of gas stations we have and make calculate how that makes for a whole country.
- trip9, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think Google should start releasing purely situational brainteasers for common people. I found the nickel question to be quite entertaining.
- Avogadro65, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"How many gas stations would you say there are in the United States?"
I was asked a variation of that question in an interview once. Instead of how many, they asked how I would go about estimating the number of gas stations in the US. - Kestral, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I happen to be a Marketing Manager for a NASDAQ listed company that many people here love just as much if not more than Google, for its products and for its marketing.
This puts me in a position where at some point in the future, there is a very high likelihood that I will be head-hunted by and/or be interviewed by Google.
Simply put, what I want to communicate are the kinds of projects I've done, what value, knowledge, experience, creativity and imagination I can bring to Google.
If an interviewer asked me those questions, I'd have to wonder how serious the company is about bringing on board people who get the job done, as opposed to indulge like that, my Fender Telecaster electric guitar is where I'm going.
But since you asked, a database is like a parking garage. Many cars (data) flow in and out, and there are permanent and temporary places for any given car, but at the end of the day, all a person wants to know is, "Dude, where's my car?" - wendyalison, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It would have been nice to know exactly what position he's applying for. Anyway, these questions might seem crazy but I think there's definitely logic behind them. The first question, I think is relevant for any job applicant, as it shows how you deal with crisis under extreme time constraint. The 2nd one is technical and is targeting only IT folks, not exactly my field of expertise. That 3rd question relates to your communication skills and how you handle customer service. The 4th, quite an unfair question for those not so good with math or numbers, is to see how fast you can come to making well-grounded estimations and figures. If I'd be ticked off by an interview, that 4th question might be the reason why it would blow it for me.
- Jonsey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"But since you asked, a database is like a parking garage. Many cars (data) flow in and out, and there are permanent and temporary places for any given car, but at the end of the day, all a person wants to know is, "Dude, where's my car?""
Awesome! - dgarallenpoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I wondered whether the blender question wasn't designed to make the applicant reflect upon his current situation. Anyway, what better way for Google to illustrate that recursiveness happens not just in programming, but in everyday life too? For those who endeavor to find a seat at the giant's table, the interviewing process must be harrowing--just as it would be to find oneself in a blender whose blades will begin to spin within one minute. And, just like being in the blender, one only has so long to formulate an answer to any question asked, and if too much time is taken, or if the wrong answer given, then the end comes swiftly. Compared to the colossus, you are insignificant and unimportant. The giant's primary purpose is to delight himself by registering your response to a series of arbitrary and seemingly mindless questions. Possessed with God-like powers, He alone will decide your fate.
- rudolphdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree, the guy seems to be going out of his way to show that he aced the "test". Yet, to be 5% off on a statistics question like that sorta comes off as *****. I am guessing that question is more to see if the respondent is more apt to cheat. Does the interviewer say "don't look these answers up online". If not, then I would look it up. It is a test of common sense. Employers don't want cheaters but they also don't want brainiacs with tons of pride, it lends itself to hoarding information and playing against the "team" concept of innovation and productivity. Generally I would want employees who think smarter, not harder or with some agenda to fill.
- colline, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Was he awarded the job? That's what I'd like to know.
"3) A database is exactly like your mother. If she sees me make a mistake, then ten years later if you ask her about it again, she will remember every detail of the mistake I made and will be able to tell you everything about it. You can also ask her for a list of other mistakes I have made in the past six months and she will be able to provide you with that as well. This will let them know you're not completely dull and have a sense of humor and can answer the question at the same time."
Well, to an eight-year-old nephew I think they're looking for creativity, which was fully provided. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Then again, most interviewers in the companies I've seen (including ones google-sized or bigger) don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and are just other engineers who are told at the last minute "I need you to interview someone for me this week" and in a desperate attempt to seem intelligent and calculating, they devise stupid questions to ask the interviewee -- none of which ever really matter one bit.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I made the mistake of interviewing with Goggle.com and not Google.com. I realized my mistake after being asked to repeatedly disrobe in front my web cam interview.
- revenant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1on number 1) if you're the size of a nickel and your mass has been reduced proportionally, then I doubt you'd be able to build up the inertia you'd need when "rocking" to get the blender to tip... or even move at all..
...just click your heels three times and say "there's no place like home"... :) - quesera, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well that's a first. Avoiding the Bay Area because of the weather??
FYI, Mountain View can get a little hot in the summers, but Virginia and New York both get hotter. And, of course, much much colder in the winters. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"OK, so you're now 2 cm tall, let's say the blender is 20cm high"
Well you've already started off on a bad step. A nickel is about 2mm thick (1.95mm to be exact I think, but then again using metric, you might not be an American and not know that...). The blades of the blender itself aren't much thicker, but then again, standing at the bottom of the blender, they'd still be quite a bit overhead. You could always take off your shirt and turn it into a parachute, figure out a way to climb up on top of the blades, and when the vortex effect started, use it to parachute you to the top. - hollywoodcole, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5What other way is there to weed out people who know binary and people who don't?
- oldcyborg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I see I can remove Google from my list of potential Employers...... I doubt I have ANYthing in common with their goals at all.. I am also, NOT that smart.... hehehe
Cyborg - norick, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Soon you will realize that some day you will die and that google is just an other company, like Microsoft or Sun or Apple or Yahoo or else. Until you know that, you are useless.
- gluon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That was my answer, not the one from the article. Would you have hired me? LOL.
- argoff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, I hope I never feel the need to get a job at Google - what this tells me is that Google is starting to get out of touch (as if that incident with China didn't tell me already). How is this any different than Microsoft "focus groups", but accept for job interviews. I hope they remember how Microsoft proved that just because you have a lot of smart people working for you, doesn't mean you know what you're talking about. If Google was smart, then they would fire half the HR department and let each person who needs help fend for themselves.
I think a lot of large organizations don't understand that the purpose of an HR department isn't to hire or even manage human resources, the purpose of an HR department is to deal with all the BS government regulations that interfere with normal free market pay/taxes/hiring/firing/health care/and employee identification. A good HR department shouldn't even burden employees with filling out all those stupid forms that ask for the same info over and over again, and especially should never be involved in the interview/screening process.
IMHO, people who want meaningful and successful careers, should avoid HR departments and interviews like this at all costs. - pope52, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3You only answered the database question in two sentences.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2No, but his 8 year old nephew was, thus, becoming the youngest ever Google employee in company history. He was then immediately made Vice President of the Database division.
- mage1129, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2With that line of thinking you can say that the blender was unplugged and turning it on only referred to switching the on switch. Also you could say the blender is empty. The point is to imagine a solution to the imagined problem, not come up with ways to say there is no problem. That is what all the comments from the origional website did.
- allanp8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thank you very much, this is really helpful.
- alphanerd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Q: "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"
This is a physics question
If your density stays the same then there is a higher concentration of particles inside than outside. Therefor the medium would equalize and particles would leave your body and you would end up with a density of 1(water). So as the presure decreases so does volume. So eventualy you would end up with 1/1 =1 so the blender would have no effect. - sreenivas228, on 12/28/2008, -0/+1hai,
very good discussion at
www.crmfaqs.blogspot.com -
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