5 ms·

I have been interviewed at Google and I was given a brainteaser. "Can you estimate Google AdWords revenue for Italy - B2B?"

grivescorbett 8y ago
This isn’t a brain teaser. It’s market size estimation, I’m guessing this was not an engineering role?
- gcatalfamo 8y ago
  How is that question different from "please estimate how many golf ball fit in a school bus" ? The only thing changing are parameters. EDIT: it was for the Search team, search spam prevention, can't remember role it's been 4-5 years, sorry.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - grivescorbett 8y ago
    If it was an engineering role I’d definitely call it a brain teaser. But for say a marketing role, an interviewers wants to see that you understand the way money flows through the business and what the parameters therein are. Maybe it’s still a brain teaser but I would say it’s relevant to the job.
  - teraflop 8y ago
    If you were interviewing for a job at a company whose main revenue stream involved transporting golf balls in school buses, that might be a perfectly reasonable interview question.
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    If someone is sending emails about golf balls and school busses, it's probably spam. ;)
mike_ivanov 8y ago
Oh, that is how they do it. /s
titanix2 8y ago
"Estimating it from the taxes paid to the state, I would say 0€." (Yes, that’s not the kind of expected answer)
- expertentipp 8y ago
  Satisfacton from saying this during an interview at Google would be worth not getting the job:)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jkingsbery 8y ago
    TRUE STORY: I interviewed at Google earlier in my career. In one of the interviews, the interviewer asked me to recite/reconstruct off the top of my head the convex hull algorithm. I remembered the lectures in undergrad algo class where the professor talked about it. I remembered where in CLRS it was covered. I remembered the general outline (efficient algorithms are O(n log n), because you have to sort the points as one of the steps). But I was struggling to remember the details, because, you know, I hadn't worked on that sort of thing in several _years_. So, the interviewer started pacing around the room, impatient that I couldn't remember the details (or recite in 10 minutes what it took a professor with notes 2 lectures to go through). He told me finally "We expect Google engineers to be able to solve problems. What if you were a Google engineer, and you had to solve this problem, what would you do?" There is, of course, only one right answer to that question, which I provided: "I would look it up in a book. I know exactly where to find it." I wouldn't spend time trying to reinvent an algorithm that someone else had already thought of. The interviewer did not like that answer. I did not get a job offer. Now that I interview candidates at a different large tech company, I make a point to not get hung up on things that are easily researchable.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      As an interviewer I always advocate for coding problems to be done at the computer and to allow internet searches. On the rare occasions someone does a cut-and-paste solution, I then modify the problem to see if they understand the solution enough to make the necessary change. It's not perfect, but it seems as close to the actual work experience they are interviewing for. I interviewed at Facebook recently and was shocked when they used Coderpad but did not allow code execution. Threw me for a loop, because I like to decompose problems and test that everything is still working as I add to it, something this did not allow me to do. I consider that a GOOD quality, why prevent me from demonstrating it?
sjg007 8y ago
Get population estimate for all countries with adword revenue, get adword revenue for each of these countries, fit to a linear model, predict italy. Or calculate adword revenue per capita and apply.
- gcatalfamo 8y ago
  No, you had to give out a number.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    How about $5B with a 99% confidence interval between $0 and $1 trillion. That's a number.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Sorry, that's not close enough. Can you do better? (For the record, the person you originally responded to did not share that question with the intention of you actually trying to answer it. The point was the illustrate how ludicrous some of those questions are. You don't have access to any of the information that you mentioned in your response in the interview.)
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Er, if you can do that, then why not "get adword revenue for each of these countries, read the value for Italy"?
pmiller2 8y ago
“Why would I need to estimate that if I worked at Google?”
- hectormalot 8y ago
  “I’d like to understand how you structure problems, we can do a different topic if you like?” “With ~50M people capable of clicking ads, and assuming they click one ad a day at 20cnt CPC, it would be around 3.6bn. I think my assumptions are on the high side, but order of magnitude is probably correct” If done well, solving a problem (not a brain teaser) together can yield insight in how people approach new challenges. If I’m hiring for someone to do what they already know this indeed not a useful question. on the other hand, if I expect the role to tackle various business problems as well I’m not sure what would be a much better way to get a sense on this. (Specifically because I’d want to discuss a not-too-complex problem that is outside your usual area of expertise)
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    What I find weird about these questions, is that they are expected to be answered without any research? How often do you expect your people to solve a problem in a domain they know nothing about without doing any research? And the given example is odd, a lot of useful information that would help to answer the question will be public, and the obvious way to answer the question would be to look it up, before estimating the stuff that isn't public (but you won't know what information is publicly available until you look for it)
    - hectormalot 8y ago
      In the context that I've seen them used, the interviewer usually provides information if asked (and says so up front). e.g. if you don't know the # of inhabitants of Italy it should be completely okay to ask. In any case I don't think it is about the calculation or the final number. It's really the approach that you develop that's interesting. I've seen this mostly used in (management)consulting though, where you actually are regularly expected to solve problems that you might not have deep understanding of. When I was interviewing developers I discussed how they would architect an application to solve a specific problem. It gives similar insight and is closer to the actual job.

