Google: Brainteasers Are A Complete Waste Of Time

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Remember all those crazy brainteaser questions Google used to ask job applicants? According to Google, they were a complete waste of time. :eek:

On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.
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How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan?
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How are these brain teasers? Is there some trick answer? Like no gas stations in Manhattan?
 
They don't have to be a waste of time. How a person answers you about how they think.

Q:How many golf balls into an airplane?
A: Well, thats a dumb thing to do, but I will play along. Look up the internal volume of the plane from the manufacturer, minus seats. Divide by volume taken by golf balls. This will get you to within 99% of your actual value.
 
Monkey God said:
They don't have to be a waste of time. How a person answers you about how they think.

Q:How many golf balls into an airplane?
A: Well, thats a dumb thing to do, but I will play along. Look up the internal volume of the plane from the manufacturer, minus seats. Divide by volume taken by golf balls. This will get you to within 99% of your actual value.
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Then the interviewer will mark you as do not hire:
'Unable to give direct answers or take guesses by being creative"
 
If you've ever applied to Google, then you know what this is talking about. Their application/interview process had a lot of odd questions like that. Kind of annoyed me in a way and I'm sure it annoyed many others...I think what they're saying is that over time they've found it has no bearing on applicant/employee performance. Obviously they had them on there because they wanted to throw a curve ball and see how people responded, but apparently in the long-run it makes no appreciable difference.
 
Monkey God said:
My answer was direct as they come. THIS is how you solve your problem.
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So if you cant acquire this information do you just give up? The purpose of a question like this is to test your resolve. Google needs you to buy golf balls STAT. The plane is taking off in an hour and network sevices is having an outage. You cant look up and research how many golf balls will actually fit, do it in your head.

Obviously personality questions have their place. I've had a recent interviewee respond to a challenge with "Well thats not my responsibility, so I would do nothing". Needless to say that resume went into the trash. Google enjoys having a very particular kind of person in their employment. They like to think that they are the kind of people who "think outside the box" no matter what level of employment they are in, so they ask a lot of really asinine questions that they have finally discovered arent really indicative of this at all. Stick to the basics, work ethic, morals, experience, and you will usually get what you need.
 
I'm surprised they didn't include the question "How many software engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
 
Interesting article, but a lot of what they discovered (brain teasers are useless, an expert in a narrow field is usually able to identify posers in the same field, GPAs are worthless once you're in the real world because the skills required to get a high GPA don't necessarily correlate to the skills required to succeed in RL, etc) fall into the "no duh" category.

One thing that would have been interesting to cover - how successful are candidates when they're recommended by existing Google employees who THEMSELVES are considered "good employees"? Stands to reason that if your company thinks you're hot stuff, you're not going to recommend a no talent ass clown to work with you, you're going to recommend somebody who's going to make you look even better...And compare/contrast that between the tech side of the house and the managerial side of the house (because I'd be willing to bet the guys who get their hands dirty only recommend good prospects, where you might run into cronyism at the managerial level)...
 
McFry said:
So if you cant acquire this information do you just give up?
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No, he's saying that you tell the interviewer how you'd solve the problem. Google wants people who can think about problems and devise potential solutions to those problems, not necessarily an answer. If you spat out "317,112" to the question "how many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?" (and if that happened to be the right answer), you'd be missing the point of the question.
 
Monkey God said:
Q:How many golf balls into an airplane?
A: Well, thats a dumb thing to do, but I will play along. Look up the internal volume of the plane from the manufacturer, minus seats. Divide by volume taken by golf balls. This will get you to within 99% of your actual value.
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It won't, because you didn't take into account the fuel tank volume, the luggage compartment, and any hollow spaces in the fuselage/wings. #fail
 
Thuleman said:
It won't, because you didn't take into account the fuel tank volume, the luggage compartment, and any hollow spaces in the fuselage/wings. #fail
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Generally, you would only put the golf balls into the luggage compartment.

The whole question raises a buunch of other questions.

1. Are the golf balls packaged or loose?
a. If packaged, what are the exact dimensions of the packaging?
b. If packaged, what is the strength of the packaging (will it break or squish when other
packages of gold balls are stacked on it)?

2. How much weight can the golf balls support before they themselves start deforming?
3. What is the deformation characteristics of the golf balls?
4. What areas of the plane are we filling with golf balls?
5. Are there going to be crew on the plane? What about passengers. What are their dimensions and weight? (have to take into account the loading capabilities of the plane).
6. How are the golf balls going to be secured? What are the dimensions and weight of said securing devices?
7. Is there going to be any more luggage beside the golf balls on the plane?
8. Will cabin pressure affect the size of the golf balls at all? If so, what is the cabin pressure range going to be?
9. What is the range of error in the cabin pressure estimates?
10. How much fuel is going to be in the fuel tanks? (Again, this has to do with loading capabilities of the plane).

I am sure there is more I could come up with, but this is at least a start.
 
Doesn't it cost less to buy golf balls locally in bulk than to transport them yourself on a commercial airline? I'd think golf ball manufacturers have this logistics thing figured out better than some dipshit software engineer.
 
How many gas stations in Manhattan?
A: Never enough, when you need them.

Hired!
 
sfsuphysics said:
How are these brain teasers? Is there some trick answer? Like no gas stations in Manhattan?
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Yeah. The answer is "the fuck if I know. There's like 1,000,000 different models and manufacturers and aircraft types. How many dumbass interviewers are there that ask retarded questions like this? The answer is one."
 
Monkey God said:
They don't have to be a waste of time. How a person answers you about how they think.
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That's retard logic, because there is no "right way to think" for any job.

Experience and knowledge in the field and answers to pertinent questions to the task required are a much better use of time than guessing how many jelly beans a thai hooker can fit in her mouth.
 
Ducman69 said:
Experience and knowledge in the field and answers to pertinent questions to the task required are a much better use of time than guessing how many jelly beans a thai hooker can fit in her mouth.
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That would be a trick question. A Thai hooker wouldn't be putting jellybeans in her mouth. Other places maybe.

Oh, about 700.
 
In my experience of software engineering, there are a lot of times where there isn't a right answer, when it comes to implementations, there's are more than one way to solve a problem. What makes a good engineer for me is for someone to think and weigh possible answers for whatever constraints are given.

Sometimes the weird questions can be used to gauge how someone thinks to tackle a problem. Even then, just good coding puzzles are a better gauge. I interviewed with google last December, and they didn't ask any weird questions like that. It was behavioral, some experience (still behavioral) and coding problems to test analytical and programming skills. There weren't any questions like how many jellybeans can fit in the astrodome.
 
cyclone3d said:
Generally, you would only put the golf balls into the luggage compartment.

The whole question raises a bunch of other questions.
[...]
I am sure there is more I could come up with, but this is at least a start.
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Incorrect. This is not a volume question, but a WEIGHT question ... assuming your intent is that the plane must still be able to fly: Which it would have to be, to still be considered an airplane. (As opposed to, say, an ashtray.)

What is the total Gross Vehicle Weight? (for a specific 747 model, 100 tons more than when empty.) Compute the number of 1.620 ounce golf balls weighing 100 tons -- 9 balls per pound, times 200,000 pounds = 1,800,000 golf balls.

Once you have the maximum permissible WEIGHT you can begin to distribute them in the available volume. The cargo hold, the wing tanks, the tail stabilizer, etc. When you have hit the maximum allowable (flyable) weight, STOP. It makes no difference if the passenger cabin space is empty, or half full ... or if you had to grind/melt the balls down to fit them in, for that matter. All that matters is that you can get the plane off the ground.
 
wonderfield said:
No, he's saying that you tell the interviewer how you'd solve the problem. Google wants people who can think about problems and devise potential solutions to those problems, not necessarily an answer. If you spat out "317,112" to the question "how many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?" (and if that happened to be the right answer), you'd be missing the point of the question.
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It doesnt matter, they want the answer to a question. You dont get to say "well to answer your question I would research all the details so I could provide you with an accurate number" as your answer.
 
Uvaman said:
Then the interviewer will mark you as do not hire:
'Unable to give direct answers or take guesses by being creative"
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ding ding ding! we have a winner. :D

The last interview I had (my current job atm) asked me 3 brainteasers the old 'On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs' teaser, 'A Few Cards Short of a Pack' teaser and a third one I couldn't answer or remember at this very moment. Anyways to make the story short the two engineers that interview me were literally crying of laughter, not because I answer the teaser correctly, but rather because it was creative but wrong. I was told that almost 80% of the individuals they had interview that day gave up without even trying.
 
The answer is Zero.

You could kill somebody with a golf ball, so it's not allowed on planes ...
 
Uvaman said:
Then the interviewer will mark you as do not hire:
'Unable to give direct answers or take guesses by being creative"
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A 1'x1'x1' box will hold approx 800 golf balls. Using a quick google search (use the tools on hand!) to find out the volume of the aircrafts cabin, in cubic feet. Alternately, length x width x height measurements of cabin area, and multiply by 0.75 to account for the oval shape of the cabin tube. Rough estimate.
 
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