Aspiring candidates will be more than happy to hear that these questions are now banned from interview. Let’s take a look at 10 questions that have been banned from Google interviews.
Golf balls in a school bus
Question : How many Golf balls can fit in a school bus?
Job : Product manager
Answer : Brave candidate named Matt Beuchamp gave this answer-
Normal school bus is 8 feet wide and 6x20 feet long. Which means 960 cubic feet volume. 1 cubic foot = 1,728 cubic inch. So that means 960x1,728 = 1.6 million cubic inches.
Radius of standard size golf ball is 2.15cm (0.85-inch). So, volume of standard size golf ball is - 4/3 x pi (3.14) x 2.15 = 40.96 cubic cm (2.5 cubic inch). If you divide 40.96 cubic cm into 1.6 million then you will get number of balls, which comes 660,000 golf balls.
But since there will be seats in the buses, which will consume some space. So let’s round up the number to 500,000 golf balls. Which still sounds ridiculous. Matt doubts if bus can take any more than 100,000 balls. But according to maths, 500,000 golf balls can be filled in the bus.
2. Evacuation Plan
Question: Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco?
Job: Product Manager
Answer: This ridiculous question totally depends upon how the interviewee will attack the problem. Hence the answer would be, “what kind of disaster are we looking at?”
3. Piano tuners in the world
Question: How many piano tuners are there in the world?
Job: Product Manager
Answer: Let’s suppose a piano needs to be tuned once a week, and it takes an hour for tuner to tune the piano. Piano tuner may be working 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. So, a tuner can tune 40 pianos a week. So the answer would be, “One tuner for every 40 pianos.”
4. Washing windows
Question: How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
Job: Product Manager
Answer: This is tricky question. A smartypants will answer this questions as, “$10 per window.”
5. 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 question is designed to check candidate’s creativity. The answer would be,”try to break the electric motor.”
6. Round manhole covers
Question: Why are manhole covers round?
Job: Software Engineer
Answer: Ordinarily plane aligned with the plane of street goes perpendicular to the street hence, manhole covers are made round so that it doesn't fall through the manhole.
7. 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: Simplest answer would be, “Ask Bob to call you at some specific time, he will call if he has your number. If he doesn't he wouldn't be able to call you.”
Another suggested answer is, “Tell Bob to add all digits of phone number, check that sum and confirm if he has your correct number.”
8. Of databases and kids
Question: Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
Job: Product Manager
Answer: This question is designed to test candidate’s ability to transform complex problems in simplest form.
The answer would be,”People use database to remember the information. Database is nothing but a machine that holds information of various type of things.”
9. Dead Beef
Question: Explain the significance of 'Dead Beef'.
Job: Software Engineer
Answer: This term is used in assembly language class in software engineering. It is a hexadecimal value which was commonly used in debugging in mainframe/assembly days. DEADBEEF makes finding and marking memory in hex dumps pages easier.
10. 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: Let’s number the eggs, starting from 14th floor, and then go up 13 floors, then 12, then 11, follow the same manner- 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 until it reaches to 99th floor.
If eggs were broke at 100th floor, it will take 12 drops. For example, if 49th floor is highest floor then number of drops will be 14th, 27th, 39th, 50th. (the egg would break on 50th floor) plus add 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49th. So that’s 14 drops.
Hence, the maximum number of drops would be 14.
These were top 10 ridiculous questions that are banned in Google interview.
There are 7 more questions that are banned-
1. Question: You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present (including you and the friend). Your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. Would you accept the wager?
2. Question: How many times a day does a clock's hands overlap?
3. Question: How many vacuums are made per year in USA?
4. Question: If a person dials a sequence of numbers on the telephone, what possible words/strings can be formed from the letters associated with those numbers?
5. Question: 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?
6. Question: You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
7. Question: A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
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