3 ms·

Can you expand on the boiling bagels on mars question ? Havent heard of that before

• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• taneq 9y ago
  In context it sounds like a flippant reference to the 'creative thinking' type questions that were all the rage a few years ago. Ask someone an oddball question with the aim of having them talk through their process of solving a question they've never heard before because you just made it up. As long as you make it clear that the actual number they come up with is irrelevant and you just want to see how they think (and you're also open to pragmatic answers like "why the hell would I be trying to calculate the weight of an Airbus A380 when I could just look it up on wikipedia?") I don't see why it's that bad a question.
• notadoc 9y ago
  It's just a variation on the typical logic/creative thinking questions that a lot of people and companies obsess over. "Well they're a great candidate otherwise but they totally failed the boiling water on alternate planet question, so let's keep searching" - believe it or not, that's a real mentality out there. I don't get it and never have.
  • collyw 9y ago
    Maybe its just me but I find a lot of algorithmic interview questions are just as hit and miss as these obscure questions if you need to do it in an interview. I had a phone interview with Google and was asked to come up with a variation of a soduko solver. Couldn't get it there and then, but half an hour later walking down the road, a really elegant solution came to me.