02 January 2012

How to survive if you're placed in a blender

The Wall Street Journal provided several answers to that dilemna in an article entitled "How to Ace a Google Interview."
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

These questions, posted by job candidates on Glassdoor.com, aren't from some wacky Silicon Valley start-up—they're asked of applicants at AT&T, Johnson & Johnson and Bank of America, respectively.

Goldman Sachs interviewers ask candidates the firm's stock price. Morgan Stanley asks interviewees to name a recent story they've read in the Financial Times—apparently, a lot can't. J.P. Morgan Chase asks the value of pi. (It's thought to be instructive to see how many digits the candidate can recite.)
Here are two additional, more standard math-type interview questions reportedly used at Google interviews -
3. Using only a four-minute hourglass and a seven-minute hourglass, measure exactly nine minutes—without the process taking longer than nine minutes.  
 
4. A book has N pages, numbered the usual way, from 1 to N. The total number of digits in the page numbers is 1,095. How many pages does the book have?
Answers to these and the blender question at the link.

Addendum: A hat tip to an anonymous reader who found an article written by someone with personal experience on a Google hiring committee.  The story that Google uses lateral thinking questions in their interview process is an urban legend (though other companies may do so).  Details at the link.

12 comments:

  1. This article was interesting, but I found a loophole in one of the questions asked. Regarding stepping on the gas pedal with a helium balloon, it is never stated whether the car is in first gear or reverse... so the only wrong answer is it stays put.

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  2. It reminds me for Fermi Problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

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  3. "of", I meant OF. Sorry.

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  4. I think the blender question is bogus. Once you throw out reality, you shouldn't have to rely on reality to answer the question. It is like religious people trying to use science to disprove science.

    Besides, if you shrunk a human to nickel size, then perhaps you would have to also shrink their intelligence as well, and at that point, you wouldn't be smart enough to know to jump until the blades hit you.

    In my Google interview, the one question that was legit that I didn't get was "let's say you had access to the google page index, which has (say) 1 billion words pointing to <= 1 billion webpages, how could you determine which were the most popular *pairs* of words on the WWW? And how long would it take to find them?"

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  5. I got the timer problem in less than a minute. A: Turn over both timers, when the 4 minute timer runs out, turn it back over. When the 7 minute timer runs out turn it back over for the 1 minute until the 8 minutes are used up with the 4 minute timer, then turn the 7 minute timer back over for a total of 9 minutes. But then, I loved the "you have two buckets" logic puzzles as a kid.

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    1. Seems u need more then a minute. Ur suppose to measure nine minutes not turn them for for 9. When u are done ur glasses wld add up to ten (6 & 4). All u have to do is turn either timer over, if its the 4 min timer stop @ 2 mins or if its the 7 min timer stop it @ 3 mins (2+7=9; 5+4=9). It does not instruct one to do in in 9 mins...it reads "no longer than 9 mins".

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  6. "AT&T", "Goldman Sachs", "Morgan Stanley".

    I'd think that "Do you lack morals or business ethics" would be better questions.

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  7. BTW, the original article was bogus. https://plus.google.com/104272082042063211465/posts/J6qG89t1er2

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  8. Thanks, anon. I've used the link you provided to put a correcting addendum on my post. :.)

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  9. For #4:
    echo [ld/]sa[ddsd1-10r^9\*sc]sb[lf1+dsflbxlc\*-lcrldrd0\ar0\*++]se0sf 1095 lexp|dc

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  10. I'd make friends with the blender. Get on its good side. tell it how amazingly strong it is and that you would greatly thankful you would be to pass by and get out of the blender and to show your strength in return.

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