According to a recent article in Business Insider, Google is the second-best tech company
to work at in 2018.
The list was compiled after taking into account what employees had written on the job website,
Glassdoor.
“Extremely intelligent and competent coworkers, exciting products, great management, amazing
perks,” said one Google engineer.
Google is not only one of the world’s leading tech companies, but has always sold itself
as uber-cool, a little bit wacky and wonderful, if not- according to some employees- stressful
at times.
These are hard fought for jobs, and you’ll need to impress in the interview.
Let’s see today if you’d pass muster in an interview, in this episode of the Infographics
Show, Could You Pass This Google Interview?
We are going to start with one of the easiest questions you might be asked, and if you can’t
get past this one you might well be in trouble.
Question: You need to check if your friend has your correct phone number but must do
it through a third party and a note you have handed to that third party.
The problem is you are not allowed to let the third party know what your phone number
is.
What do you write on the note?
We’ll give you some time to think about each question.
Answer: It seems this one is all about how the question is asked.
You see, you don’t have to speak to your friend at all, you just need to know that
he or she knows your correct number.
So, just tell him to call you at a certain time.
If he calls you successfully you know he has the correct number and if he doesn’t call
you know he doesn’t have the correct number.
This one you really should have got, but they are going to get harder as we go on.
Question: Why are manhole covers round?
Answer: It’s because if they are round they won’t fall through the hole.
A rectangular manhole cover could be turned and plop, there it goes down the hole.
A round cover can also fit on the hole if turned at any angle.
There are other reasons, related to the shape of humans that go down the manholes, and also
the fact it’s easier to dig holes for round covers.
According to one website round castings are also easier to make, but let’s face it,
most interviewers won’t be expecting that answer.
Question: How many times a day do a clock’s hands overlap?
Answer: This one is kind of a trick question.
You might just come right out and say 24.
But that’s not correct.
The hands will overlap at 12:00, 1:05, 2:10, 3:15, 4:20, 5:25, 6:30, 7:35, 8:40, 9:45 and
10:50 two times a day.
At 11:55 there is no overlap because the hour hand is on its way to 12.
So, the answer is 22 times.
Question: You are the captain of a pirate ship and onboard you have treasure worth a
small fortune.
The problem is, if you don’t share this treasure between the rest of the guys on the
ship in a way that they are happy with they will kill you.
You also want the very best deal for yourself.
How do you share the treasure?
Answer: You give 51 percent of the treasure to the other pirates and keep 49 percent for
yourself is the answer Google was looking for.
Apparently, this will keep them off your back.
Shiver me timbers, wasn’t that one easy?
Question: How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
Answer: Hmm, how would you possibly know the answer to this?
Apparently, Google isn’t thinking for a moment you could get the right number.
Instead, we are told that you are supposed to say however many the market demands.
The way someone worked it out is that you should add up the hours it takes someone to
tune a piano and how many times a piano needs to be tuned.
So, if it takes an hour to do the tuning and the average tuner worked for 8 hours five
days a week he or she could tune 40 pianos a week at most.
Your answer would then be one tuner for every 40 pianos.
Now make a guess at how many pianos there are.
These are called Fermi problems, which basically means making intelligent guesses.
All Google wants to know is that you can make an intelligent estimate based on fairly reasonable
assumptions.
Question: Take a country where every family continues to have children until they have
a boy.
If they have a girl, they have another child.
If they have a boy, they stop.
What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?
Answer: Ok, so there are people arguing about this on mathematics forums and we won’t
pretend to know better than them.
The Google answer is apparently 50-50 of boys and girls.
Some people have drawn up long and complicated equations and disagree.
One person writes it’s 50-50 because it follows the same law of averages as tossing
coins.
He writes, “Think of it as coin tosses: As the resulting distribution is completely
independent of the stopping time the proportion will in the limit always converge to the original
distribution which is supposed to be 50-50.”
We will just agree with that person, but if anyone has a different answer please tell
us in the comments below.
Question: Now to something a little less taxing on the brain, but it shows you can think outside
of the box if you get it right.
The question is simply this.
A man pushes his car to a hotel and lost his fortune.
What happened?
Answer: Did you get it?
You see, this scenario happened when the person was playing Monopoly.
He moved his car (board piece) to a hotel and landed on perhaps Boardwalk, or for Brits,
Mayfair.
He lost all his cash for that unlucky roll of the dice.
Question: Back to math.
You have eight golf balls.
Seven of them are exactly the same weight but one of those dimpled spheres weighs a
bit more than the others.
How would you find which ball weighed more if you had a balance but could only perform
two weighing’s?
Answer: First take 6 six balls and put three on each side of the scale.
If one side doesn’t weight more and the scale is exactly equal, you know that one
of the two balls you have left is the imposter heavyweight.
Just weigh them now.
But, if the heavy ball is part of the three balls on each side of the scale you will now
know it’s one of three.
Now pick two balls from those three and put them on each side of the scale.
If one ball weighs more you will see, but if both balls weigh the same you will know
that it’s the ball you didn’t put on the scale.
Question: You are shrunk to the size 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?
Answer: Ok, so Google is being a bit annoying here.
You see, it would seem that there’s no scientific way you could figure out your survival.
Google wants to see how creative you’d get, thinking on your little feet.
What would you do?
Google thinks the best thing would be to try and break the motor.
Question: There are four of you and you all need to cross a very rickety bridge in the
dark.
The thing is, this old bridge is dangerous, and you can’t get across without taking
a flashlight.
The bridge can only support two people at one time and you only have one flashlight.
To add to the problem all of you move at different speeds.
The four of you move across the bridge at 1 minute, 2 minutes, 7 minutes and 10 minutes.
How do you get them across the bridge in the least amount of time.
Answer: The one minute and two-minute people go across together, but then two comes back
with the torch.
The seven and ten-minute people go next and then one comes back with the torch.
Then one and two go across again.
You are all across and it took just 17 minutes.
So, how many of these did you get correct?
Would you have passed the interview?
Let us know in the comments section below.
Also, be sure to watch our other video called – 10 Highest Paying Jobs.
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next time.