1 / 12 10 questions banned from Google interviews Sometimes the hiring practices of even the biggest and most successful companies can be outright ridiculous. There can be bizarre interview questions that seemingly have no answers. There can be standards that will knock a candidate out of the race before he even approaches the starting line.



Google used to be the shining example of these practices. It had high standards and asked silly questions. The questions were so nuts that they were eventually banned from being asked. That's right, banned.



Future Google employees should be grateful these questions are no longer on the table. ...Read more

2 / 12 Round manhole covers Question: Why are manhole covers round?



Job: Software Engineer



Answer: So it doesn't fall through the manhole (when the plane ordinarily aligned with the plane of the street goes perpendicular to the street). ...Read more

3 / 12 Piano tuners in the world Question: How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?



Job: Product Manager



Answer: We'd answer "However many the market dictates. If pianos need tuning once a week, and it takes an hour to tune a piano and a piano tuner works 8 hours a day for 5 days a week 40 pianos need tuning each week. We'd answer one for every 40 pianos." ...Read more

4 / 12 Dead Beef Question: Explain the significance of 'Dead Beef'.



Job: Software Engineer



Answer: DEADBEEF is a hexadecimal value that was used in debugging back in the mainframe/assembly days because it was easy to see when marking and finding specific memory in pages of hex dumps.



Most computer science graduates have seen this at least in their assembly language classes in college and that's why they expect software engineers to know it. ...Read more

5 / 12 Washing windows Question: How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?



Job: Product Manager



Answer: This is one of those questions where the trick is to come up with an easier answer than the one that's seemingly being called for. We'd say. "$10 per window." ...Read more

6 / 12 Of databases and kids Question: Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.



Job: Product Manager



Answer: The point here is to test the applicant's ability to communicate complex ideas in simple language.



Here's our attempt, "A database is a machine that remembers lots of information about lots of things. People use them to help remember that information. Go play outside." ...Read more

7 / 12 Evacuation plans Question: Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.



Job: Product Manager



Answer: Again, this one is all about the interviewer seeing how the interviewee would attack the problem. We'd start our answer by asking, "what kind of disaster are we planning for?" ...Read more

8 / 12 Honey, someone shrunk me! Question: 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?



Job: Product Manager



Answer: This one is all about the judging interviewee's creativity. We'd try to break the electric motor. ...Read more

9 / 12 Golf balls in a school bus Question: How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?



Job: Product Manager



Answer: Reader Matt Beuchamp came up with a dandy answer, writing:



I figure a standard school bus is about 8ft wide by 6x20-feet long. That means 960 cubic feet and since there are 1,728 cubic inches in a cubit foot, that means about 1.6 million cubic inches.



I calculate the volume of a golf ball to be about 2.5 cubic inches (4/3 x pi x 0.85) as 0.85-inch is the radius of a golf ball. Divide that 2.5 cubic inches into 1.6 million and you come up with 660,000 golf balls.



However, since there are seats etc in there taking up space and also since the spherical shape of a golf ball means there will be considerable empty space between them when stacked, I'll round down to 500,000 golf balls.



Which sounds ludicrous. I would have spitballed no more than 100,000. But I stand by my math. ...Read more

10 / 12 Secret messages Question: You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write a the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you.



What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?



Job: Software Engineer



Answer: Since you are just "checking," you ask him to call you at a certain time. If he doesn't, he doesn't have your number.



Too simple? A reader suggested: "In that case you need a check-sum. Have Bob add all the digits of your phone number together, write down the total, and pass that back to you." ...Read more

11 / 12 Dropping eggs from 100th floor Question: You have two eggs and get access to a one-hundred-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical.



You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process.



Job: Product Manager



Answer: The maximum egg drops for this method is 14 times.



Instead of partitioning the floors by 10, Start at the 14th floor, and then go up 13 floors, then 12, then 11, then 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 until you get to the 99th floor, then here.



If the egg were to break at the 100th floor, it would take 12 drops (or 11 if you assume that it would break at the 100th floor). Say, for example, that the 49th floor was the highest floor, the number of drops would be the 14th, 27th, 39th, 50th (the egg would break on the 50th floor) plus the 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 and 49th floor for a total of 14 drops. ...Read more