Imagine yourself at the head of a desperate band of pirate cut-throats. For
some readers — investment bankers, members of parliament — this should not
be too difficult. You’ve enjoyed a very good financial year bringing terror
to the high seas and now is the time to divvy up the loot. From a management
point of view, there is just one snag. If the crew don’t like the size of
their bonuses, they will run you through with their cutlasses and possibly
introduce woodworm into your false leg. What do you do to ensure you get the
biggest share of the treasure, but live to enjoy it?
You might be surprised to learn that this is just the sort of situation you
could face while working for Google, the world’s cyber superpower. Clearly,
life at the cutting edge of search-engine development is rather tougher than
we’ve been led to believe. The question is just one of the problems that job
applicants are expected to solve at interviews off the tops of their heads
(no Googling allowed, obviously).
If you also know, say, how to get four people across a rickety bridge under
difficult circumstances at night — flashlight that will last only 17
minutes, bridge can’t hold more than two people, one of the party takes half
an hour to cross but needs to go to the lavatory halfway, the usual stuff —
then all the better.
These days interviews are rigorous, and if you’re trying to get a job with
Google they don’t come much tougher. The company, which employs about 20,000
people worldwide, gets 3,000 job applications a day. Just to give you some
idea of the competition for jobs, there were only 50 UK vacancies being
advertised last week.
An extensive list of Google questions was posted last month on a blog written
by Lewis Lin, a recruitment consultant in Seattle who has helped young
graduates to find jobs with both Google and Microsoft. Many are software and
engineering problems that you might expect to be asked at an interview for a
big computer firm. But you can also expect to be asked about those pirates,
100 adulterous husbands, manhole covers and all the dirty windows in Seattle.
How times have changed. It’s not that long ago — probably about 20-30 years —
when job interviews at big companies went something like this:
Interviewer: “Didn’t your father used to work here?”
Interviewee: “Yes. He sends his best wishes.”
Interviewer: “Do you still play rugby, by the way?”
Interviewee: “Yes.”
Interviewer: “Jolly good. When can you start?”
This was the way young people got jobs pretty much everywhere. Not any more.
According to computer geek legend, it was Microsoft that first started using
puzzles in formal job interviews, largely because Bill Gates enjoyed puzzles
more than he enjoyed interviewing. But such questions will be familiar to
university applicants, who’ve had to put up with this sort of thing for
years.
A book called So You Want to Go to Oxbridge? Tell Me About a Banana lists the
sort of questions that Oxford and Cambridge applicants have faced in recent
years. “If ancient history has a shape, what shape might that be?” is one of
them. “What is the most interesting thing about a squirrel?” is another (to
which the answer is, duh, obviously: “red squirrel or grey squirrel?”).
“Microsoft and Google are known as the two companies that have historically
used brain teasers in the interview process,” says Lin. “Candidates usually
react in one of two ways. Some dismiss puzzle or estimation questions as
ridiculous; others clam up under the stress of an unfamiliar question. As
far-fetched as the question may sound, do take it seriously. Take a deep
breath, give it your best shot.”
Some questions don’t actually have an answer. The interviewer is looking for
an analytical approach rather than a correct solution. And even if you get
the job, you won’t necessarily discover the right answer to the questions.
“Many of us here are still trying to figure out how many tennis balls can fit
into a small room, or the number of people currently travelling by air in
the world,” says Laura Scott, Google’s UK spokeswoman.
“Googlers love creative ideas, finding innovative solutions and cracking
complex problems — it’s what keeps us on our toes. That’s why we aim to ask
many different and engaging questions in interviews.
“The questions give us a sense of how someone works through a difficult
problem, which in turn helps us get to know a person and see whether they
would be a good fit for Google.”
Sometimes — just sometimes — interview questions are easier than they seem.
When Professor Marcus du Sautoy was interviewed to read maths at Oxford, he
was asked whether he could change a light bulb. “I thought I was meant to
come up with a witty joke,” says du Sautoy, now Oxford’s professor for the
public understanding of science. Actually, the tutor just wanted some help
to change his light bulb.
Figure these out
Are you the right stuff for Google? Here are nine typical questions asked at
Google interviews. Answers have been supplied by Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford
University professor for the public understanding of science; Alexander
Paseau, philosophy fellow at Wadham College, Oxford; David Wallace,
philosophy of physics fellow at Balliol College, Oxford; Roland White,
professor for the private misunderstanding of science at the University of
Wapping.
1 You have eight balls all of the same size. Seven of them weigh the same. One
of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the heavier ball by using a
balance and only two weighings?
2 You’re a pirate ship captain, and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is
divided. If fewer than half the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you
recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of
the booty, but still survive?
3 Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every
wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has
cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law
that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is
unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never
disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces
that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?
4 How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
5 How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
6 How many times a day do a clock’s hands overlap?
7 How many piano tuners are there in the world?
8 Why are manhole covers round?
9 A man pushed his car to the hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Answers are below
Answers 1 Weigh balls 1, 2, 3 against 4, 5, 6. If they balance,
compare 7 and 8; if they differ, take the heavier set (say 1,2,3) and weigh
1 and 2. If they balance, ball 3 is heaviest.
2 If there are N pirates, give half of them just over 1/N of the loot
each (which is more than they’d expect by even distribution). Keep the
remaining loot (just under half the total).
3 Suppose there are only two married couples in the village. When the
queen makes her announcement, Wife 1 knows Husband 2 was unfaithful. Now she
knows that if Wife 2 sees that Husband 1 is faithful then Wife 2 will kill
Husband 2 on the first day because at least one of the two men is unfaithful
and it isn’t Husband 1. However, Wife 2 doesn’t kill her husband. The only
reason being because she knows Husband 1 is unfaithful. Because both
husbands are still alive on the second day the wives know both are
unfaithful. So on the second day both husbands are killed by their wives.
What happens with 100 married couples is that the wives have to wait till
the 100th day before they can prove that their husband is cheating. On the
100th day there is a bloodbath: all the men are killed by their wives.
4 Full marks for mentioning the Kepler conjecture on packing spheres
into a three-dimensional space. The fraction of the volume you can fill is
/(3 2). “This comes out at roughly 74%”, says Professor du Sautoy.
5 We got a quote: Valhalla window cleaning service of Seattle says it
will do all the residential windows for $90m and all the commercial ones for
$100m. Valhalla usually charges $125 for a “normal” 18-window house.
6 22 7 The UK’s Pianoforte Tuners’ Association has 200 members,
but vice-president John Lambert thinks there are about 1,000 people tuning
British pianos. Let’s say the UK population is 60m. That’s one tuner per
60,000 of the population. Let’s then make the assumption that everybody in
the world — approx 6.7 billion — is as keen on playing the piano as the
British (and yes, it’s a rather unlikely assumption). That means there are
111,667 piano tuners in the world. But Dr Wallace puts the figure at 10,000.
“There aren’t many outside the West’s 600m population,” he says. “The
average town has maybe two or three but is servicing a wider area with maybe
another 50,000 people. So, vaguely, one per 50,000. Or about 10,000.”
8 They’re not always round, but you can’t drop a round cover down the
hole like you can with a square cover (which can fall down the diagonal).
“The shape of a 50p coin will also work,” says Professor du Sautoy.
9 He was playing Monopoly.
Additonal reporting Josh Glancy
Your Comments
Order By: