[HN Gopher] If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2...
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If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)
Author : alfiedotwtf
Score : 196 points
Date : 2021-07-23 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sellsbrothers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sellsbrothers.com)
| msravi wrote:
| In the same vein: The Barometer Question and Calandra's account
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometer_question
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I'd never seen that before, that's excellent!
|
| The original PDF is at
| https://www.unz.com/PDF/PERIODICAL/SaturdayRev-1968dec21/62/,
| which is includes a nice drawing of the student speaking with a
| building superintendent while holding a barometer, but to say
| more would be to spoil the punchline. Here is the text:
|
| > Angels on a Pin By ALEXANDER CALANDRA
|
| SOME time ago, I received a call from a colleague who asked if
| I would be the referee on the grading of an examination
| question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer
| to a physics question, while the student claimed he should
| receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up
| against the student. The instructor and the student agreed to
| submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
|
| I went to my colleague's office and read the examination
| question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a
| tall building with the aid of a barometer."
|
| The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the
| building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the
| street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope.
| The length of the rope is the height of the building."
|
| I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for
| full credit, since he had answered the question completely and
| correctly. On the other hand, if full credit were given, it
| could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his
| physics course. A high grade is supposed to certify competence
| in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested
| that the student have another try at answering the question. I
| was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised
| that the student did.
|
| I gave the student six minutes to answer the question, with the
| warning that his answer should show some know- ledge of
| physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written
| anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He
| had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the
| best one. I excused myself for interrupting him, and asked him
| to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer
| which read:
|
| "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over
| the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer. timing its fall with
| a stopwatch. Then, using the formula S=1/2at^2, calculate the
| height of the building."
|
| At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He
| conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.
|
| In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student
| had said he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him
| what they were. "Oh, yes," said the student. "There are many
| ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a
| barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a
| sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length
| of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building,
| and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the height of
| the building."
|
| "Fine," I said. "And the others?"
|
| "Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement
| method that you will like. In this method, you take the
| barometer and begin to walk up the stairs, As you climb the
| stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the
| wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give
| you the height of the building in barometer units. A very
| direct method.
|
| "Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can
| tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a
| pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street level
| and at the top of the building. From the difference between the
| two values of 'g,' the height of the building can, in
| principle, be calculated."
|
| Finally he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the
| problem, "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the
| barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's
| door, When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as
| follows: "Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer, if
| you will tell me the height of this building, I will give you
| this barometer.'"
|
| At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know
| the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he
| did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college
| instructors trying to teach him how to think, to use the
| "scientific method," and to explore the deep inner logic of the
| subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new
| mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the
| subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism
| as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked
| classrooms of America.
| prionassembly wrote:
| Interesting. Unz.com is a radical Right (I wouldn't say
| extreme-right) wing website...
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| They have a dualistic world view, and the public school
| system is part of where the enemy stands. Anything that
| scores points against the enemy is a good weapon.
| dekhn wrote:
| this is one of my favorite made-up stories
| grumpyprole wrote:
| It sounds like the original question was just badly worded.
| It should have read "Show how it is possible to determine the
| height of a tall building _using only_ a barometer. ". The
| other answers, while not incorrect, do assume the
| availability of additional items such as rope and watches.
| nomel wrote:
| > using only a barometer
|
| But the pressure of a vacuum is 0, so unconventional means
| would be required, if it were worded that way.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The one about direct measurement wouldn't require anything
| else. You're just climbing the stairs and counting. Doing
| it the "right" way would also require the stairs (well, and
| elevator would work for that too, but I would count the
| elevator as an additional item which itself uses complex
| mechanics and cables to get you to the top.)
| ineedasername wrote:
| Hold the barometer up and shout that it's a bomb & you'll blow
| up the building if someone doesn't tell you how tall it is.
|
| Use the barometer to prop open the door to the city's municipal
| building as the last person leaves for the day & sneak in to
| find the plans for building.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Dig a hole all the way through the earth and drop the
| barometer from the top of the building into the hole, and
| subtract from that time the time it would take the barometer
| to fall from directly over the hole to the other side and
| then divide the remainder by 9.8m/s^2.
| 300bps wrote:
| I can't read anything about Richard Feynman without thinking of
| the letter he wrote his wife 16 months after she passed away. "I
| love my wife. My wife is dead."
|
| https://fs.blog/2013/08/richard-feynman-love-letter/
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Old previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866305
| davidw wrote:
| Ok, this is funny and odd. This immediately reminded me of the
| scene in Cryptonimicon where Waterhouse takes a 'simple' math
| test. It apparently reminded my past self of the same thing 11
| years ago, when this was posted back then.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866629 (I dug up the actual
| passage from the book, so you can read it)
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I listened to it as an audiobook while driving, and listened to
| that segment 3 times back-to-back.
| ww520 wrote:
| Those are actually some very good answers.
| Intermernet wrote:
| "It looks like you're trying to create a pictorial representation
| of the mathematical expressions describing the behavior and
| interaction of subatomic particles. Would you like help with
| that?"
| crmd wrote:
| I couldn't help but read that in Feynman's voice!
| jmgrosen wrote:
| One would hope Microsoft wouldn't hire him due to his long
| history of rampant sexism, but, being realistic, they would not
| likely care.
| mhh__ wrote:
| You're being downvoted, but I do think it's an important thing
| to mention as we tend to worship feynman, which is OK, but I
| would hate for it to lead for anyone to act like he could be
| around women.
| gmadsen wrote:
| ah yes lets tear down any and all great thinkers, so we don't
| need to compete on a competency basis.
| belter wrote:
| Your comment led me to be the 10,000 today
| https://xkcd.com/1053/ to discover Feynmans Women's Bathing
| Swimsuits...
| dpcx wrote:
| I misread the title and thought it was talking about Stallman,
| and I wondered why he would ever apply for a job at Microsoft...
| [deleted]
| zabzonk wrote:
| I've made all those observations (and more) regarding manhole
| covers.
|
| And what job did he apply for?
| l0b0 wrote:
| Could've been funny if the interviewee was someone like Descartes
| rather than one of the most lucid, funny and friendly voices of
| the 20th century.
| danbrooks wrote:
| What an amazing ending! :)
| 13of40 wrote:
| When I worked there in the early 2000's I had a friend of a
| friend whose fiancee graduated with a bachelor's degree in
| either CS or EE and applied for a developer position. Somehow,
| and I struggle to understand the mechanics of this because
| engineering was highly compartmentalized away from the
| "business" parts of the business, they managed to turn her down
| for an engineering role and got her a job in marketing.
|
| Also, the manhole cover question was considered declasse as
| early as 1999. One that was still making the rounds was...let's
| see if I can remember this... You have a soda machine that has
| three buttons, Coke, Pepsi, and Random (Coke or Pepsi). You
| know that your trickster coworker has swapped all of the button
| labels, so none of them are correct. What's the optimal
| strategy for getting a Coke out of the machine?
| [deleted]
| cacois wrote:
| That was actually fun to think through for a minute. Easy,
| but I can see how a young me nervous at an interview might
| have stumbled.
|
| Its why I hate those things. They aren't testing analytical
| or creative ability, they are testing grace under pressure -
| a quality I have found is gained through experience.
| erhk wrote:
| Ask my coworker which one is coke
| csells wrote:
| It depends on your definition of optimal. If you optimize for
| time, then pressing each button one at a time until a Coke
| comes out. Plus it doesn't take any brain cells so I can get
| back to coding quicker. : )
| RHSeeger wrote:
| You can also optimize for
|
| - The highest likelihood of getting your choice with a
| single pick
|
| - The least amount of money spent to guarantee getting your
| choice
| goodcanadian wrote:
| If you take as given, "none of them are correct," I think
| both of those optimisations still start with pressing
| Pepsi. It is either Coke or random, so you have about a
| 75% chance of getting what you want on the first press.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| If none of them are correct, then
|
| - pepsi is coke or random
|
| - coke is pepsi or random
|
| - random is coke or pepsi
|
| If you want Coke and you start with Pepsi, you'll get
| back Coke (1/2 + 1/2x1/2) or Pepsi (1/2x1/2). However,
| you could pick it and get back Pepsi 10 times in a row.
|
| If you start by picking Random, you get back Coke (1/2)
| or Pepsi (1/2). If you get back Pepsi, you know
|
| 1. Random = Pepsi 2. Coke = Random (since it can no
| longer be Pepsi, since Random is) 3. Pepsi = Coke
|
| So, you get back Coke on your first attempt (1/2), or you
| get back Coke on your second attempt (1/1).
|
| So picking random first, then the correct one, optimizes
| for lowest upper bound on the number of choices to get
| what you want. Which is _actually_ what I meant by "The
| least amount of money spent to guarantee getting your
| choice", but didn't actually express correctly.
| majormajor wrote:
| > If you want Coke and you start with Pepsi, you'll get
| back Coke (1/2 + 1/2x1/2) or Pepsi (1/2x1/2). However,
| you could pick it and get back Pepsi 10 times in a row.
|
| Why would you push it ten times in a row? If you get a
| Pepsi from it on your first press, you now know:
|
| - The button labeled Pepsi is actually Random (it can't
| be the actual Pepsi button, since none of the labels are
| correct, and it's also not the Coke button)
|
| - Therefore, the button labeled Coke is actually Pepsi
| (it can't be Coke by rule, and it's also not Random since
| we know where Random is now)
|
| - Therefore, the button labeled Pepsi is actually Coke
| (elimination)
|
| So the max is still 2 steps, but you have 75% chance of
| getting a Coke on the first try instead of just 50%
| chance. Same lower bounds, but better expected value.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| If you hit the Pepsi button and get Pepsi, you _know_ it
| 's random, so the random button has to be Coke (and Coke
| gives Pepsi). So picking the Pepsi button first still
| works in two tries - you either get a Coke all the time,
| get it randomly on the first try, or figure out which
| button gets you Coke.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Whoops, good point.
| JadeNB wrote:
| At a quick glance, everyone in this thread seems to be
| assuming 'random' gives you Coke or Pepsi with equal
| probability ....
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Regardless of the probability distribution of the random
| button, it does not change the optimal strategy. By
| pressing the Pepsi button, you are either going to get
| Coke (you "win") or Pepsi (so you know the button is
| random and you "win" by pressing random on the next go
| which you now know is Coke).
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Regardless of the probability distribution of the
| random button, it does not change the optimal strategy.
|
| I agree, and didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I was just
| referring to the specific probability computations being
| made.
| arethuza wrote:
| I really think the answer for all of those kinds of questions
| should be "I'd use Google to find the answer". I mean who
| would try and solve a problem like that _without_ searching
| for a solution first?
|
| Edit: http://mathpuzzlewiki.com/index.php/Soda_machine
| voxadam wrote:
| If you're being interviewed for a job at Microsoft the
| answer should be "I'd use Bing to find the answer."
| packetslave wrote:
| When I interviewed in Redmond in 2011, they actually told
| us this in the pre-interview orientation session!
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >You have a soda machine that has three buttons, Coke, Pepsi,
| and Random (Coke or Pepsi). You know that your trickster
| coworker has swapped all of the button labels, so none of
| them are correct. What's the optimal strategy for getting a
| Coke out of the machine?
|
| I prefer Pepsi to Coke, so I wouldn't attempt to get a Coke.
| The optimal strategy is, of course, to get a crowbar, pry the
| machine open and take what you want.
|
| That's the optimal, least expensive strategy -- assuming you
| have access to a crowbar.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Does anything beat just pressing the buttons in order?
| adflux wrote:
| This is essentially the Monty Hall problem. First choice is
| 1/3d to be correct, if this choice is wrong, then change,
| because you will now improve your odds to be 1/2
| [deleted]
| seiferteric wrote:
| Maybe I am misunderstanding but the question says NONE of
| the labels are correct right? If so, I was thinking of it
| this way. If you press coke, it can only be random or
| Pepsi (.25?), if you press Pepsi, it can only be coke or
| random (.75?), if you press random it can only be coke or
| Pepsi (.5) (oddly this is still random 50/50 :) ). So the
| optimal on first try would be to press Pepsi?
| lagadu wrote:
| You press random and taste, lets say it comes out pepsi.
| This means that this button has to be the pepsi button
| because if it was the random button then the label would
| be correct, like you mentioned. This settles the pepsi
| button.
|
| Regarding the other two buttons, one is random and the
| other is coke but their labels are pepsi and coke, giving
| us only two possible (order-independent) states which
| I'll illustrate with the format
| drink(label)/drink(label):
|
| Coke(Pepsi)/Random(coke)
|
| Coke(Coke)/Random(Pepsi)
|
| The second case is invalid because it would require for
| the coke label to be correct, leaving only one possible
| case: the button labeled pepsi would have to give out
| coke.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Both methods are fine.
|
| Let's say you press the Random button first. If it is
| actually the Coke button, you get a Coke, and you can
| stop. Otherwise it's actually the Pepsi button, then you
| press the Pepsi button since that is actually the Coke
| button. So you get a Coke in one or two button presses.
|
| Basically there are only two permutations of buttons
| possible, because all other permutations are disqualified
| by the "not the same as before" rule. Since the goal is
| specifically to get a Coke in the fewest button presses,
| you just have to not start with the Coke button since
| that is the least likely to produce a Coke.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| This was actually my first-glance answer. Consider that
| the Pepsi label can't possibly be the Pepsi button, but
| the other two can.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| And if that first press fails, the Pepsi label must be
| the Random button, so you should press the button with
| the Random label as it is guaranteed to be the Coke
| button.
| cbzbc wrote:
| No, you an apply more reasoning to it up front. If "none
| of them are correct" then you press 'surprise' first, and
| you either get the drink you wanted that time, or on your
| next guess.
| TKZZ wrote:
| If the labels are all incorrect, you would want to start
| with the one labelled with the drink you don't want. This
| would give you an initial chance of 75% of getting the
| drink you do want (.5 + .25). If you don't get it on the
| first press, then you would press the one labelled
| "random", as this would 100% be the drink that you do
| want.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I worked this out for the version of the problem on the
| linked pages but I must have misread the one posted here.
| 13of40 wrote:
| IIRC, optimal was measured by how many quarters you put in
| the machine.
| pvitz wrote:
| Smashing the machine?
| david_allison wrote:
| Yes.
|
| rot13:
|
| Bcgvzny fgengrtl vf gb fryrpg "enaqbz", gura vs lbh trg n
| Crcfv, fryrpg "Crcfv". Gjb cerffrf znk
|
| Nsgre fryrpgvat "Enaqbz":
|
| * lbh trg n Pbxr (1 cerff)
|
| * Lbh trg n Crcfv
|
| Vs lbh trg n Crcfv, lbh xabj gung "enaqbz" vf gur ohggba
| juvpu nyjnlf cebqhprf n "Crcfv" (bayl "Crcfv" be "Enaqbz"
| pna cebqhpr n Crcfv, naq lbh xabj gur ynoryf ner jebat).
|
| Sebz urer, lbh xabj gung gur ohggba ynoryyrq "Pbxr" pna'g
| cebqhpr n "Pbxr", nf gur ynoryf ner fjvgpurq. Vg pna'g
| cebqhpr n "Crcfv", nf jr'ir sbhaq gung ohggba, fb vg zhfg
| or "enaqbz".
|
| Gurersber, cerffvat "Crcfv" ba gur frpbaq gel jvyy nyjnlf
| trg lbh n "Pbxr"
| [deleted]
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I don't think I get the punchline. Could someone explain?
| cacois wrote:
| You were supposed to expect them to fail his interview
| because he didn't give the "right" answer (manhole covers are
| round so they can't fall in the hole). Instead, he completely
| disagreed with the "right" answer, but did so in a way that
| was incredibly convincing. So, they decided his primary value
| was not in his intellect (leading him to a job in
| engineering), but in his ability to convince people of things
| (leading him to a job in marketing).
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I did follow the "intended" vs. "right" subtext right until
| the punchline.
|
| I also at no point got the impression that this fictional
| Feynman was very convincing, charming or anything like
| that. Just a bit of a talky wise-ass, really. Obviously he
| knows his stuff, but he's not direct enough to just say
| that outright, he tries to lord his intellect over the
| interviewer.
|
| So I really wasn't sure what the punchline ("let's hire you
| in marketing") was all about. Is the interviewer saying
| this guy is a bad engineer since he doesn't get to the
| point? That he's a good marketer because he can talk lots
| and lots of bullshit?
|
| Is the implication that being offered a position in
| marketing would be _better_ than in engineering? It 's
| definitely not what the candidate came in for, and the
| interviewer also doesn't mention if they _would_ hire him
| for engineering, just for marketing.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Sounded like Stallman than Feynman tbh.
| zem wrote:
| yep, the joke was getting at the "talk lots and lots of
| bullshit" aspect. it's the engineer's stereotype of a
| marketing person. like, "hey, this guy won't cut it as an
| engineer - he couldn't even answer the manhole question.
| but he sure can spout bullshit with the best of them!"
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Yeah, it doesn't sound like the real Feynman at all to
| me. Where's the wit and charm?
| jfengel wrote:
| _Just a bit of a talky wise-ass, really._
|
| That much, at least, actually sounds like Feynman. But
| for the most part, no, it didn't really sound much like
| him.
| aeternum wrote:
| In Feynman's day, people climbing down a manhole ladder were
| still mostly elliptical in cross-section. It's only nowadays that
| most people are mostly circular.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I was expecting something a little different, where they passed
| on him because he didn't give the 'right' answer (what the
| interviewer had preconceived and/or looked up online).
| emerged wrote:
| Well yea, that expectation was produced purposefully in order
| to be subverted for the actual punchline.
| bishnu wrote:
| 100%. The answer wouldn't be "join our marketing team", it
| would be "you aren't a culture fit".
| barrenko wrote:
| Ye, they really don't like people who think at marketing
| departments.
| thom wrote:
| Well, that _is_ the conceit here. The 'right' answer is that
| all manhole covers are round because a round cover can't fall
| into the hole.
| watwut wrote:
| Many manholes are in fact squared. So the premise itself is
| wrong.
| dekhn wrote:
| Let's just say there are many questions that people ask in
| interviews where they have a scientific sounding answer
| that is simple and wrong (when considered in full context).
|
| it's not your job to consider it in full context and give
| the globally true answer (as feynmann attempted here). it's
| your job to be cleverer than the interview, perceive what
| they want to hear, and tell it back to them in a way that
| maximizes the score they give you on the interview.
|
| The reason you do that is it directly impacts the size of
| the job offer they give you if you answer questions exactly
| the way you want to hear. It's eminently rational, and a
| form of social engineering. Once you're hired you can
| advocate for change from within *
|
| * I tried to get google to change many of it's stupidest
| hiring practices for years but it was tilting at a windmill
| codesections wrote:
| This is pointed out in the first two words of the "Feynman"
| answer ("They're not.")
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| I'm fairly certain a square manhole cover with a sufficient
| perimeter would still have no chance of falling into a hole,
| depending on the diameter of said hole.
| ryandvm wrote:
| If I know anything about capitalism, the primary reason
| manhole covers are round is because that's the most cost-
| efficient shape for the job.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is almost certainly the answer. They're round to fit
| the cylindrical holes they're covering, and those holes
| are round because they're made with drills, and they're
| made with drills because that's a lot faster and cheaper
| than digging.
| yobbo wrote:
| Tunnels are round because a round tube on the inside is
| stronger against compression than an equivalent square
| tube is. They are like vaults.
| beached_whale wrote:
| If you provide a sufficient lip on the hole such that the
| minimum side is larger than any of the four diagonals it
| would work.
| kragen wrote:
| Right, but this makes the area of the cover twice the
| area of the hole, and the cover twice as heavy as it
| would need to be if it were round. As Feynman pointed
| out, even round covers are already pretty heavy--I
| injured my wrist (ligaments?) from the tension of lifting
| one in my teens.
|
| However, if this were the only consideration, you could
| get a wider-diameter manhole with a smaller cover by
| making it in the form of an equilateral triangle, as
| evidently Nashua, NH, does:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhole_cover#Other.
| Indeed, you don't need to stop there; if you curve the
| sides of the triangle in toward the center, you can get a
| manhole with an even smaller surface area for a given
| diameter, although at some point the extra "diameter"
| will be too curved to be useful.
| MathYouF wrote:
| Indeed, though to do it this way would be very wasteful
| of resources as the ratio of the manhole size to the size
| of the cover wouldn't be maximized. The cover would be
| needlessly covering a lip whose large size only exists
| because of the poor choice of shape.
| [deleted]
| zucker42 wrote:
| It explains in the joke how it's possible to fit a square
| cover into a slightly smaller square hole. The easiest way
| is to position the cover vertically and across the
| diagonal. The lip that the square cover rests on would have
| to be impractically large to fully prevent the cover from
| fitting into the hole.
| rdiddly wrote:
| If we're talking square cover, round hole, no cover big
| enough to cover the hole could fall in.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| But a triangle works for this, too.
| FabHK wrote:
| Pretty sure I can toss a triangular cover into a triangular
| hole. You might be thinking of a Reuleaux triangle (which
| is not a triangle, narrowly conceived.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_triangle
| [deleted]
| extr wrote:
| Manhole covers are round so you can move them by rolling them
| around. Duh
| rcpt wrote:
| You know how police have to take an IQ test and get denied the
| job if they score too high?
|
| Like that, but for tech interviews.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think it's a rare practice right?
|
| "... the theory that those who scored too high could get
| bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly
| training."
|
| I must be a genius. I'm sooo bored at my software dev job.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-
| cops/st...
| tester756 wrote:
| or it's time to change job :)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I feel like most jobs get boring in a year or less.
| Usually it's due to the bureaucracy and not having any
| input into the business systems that were implement in
| the tech.
| wsc981 wrote:
| Bored like Peter Gibbons?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_1lIFRdnhA
|
| Maybe you need a promotion.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af8DVIZ5LX4
| giantg2 wrote:
| There are a lot of good points in there
| FabHK wrote:
| > police have to take an IQ test and get denied the job if
| they score too high
|
| Pilots as well, apparently.
| hereforphone wrote:
| But can he do a heap sort on the whiteboard, that's the real
| question
| Qw3r7 wrote:
| Probably not, but he could sleep with his bosses wife
| janeroe wrote:
| Why not? He was into computing. His lectures on computation
| (transcribed from his course in California Institute of
| Technology) are published:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Computation-
| Frontier...
| jbay808 wrote:
| They're very good lectures, too.
| jandrese wrote:
| He worked for an early computer manufacturer at one point
| in his life. The completely wacky Thinking Machines
| Corporation, who built probably the strangest computer
| architecture ever commercially developed.
|
| There were building massively parallel systems back in the
| 80s. Literally thousands of parallel processors, but each
| processor was only a single bit machine with an incredibly
| primitive ALU and little else. Or maybe it would be better
| to think of them as the first GPU builder, at least 20
| years ahead of their time.
| da4b3c01a3 wrote:
| Physicists must be the dumbest hypocrites on earth. On one hand,
| they claim rationality and on the other hand, they build weapons
| for worthless fanatics whose soul is less valuable than termites.
| okareaman wrote:
| How many ping pong balls would it take to fill a 747?
|
| Why do you ask? What problem are you trying to solve?
|
| We want to understand your thought process
|
| I'd think it was stupid to fill a 747 with ping pong balls and
| think about something else
| hintymad wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy this type of attack. How is this different
| from calculating yield of a bomb as Fermi did? It's back-of-
| envelope calculation that physicists do all the time. Ping Pong
| in a Boeing is merely a setup with the least context. This is
| like criticizing a math teacher for asking elementary students
| to calculate how long it takes to fill a swimming pool when
| water is flowing in and out of the pool at the same time. Yeah,
| the setup sounds ridiculous, but you know what, that's the
| setup that a student understands, and we see similar scenarios
| in real world: a company earns and spends at the same time, a
| queuing system has incoming traffic and completed tasks, a
| factory has incoming jobs and outgoing completed products...
| So, what's wrong with the question again?
|
| Frankly, the fictional Feynman in the article sounds
| confrontational and arrogant. Take the manhole question for an
| example, all the counter questions are either nit picking, or
| rejecting the value of industrial design. Of course there is a
| reason for choosing a round shape for manhole cover. Of course
| there is a trade-off among different shapes.
|
| Please note, I'm not saying the manhole question is good for
| interview, but it does not mean that we need to be mean and
| resort to cheap attacks to make a point.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| There is an interesting point in there about reverse
| engineering stuff, like you sometimes see in evolutionary
| biology and such.
| derekp7 wrote:
| This is fine if the question relates to something that the
| candidate is familiar with. But I have personally never set
| foot in a 747, much less be able to come up with any estimate
| of the dimensions in order to estimate volume. Then there is
| the formula to determine the packing volume of ping pong
| balls.
|
| Just like the question of how much water dumps out of the
| Amazon river per day. Yes, I can write down a formula with a
| bunch of variables, but there is no way I could justify my
| guess of what the values of those variables are without some
| research ahead of time. And in reality, who wants a developer
| that just starts banging out code without researching the
| problem domain space first?
|
| In Fermi's case he already knew the inputs such as air
| resistance, weight of the paper, and of course knew all the
| relevant math formulas because that was part of his education
| and job.
| FabHK wrote:
| > I have personally never set foot in a 747
|
| Ok. Do you know how many people it carries? Is it about 10,
| 300, or 10,000?
|
| And how many spheres of diameter 1 can you pack into a cube
| of length 1? About 0.13, 1.3, or 13?
|
| What else do you need, seriously?
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| How well these questions correlate to job performance is an
| interesting question but the goal I think is not for you to
| get to the "right" answer (in the sense of figuring the
| optimal bin-packing approach on the fly). The goal is to
| see how you are able to take a broad problem and break it
| down by:
|
| 1. Identifying key assumptions or inputs. You may not know
| the dimensions of a 747 off-hand but ideally you can come
| up with a way of determining the number of ping-ping balls
| GIVEN the correct dimensions as input. That is you can come
| up with a model that you can plug the right numbers into
| once you look them up.
|
| 2. Clarifying the problem by asking questions and drilling
| in on requirements.
|
| 3. Create a model that you can communicate to others and
| allows you to make decisions just based on order-of-
| magnitude considerations. I.e. make decisions under
| uncertainty.
|
| All of those skills I think are relevant to software
| engineering and system design. For example, you may need to
| provision hardware long before you know the exact design of
| a system. Can you come up with a rough estimate of how much
| storage you will need? Or at least put reasonable upper
| bounds on it? How many qps would you expect a system to
| need to support and does that mean you have to use a
| distributed datastore vs a single RDBMS?
| giobox wrote:
| I've found in interviews you can just declare your
| assumptions for the things you don't know.
|
| Ultimately these sorts of job interview questions are
| designed to evoke a response that can let you demonstrate
| how you would go about solving/explaining the problem;
| actually solving it correctly is rarely required or
| expected. I'd just say having never seen a 747, for
| purposes of the calculation let's assume they are 300m long
| with a 10m diameter etc etc and proceed to do a terrible
| job of calculating how many ping pong balls fit.
| zinclozenge wrote:
| You would think that ultimately the question is about the
| thought process. But that usually gets lost and it
| devolves into a question that gets asked with an expected
| answer.
| hintymad wrote:
| I guess we can always clarify the context? Something like:
| I've never set foot in a 747, could you please describe
| what that is? Can I assume that the plane has no furniture,
| and the dimension is yada yada? You know, have a
| conversation.
|
| Actually, that's exactly what Feynman did in the excellent
| writeup: https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-
| connection-machin.... A quote: "For Richard, figuring out
| these problems was a kind of a game. He always started by
| asking very basic questions like, "What is the simplest
| example?" or "How can you tell if the answer is right?" He
| asked questions until he reduced the problem to some
| essential puzzle that he thought he would be able to
| solve."
| sjg007 wrote:
| The cylinder being the strongest shape is the most
| interesting answer.
| memco wrote:
| Why use the pool at all if you already have useful examples
| of inflow and outflow of money or another or the queue at the
| grocery store? Someone of age to understand flow rates of
| liquid would likely be able to understand money enough to be
| able to do the same calculations can't get the same
| principles but with a functional analogy instead.
| hintymad wrote:
| My guess is that such problems are for 3rd-graders, who do
| not necessarily have real-world experience to understand
| more realistic setup.
| nickff wrote:
| There are an infinite number of variations on the problem;
| you could also ask about a reservoir with inflows and
| outflows, or a water tower, or a continuous distillation
| process. I think the money variant is actually one of the
| worst, as it evokes no imagery (in an era of largely
| digital transactions), but I'm not sure the exact question
| asked really matters.
|
| If someone fights a hypothetical, they're usually being
| adversarial, confrontational, or just avoiding answering
| the question, which is useful information in an interview.
| FabHK wrote:
| > I think the money variant is actually one of the worst,
| as it evokes no imagery
|
| Plus money is obviously discrete, while water is
| conceptually nice and continuous.
| deanCommie wrote:
| The real problem with that question isn't that it's stupid.
| Everyone knows it's stupid, it's testing your ability to come
| up with an estimate in a domain you're not too familiar with
| using "napkin math". That's a legitimate skill and asset in
| software engineering.
|
| The real problem is that the ability to come up with a good
| napkin math estimate for a technical problem doesn't correlate
| with the ability to actually do the job to solve the problem.
|
| Ability to estimate doesn't imply engineering/programming
| skill. You still have to evaluate that part somehow (coding,
| take home test, github contributions, etc).
|
| It also tells you nothing about the candidate's ability to work
| with others, under pressure, collaborate in a team, and all
| sorts of other "behavioural" interview questions.
|
| Once you spent enough time to evaluate someone's behavioural
| skills, and also their technical skills, you don't have any
| time left in an hour interview to evaluate their napkin math
| skills.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Which is why companies started moving into other questions
| that have no relation to your job, like designing youtube.
| There is such a slim chance that you'll end up designing
| youtube at your tenure there, in a team of 2...that it's
| probably more likely to fill a jet with balls. Yet somehow
| people are not bothered by the design youtube question the
| same way they are about balls in a plane. It's true that the
| youtube version has technologies that are somewhat related to
| what you'll be doing, but in practice you won't have the
| opportunity to choose that many technologies for a single
| product, you'll be a cog in the machine anyway.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| Yeah, I think in general people lump Fermi estimation
| problems in with "brain teaser" questions (which I think
| really are silly) because they are both technical(ish)
| interview questions that have nothing to do (superficially)
| with software engineering.
| FabHK wrote:
| > the ability to come up with a good napkin math estimate for
| a technical problem doesn't correlate with the ability to
| actually do the job to solve the problem.
|
| You realise that that's a very strong (and probably wrong)
| statement? Those two abilities are obviously distinct, but
| quite probably positively correlated. So while there are be
| better interview questions, the answer to this question tells
| you something about the candidate.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > The real problem is that the ability to come up with a good
| napkin math estimate for a technical problem doesn't
| correlate with the ability to actually do the job to solve
| the problem.
|
| I don't think this is true at all. There have been many times
| where I've estimated numbers to come up with a "scale" number
| ... which was important in other ways. How many servers are
| we likely to need? How many connections per second are we
| likely to see? How much memory is this likely to take up.
| Depending on the context in which you need to know the
| answer, estimating a value can be extremely useful. It can
| point you towards the right "group" of solutions that you
| should consider.
| jstx1 wrote:
| > I'd think it was stupid to fill a 747 with ping pong balls
| and think about something else
|
| This is fine as long as you understand that it's equivalent to
| walking out of the interview right then and there.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| In an interview, stopping at this might just make you not get
| the job. If you're lucky the interviewer will laugh and ask the
| appropriate followup question. It goes something like this:
| Haha, awesome answer. I agree with you from a business
| perspective it seems stupid at first. Now I can't come up with
| a good reason to do this, but let's say I as your Product
| person have convinced you with enough good reasons that it is
| indeed a valuable task to fill this 747 with as many ping pong
| balls as you can. What would you do?
|
| If you keep it at "I refuse to answer this question", you're
| out. If you laugh and maybe talk about your experience with
| Product people asking for stupid stuff all the time and then
| you ask some/all/other questions like these back:
|
| Is this a 747 in it's "raw" state, i.e. no seats, no overhead
| compartments etc, basically empty fuselage? Am I supposed to
| fill the wings as well (i.e. the kerosine storage areas? Is the
| aircraft supposed to be able to fly after this? Do I have to
| care about the flammability of ping pong balls? Btw. how much
| do ping pong balls weigh and how big are they again, just to be
| sure we're talking about the same thing I'm thinking of here?
|
| And the list goes on. This is just the stuff I could come up
| with in a minute without being in a high pressure interview
| situation :) One of my bosses once told me why he likes me
| working for him: You don't say "can't be done" you just ask
| back "How much can this cost?"
| swiley wrote:
| Yeah, unfortunately you get asked to do some pretty silly
| stuff all the time and being able to cope with that is a
| critical skill.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Also, you need pilots. And never mind ping pong balls are
| highly flammable and thus dangerous goods. Maybe they want to
| burn down a 747?
| datad wrote:
| An unladen 747?
| geoduck14 wrote:
| African? Or European?
| dekhn wrote:
| no, airbus or boeing!
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Feynman wouldn't dismiss that question. He'd overthink it.
|
| Someone once asked Feynman which way a top spinning sprinkler
| would spin if it was underwater and water was sucked through it
| instead of pushed out of it. He got into back and forth debates
| with other students. He ended up using the universities cooling
| pond for the cyclotron to actually run the experiment.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_sprinkler
|
| So if you asked Feynman "How many ping pong balls would it take
| to fill a 747?" you wouldn't receive a "Why do you ask? What
| problem are you trying to solve?". Instead you'd find him
| trying to acquire a large 747 and a whole lot of ping pong
| balls in order to validate his initial guess.
| Hokusai wrote:
| The problem is that it is impossible to give a good answer
| without context. Did it matter a 2% error? There are cost
| limits? Maybe you don't even need to know the number of ping
| pong balls but it would be faster to transport them by ship....
| s0rce wrote:
| Isn't the context an interview, ie. give a decent order of
| magnitude estimate with back of the envelope methods.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Probably, but to be fair, when a client asks "can you put a
| button here that sends an alert email when it's
| clicked?"... a reasonable first question may very well be
| "what is it you're hoping to accomplish here... so we can
| tell if such a button is really the right answer". In many
| cases, the button isn't the right answer. And being the
| kind of person that digs to find out what the problem
| trying to be solved actually is... can be very important.
| Hokusai wrote:
| Oh, yes. It's about having a shared culture more than
| intelligence or knowledge. I know what I will answer if I
| wanted the job, that does not mean that it's a good answer,
| it just means that I have the background to know what are
| they looking for.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| If you dissolve the ping pong balls in acetone first I can
| fit as many as you have available into a 747 with plenty of
| room left over for a machine to reconstitute them on the
| other side.
| pedja wrote:
| Usefulness of the question aside, dismissing it as stupid is at
| the very least, shortsighted[1].
|
| [1] - https://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/
| wolpoli wrote:
| The correct answer really depends on what role the candidate is
| trying to get.
|
| An engineering person would come up with the thought process to
| their estimate.
|
| A business person might start asking questions about the
| business needs for trying to fill a 747 with ping pong balls.
|
| But someone trying to get an engineering role should think
| twice before trying to sound smart and replying in an out of
| line manner.
| conjecTech wrote:
| I don't get the derision for these kinds of problems. And I
| think it's unlikely Feynman would have found this unhelpful.
| These are commonly referred to as Fermi problems. Fermi was a
| physicist of Feynman's generation - they were probably standing
| together at Trinity when Fermi did the famous yield
| approximation. The other physicists held this ability in such
| esteem they gave it a name and remembered him for it.
|
| The question is meant to gauge whether you can create a simple
| model of a system that is completely foreign to you, but for
| which you are familiar with the fundamental rules governing it.
| The absurdity of it serves to remove bias. You don't have to
| worry about whether or not the candidate happens to have
| experience filling airplanes with ping pong balls. So much of
| effective programming is creating a model for the processes we
| are trying to automate. Coming up with effective abstractions
| uses many of the same skills.
| hogFeast wrote:
| That would be true if everyone wasn't also asking the same
| questions. So you are just testing whether the person knows
| that you ask that question or has interviewed at other places
| that do (I have seen this in other industries too: firm
| adopts some "interview technique", no women get through, no
| under-represented groups get through, they are baffled but
| put it down to their process being a completely objective
| identifier of innate genius...kind of ignoring that some of
| these places are hiring tens of thousands of people who, by
| definition, aren't geniuses...people are weird).
| nickff wrote:
| An interesting little tid-bit: I've read that Feynman was
| sitting in a truck at Trinity, and I think he was alone.
| Feynman calculated that the truck's windscreen would absorb
| enough of the bomb's UV emissions to obviate the need for
| additional eye protection. The same source (which I cannot
| currently locate) said that everyone else was wearing welding
| masks/goggles.
| pklausler wrote:
| _Surely You 're Joking, Mr. Feynman_
|
| Highly recommended.
| mdoms wrote:
| If he was alone why was "everyone else" wearing goggles?
| pbak wrote:
| You really gunning for that QA job, are you ?
| [deleted]
| jameshart wrote:
| Indeed. Feynman talked in 'surely you're joking..' about his
| affection for MIT students in his fraternity setting one
| another puzzles, and he talked about the question of how
| trains go round corners being one he found particularly
| interesting. In fact he repeats it in this interview:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7h4OtFDnYE
|
| He doesn't answer the question 'how does a train stay on the
| track' with 'some trains don't'; he doesn't switch to talking
| about rollercoaster trains and insist that the way they stay
| on the track is with horizontal wheels. He finds the logical,
| geometrically satisfying answer quite delightful.
|
| And in fact, in many cases the flanges which he says are just
| for safety and aren't supposed to impact the track because
| otherwise they make a terrible sound... are expected to hit
| the track to help the train make it round particularly tight
| turns. Coming from New York and having ridden the subways
| you'd think Feynman would know there are some corners subway
| trains take where the flanges rub all the way round, and the
| lovely conical wheels aren't what keeps the train on the
| track at all.
|
| So I definitely find this a weird characterization of a
| Feynman-ish approach to this kind of problem. I think he'd
| probably have delighted in the geometric neatness of why
| circular or triangular manhole covers can't fall down their
| holes, and been happy to ignore the practical fact of square
| ones for the sake of a good puzzle story.
| mabbo wrote:
| The 747 ping pong ball estimation problem _is_ a Fermi
| problem, where the goal is to get the right order of
| magnitude of the answer. Sure.
|
| But "why are manhole covers round?" is not. It's a stupid
| "have you ever heard this clever fact" question that's often
| designed just to figure out if you're clever and/or lucky vs
| testing actual knowledge and skill.
|
| If your aim in interviewing is to fill the team with people
| who love being clever then it's a great technique. But in my
| view, it's better to interview for the skills the job
| requires.
| conjecTech wrote:
| I do agree that logic puzzles which require a single
| observation and/or have a binary outcome tend to be very
| bad interview questions. That being said, I think the
| original post demonstrates that the issue with the manhole
| cover problem isn't necessarily the question itself, but
| how it's evaluated. I'd be quite pleased if I were asking
| the question and the interviewee gave that answer (though I
| might raise the point that the configuration necessary to
| drop a rectangular cover is also one of the most ergonomic
| for holding it). The general notion that there is a single
| right and wrong answer is incongruous with a class of
| question used to evaluate the candidate's reasoning
| ability. Though I wouldn't be surprised if these were
| historically evaluated appropriately and candidates simply
| misinferred why they were being rejected.
| II2II wrote:
| > But "why are manhole covers round?" is not. It's a stupid
| "have you ever heard this clever fact" question that's
| often designed just to figure out if you're clever and/or
| lucky vs testing actual knowledge and skill.
|
| I once had this interview question, gave them the expected
| answer, and cited the source of that answer. I never did
| get that job.
|
| I am going to take your claim a step further and assert
| that this type of question can only reliably test
| cleverness if the interviewee is properly primed (e.g.
| there was a prior discussion of workplace safety), then the
| important thing is explaining why. Otherwise the only way
| to arrive at the answer is to realize that
| construction/maintenance workplaces place a high priority
| on safety. That isn't the type of thing you're likely to
| think about during an interview for a programming position.
| version_five wrote:
| I worked and interviewed a lot of people in business
| consulting. We did ask what you call Fermi problems as they
| are surprisingly representative of the abstract thinking
| that is required in the job, specifically proposing
| frameworks for what kind of information we need to either
| go and get or state as assumptions in order to support a
| decision. As the GP points out, the questions are testing
| how you model something you don't know but have common
| sense about, and significantly, how you don't get caught up
| in uncertainty or irrelevant minutia and identify some core
| assumptions.
|
| That said, I agree 100% with you about "trick" questions.
| It seems some people cannot distinguish between "market
| sizing" (Fermi problems) where you need to make reasonable
| assumptions and describe a model of something, and "a man
| is found in scuba gear in the middle of the forest"
| brainteasers for kids. I have no idea why anyone asks
| brainteasers in an interview.
| falcor84 wrote:
| >We want to understand your thought process
|
| That's one reason, but from my personal experience
| interviewing, an even bigger signal is a candidate's attitude
| to a challenge. I've found that the best candidates tend to be
| those who 'own' the challenge such that they clearly get
| excited about solving it themselves, rather than just to please
| the interviewer.
|
| >Why do you ask? This is a particularly interesting question,
| as I'd say it's asked by the best and the worst and the best
| performers, the best looking to solve the underlying problem,
| and the worst looking to shirk responsibility.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I'd think it was stupid to fill a 747 with ping pong balls
| and think about something else
|
| This man never heard of a Fermi estimate, or encountered one in
| a problem set.
| jstx1 wrote:
| It's possible to know what a Fermi problem is and still think
| that they're bad interview questions.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Richard Feynman is not someone to look up to, he was an arrogant,
| sexist asshole that liked the sound of his own voice. He'd be a
| great fit for the GOP.
| serverholic wrote:
| Almost everyone was sexist in his time. But yes, let's please
| continue to cancel history.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Your statement is what's wrong with how history is viewed. I
| wasn't talking specifically to the article, but the comments.
| He's being glorified for his personality and his sexist views
| are were very much apart of his personality. Don't erase him
| from history, but also don't act like he is some role model.
| serverholic wrote:
| Please show me where anyone in this thread is glorifying
| anything close to sexism.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| You have poor reading comprehension. Glorying him and his
| personality includes his sexist personality as well.
| desireco42 wrote:
| This is epic :). I can imagine how interviewer would be pissed
| off if you come this prepared. They love those koan type
| questions but don't like when you turn the tables on them.
| dudul wrote:
| I'm so pissed at these stupid questions during interviews that
| now I start doing that.
|
| The last one was "how many tennis balls could you fit in the
| Empire State Building?". I spent maybe 10 minutes asking
| idiotic "clarifying" questions before the interviewer realized
| I was messing with him (e.g. "can I use any color for the
| balls?" "Do I have a crew to help me?" "Can I try to crush
| them?" etc). He got pretty upset yeah, saying that I wasn't
| taking it seriously. I just said "with a question like that I
| think you're the one not taking it seriously". I didn't get the
| job.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| zepolen wrote:
| So what's not serious about that question assuming it was for
| a programming position?
| 988747 wrote:
| For one, it has nothing to do with programming. Also,
| nothing to do with time management, people skills, or
| anything else that programmers do on their job.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's an estimation problem, and programming is full of
| estimation problems. How many servers will I need? Will I
| be able to fit this in RAM or do I need an on-disk
| solution? How long will it take to go from 10 users to 10
| million users, and will I be able to scale the design?
|
| You don't need the exact value, just a rough order of
| magnitude. That's the whole point of the big-O notation.
| A problem like that is lighthearted, which has the
| advantage of removing all of the computery specifics that
| could bog you down in a realistic question. The ability
| to pull numbers out of your ass quickly, and still have
| them be within a factor-of-2 of an answer that would take
| weeks or months to gather, is critical for a developer.
|
| The ability to guess that is also a good indicator of
| whether you're likely to be a good culture fit.
| jerf wrote:
| I agree with you, and as such, I suggest simply asking
| such an estimation problem set in the computing world. It
| also has the advantage that you can get into discussions
| of things relevant to computing, like finding out how
| much they understand about orders of magnitude time like
| socket communication times to various distances, speeds
| of disks, etc.
|
| One of the reasons I don't like "how many ping pong
| balls" etc. is that you're wasting valuable interview
| time. Interview time should be treated as very valuable
| to all concerned. Asking about ping pong balls just to
| find out estimation skills is a waste of time because it
| doesn't raise any other interesting questions, vs asking
| an estimation question that raises all kinds of other
| things you can pick up that are actually relevant _in
| addition to_ testing estimation skills.
| jfengel wrote:
| I think there's advantages and disadvantages to either
| approach. In this case, the thing I like about it is
| having them talk through their reasoning, regardless of
| the domain. If it's a domain they're familiar with I get
| the benefit of their knowledge, but it also takes longer
| because the specificity raises a lot more questions. If
| it's an unfamiliar domain, I get a glimpse of their
| creativity with a problem they haven't previously
| considered.
|
| If anything, it sounds like "ping pong ball" problems
| have become cliche. That makes them less useful: it
| doesn't represent my creativity, and it potentially leads
| to them reciting rote answers from "cracking the
| interview" books.
|
| Fortunately, I can come up with a thousand problems off
| the top of my head. How many letter "e" in the New York
| Times every day? How many sodium atoms in the ocean? How
| many people at the Nobel Prize Ceremony?
|
| The more off the wall the question, the more I'm testing
| how they handle the unfamiliar -- as well as conveying
| who I am. Which is part of the point. They should be
| interviewing me as much as I'm interviewing them.
| zepolen wrote:
| I find it pointless to convince someone who doesn't see
| the value of thinking about solutions to problems they've
| never seen before. They will never be pioneers and that's
| okay, an organization needs both.
| v64 wrote:
| If you want to know how many servers I'd need for a task
| or to discuss memory/space tradeoffs, then ask those
| questions outright instead of doing this indirect dance.
| I don't see how the question gives you an advantage when
| you're being asked to take skills you use and apply them
| to domains you don't work in that are irrelevant for the
| job.
|
| The skillset I have that allows me to accurately estimate
| software projects is based on my knowledge and experience
| in that domain, and just because I can estimate there
| doesn't mean I can estimate tennis balls in a building,
| nor does being able to estimate tennis balls in a
| building give any indication of ability to estimate
| software projects.
|
| Anyone that thinks there's some overlap between
| estimating software problems and estimating how many
| tennis balls would fit in the Empire State Building is
| not someone I'd want to work for.
| jfengel wrote:
| Sounds like we have an excellent accord, then. I want
| employees who can think creatively about problems that
| they haven't seen before. So with any luck, you'll find
| places who want employees like you, and I'll find
| employees who match my criteria.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Without trying to be pedantic... it may have nothing to
| do with "programming", but it does have to do with
| "software development". Programming is writing code.
| Software development tends to be more about problem
| solving, figuring out what code needs to be written in
| the first place. I'd rather do the "figure out the number
| of balls that fit in a building" than "write code to re-
| order a binary tree", since the former is more likely to
| clearly demonstrate the problem solving skills I use
| every day at work... developing software.
| retrac wrote:
| Well for one thing, it's painfully trivial. We had to
| estimate the number of marble candies in a glass jar back
| in 3rd grade. The closest estimate won the jar of candies.
| We approached it methodically in much the manner I assume
| the interviewer expects the applicant to there? Estimate
| volume of the container. Estimate volume of a marble when
| packed together. Divide. I guess it does serve as a very,
| very basic test of arithmetic and reasoning skills. But
| kind of insultingly so.
| 13of40 wrote:
| The answer to that question is the volume of the building
| minus some factor (let's say 40%) for other stuff like
| walls and floors, etc. times the number of tennis balls you
| can fit in a given space, like a cubic meter. Basically...
|
| x * y * z * 0.6 * n
|
| If you could quickly express it like that, despite not
| actually coming up with a number, you would probably pass.
| To me, being able to estimate the scope of things before
| launching into writing code is a valuable skill, but
| there's something about the quirkiness(?) of how the
| question is presented that's off-putting to some people.
| But on the other hand, maybe that's by design, and those
| people are the ones being selected out?
| drclau wrote:
| Wait. Is this some old story (I hope!) or are these questions
| still used in interviews?
| skrebbel wrote:
| "Do I have a crew to help me?" had me laughing out loud.
| [deleted]
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| I've read it before, but it's always such a fun read. The author
| got Feynman's speaking style down perfectly.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Well, I think it gets it wrong when it comes to the safety
| issue question. Something being possible, even if unlikely, is
| obviously more dangerous than something being impossible.
| Feynman would definitely understand that even if he insisted
| that the main reason for the shape of the cover is the shape of
| the hole (which is probably true).
|
| EDIT: Assuming Feynman is deliberately being obtuse, he might
| point out that, while unlikely, if the round cover is placed on
| its edge, it could roll away potentially injuring someone or
| damaging property.
| [deleted]
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Something being possible, even if unlikely, is obviously
| more dangerous than something being impossible. Feynman would
| definitely understand that even if he insisted that the main
| reason for the shape of the cover is the shape of the hole
| (which is probably true).
|
| This is a very good point for someone who is known, among
| other things, for his O-ring demonstration (https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_...).
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| It amazes me how defensive, threatened, and snarky people get
| about interview questions.
|
| When leading an interview, do you know how hard it is to tease
| out if someone is a creative thinker or just a bullshitter? Very
| hard. You come at it from multiple angles. Sometimes you need
| questions like this, it is part of the interviewing toolkit along
| with coding examples, and domain-specific challenges.
|
| EDIT: And sometimes you just need to hire a drone that will
| follow orders and not think creatively: just implement the spec
| as-is. WHy? because tech needs all sorts of skills. You don't
| need (and can't manage) a team of Feynmans. It would be crazy,
| his ego was huge.
| xkjkls wrote:
| Eh, your mileage may vary, but I've normally found too
| completely open ended questions impossible to ever really get a
| good signal from. I've done enough interviews to feel like
| questions with a pretty binary "you either get it or you
| don't", evaluation make it pretty hard to judge someone. I'd
| rather ask questions where there are multiple levels of
| evaluation, rather than a single trick.
| munchbunny wrote:
| _tease out if someone is a creative thinker_
|
| While I get your point and have been in a similar position
| myself as the interviewer, the longer I've been working the
| more I think "creative" is just as much of an overloaded and
| under-defined term as "smart". These days I just look for the
| ability to think through complex things methodically, and the
| creative spark will show itself later, and in place of innate
| creativity, the ability to churn through lots of ideas when
| it's needed is a serviceable substitute.
|
| And if by "creative" the interviewers (not necessarily you)
| mean the ability to come up with novel but compelling ideas,
| that's something that happens on timescales longer than an
| interview and certainly not under interview pressure. The
| people I know who are best at generating novel, compelling
| ideas do it on the timescales of weeks to months.
| nickkell wrote:
| I thought it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask someone
| trying out for Microsoft's new manhole design division
| queuebert wrote:
| So that's why Windows sucks. It was designed by people who
| are good at manhole design, not writing software. :-)
| panzagl wrote:
| Well, the computer company he did work for isn't around anymore,
| so Microsoft would probably be ok passing on him.
| gorwell wrote:
| It is rather remarkable how unenlightened and vulgar our
| interview questions used to be. Manhole is the language of the
| savage from an age long ago, isn't that something? Thank Ford our
| omniscient DEI Controllers replaced it with Personhole! As a
| result our species thrived as never before.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| _Brave New World_ doesn 't really work well as a tool to
| criticise "woke", this is a bad angle. If we lived in _Brave
| New World_ , people wouldn't fight for their ideas about social
| justice because they'd be hypnotically conditioned to love the
| social _status quo_ and their place in it from birth. A huge
| part of Huxley 's premise is that social change can't happen in
| his dystopia because nobody feels any need for it despite the
| obviously dystopian underpinnings of the supposedly "happy"
| world.
| babelfish wrote:
| What are you talking about?
| hoten wrote:
| GP saw an opportunity to be anti-woke and jumped on it. It's
| what passes for humor in some circles. Jump on a "woke" thing
| that is clearly ridiculous and no more than 0.001% of people
| agree with, offer it up as a strawman of PC culture, and use
| it to ridicule liberals.
|
| It's especially egregious here because it has nothing to do
| with the shared article, unless you consider any conversation
| on Feynman as a bridge to talk about modern political
| correctness wrt. to Feynman.
| gorwell wrote:
| It's not to ridicule liberals. I'm a liberal. It's to mock
| the illiberalism and totalitarianism that is replacing
| liberalism, and is increasingly flexing its power in our
| cultural institutions.
| babelfish wrote:
| How was that relevant to the article?
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