Google has always been amongst the top companies in the world. This doesn’t just concern their technological, financial and socially important, but the workplace itself. It’s a dream come true.
But there is a catch. In order to become a member of the Google team, you have to go through a pretty strange job interview. Aside from ordinary job search requirement such as CV, you have to go through a set of strange, logical questions. They will test your critical thinking, imagination and willingness to work and function under pressure.
However, although some questions still stand, there has been a few that was too difficult. Yes, even Google, who take pride in their difficult “entrance exam” have deemed these questions inadequate. Let’s take a look at the 7 questions which have been a headache for job candidates in the last twenty years. Maybe you know the answers.
Why are manhole covers round?
ANSWER: Well, it’s fairly simple, but nobody ever dissects the significance of simple things. Manhole covers are round because it’s the only shape that doesn’t fall into the hole. Squares and rectangles all do.
2 eggs, 100-story building
You have two eggs and you can enter a 100-story building. Both eggs are identical. The aim is to find out the highest floor from which an egg will not break when dropped out of a window from that floor. If an egg breaks when dropped from floor n, then it would also have broken from any floor above that. If an egg survives a fall, then it will survive any fall shorter than that.
The question is: What strategy should you adopt to minimize the number egg drops it takes to find the solution?
Your Friend Bob
You have two friends, Bob and Eve. You have to send a message on a paper to Bob, via Eve, to check if he knows your phone number. How would you do that without allowing Eve to find out your number?
ANSWER: It’s simple, just tell Bob to call you at a certain time and if he does – he knows your phone number.
How many times a day do the clock’s hands overlap?
ANSWER: 22 times.
Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco
ANSWER: This isn’t a question with a single correct answer, but more of a test of someone’s thinking in a crisis. Most candidates start the answer with “What kind of disaster are we talking exactly?”
Explain the significance of dead beef
ANSWER: This has nothing to do with cows. Dead beef is an old hexadecimal value used for finding memory in pages of hex dumps a long time ago. Not many, but some software engineer know about this.
The Cheaters Village
“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?”