grivescorbett 8y ago

This isn’t a brain teaser. It’s market size estimation, I’m guessing this was not an engineering role?

gcatalfamo 8y ago
How is that question different from "please estimate how many golf ball fit in a school bus" ? The only thing changing are parameters. EDIT: it was for the Search team, search spam prevention, can't remember role it's been 4-5 years, sorry.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- grivescorbett 8y ago
  If it was an engineering role I’d definitely call it a brain teaser. But for say a marketing role, an interviewers wants to see that you understand the way money flows through the business and what the parameters therein are. Maybe it’s still a brain teaser but I would say it’s relevant to the job.
- teraflop 8y ago
  If you were interviewing for a job at a company whose main revenue stream involved transporting golf balls in school buses, that might be a perfectly reasonable interview question.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  If someone is sending emails about golf balls and school busses, it's probably spam. ;)

mike_ivanov 8y ago

Oh, that is how they do it. /s

titanix2 8y ago

"Estimating it from the taxes paid to the state, I would say 0€." (Yes, that’s not the kind of expected answer)

expertentipp 8y ago
Satisfacton from saying this during an interview at Google would be worth not getting the job:)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jkingsbery 8y ago
  TRUE STORY: I interviewed at Google earlier in my career. In one of the interviews, the interviewer asked me to recite/reconstruct off the top of my head the convex hull algorithm. I remembered the lectures in undergrad algo class where the professor talked about it. I remembered where in CLRS it was covered. I remembered the general outline (efficient algorithms are O(n log n), because you have to sort the points as one of the steps). But I was struggling to remember the details, because, you know, I hadn't worked on that sort of thing in several _years_. So, the interviewer started pacing around the room, impatient that I couldn't remember the details (or recite in 10 minutes what it took a professor with notes 2 lectures to go through). He told me finally "We expect Google engineers to be able to solve problems. What if you were a Google engineer, and you had to solve this problem, what would you do?" There is, of course, only one right answer to that question, which I provided: "I would look it up in a book. I know exactly where to find it." I wouldn't spend time trying to reinvent an algorithm that someone else had already thought of. The interviewer did not like that answer. I did not get a job offer. Now that I interview candidates at a different large tech company, I make a point to not get hung up on things that are easily researchable.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    As an interviewer I always advocate for coding problems to be done at the computer and to allow internet searches. On the rare occasions someone does a cut-and-paste solution, I then modify the problem to see if they understand the solution enough to make the necessary change. It's not perfect, but it seems as close to the actual work experience they are interviewing for. I interviewed at Facebook recently and was shocked when they used Coderpad but did not allow code execution. Threw me for a loop, because I like to decompose problems and test that everything is still working as I add to it, something this did not allow me to do. I consider that a GOOD quality, why prevent me from demonstrating it?

sjg007 8y ago

Get population estimate for all countries with adword revenue, get adword revenue for each of these countries, fit to a linear model, predict italy. Or calculate adword revenue per capita and apply.

gcatalfamo 8y ago
No, you had to give out a number.
- sjg007 8y ago
  How about $5B with a 99% confidence interval between $0 and $1 trillion. That's a number.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Sorry, that's not close enough. Can you do better? (For the record, the person you originally responded to did not share that question with the intention of you actually trying to answer it. The point was the illustrate how ludicrous some of those questions are. You don't have access to any of the information that you mentioned in your response in the interview.)
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Er, if you can do that, then why not "get adword revenue for each of these countries, read the value for Italy"?

pmiller2 8y ago

“Why would I need to estimate that if I worked at Google?”

hectormalot 8y ago
“I’d like to understand how you structure problems, we can do a different topic if you like?” “With ~50M people capable of clicking ads, and assuming they click one ad a day at 20cnt CPC, it would be around 3.6bn. I think my assumptions are on the high side, but order of magnitude is probably correct” If done well, solving a problem (not a brain teaser) together can yield insight in how people approach new challenges. If I’m hiring for someone to do what they already know this indeed not a useful question. on the other hand, if I expect the role to tackle various business problems as well I’m not sure what would be a much better way to get a sense on this. (Specifically because I’d want to discuss a not-too-complex problem that is outside your usual area of expertise)
- nicoburns 8y ago
  What I find weird about these questions, is that they are expected to be answered without any research? How often do you expect your people to solve a problem in a domain they know nothing about without doing any research? And the given example is odd, a lot of useful information that would help to answer the question will be public, and the obvious way to answer the question would be to look it up, before estimating the stuff that isn't public (but you won't know what information is publicly available until you look for it)
  - hectormalot 8y ago
    In the context that I've seen them used, the interviewer usually provides information if asked (and says so up front). e.g. if you don't know the # of inhabitants of Italy it should be completely okay to ask. In any case I don't think it is about the calculation or the final number. It's really the approach that you develop that's interesting. I've seen this mostly used in (management)consulting though, where you actually are regularly expected to solve problems that you might not have deep understanding of. When I was interviewing developers I discussed how they would architect an application to solve a specific problem. It gives similar insight and is closer to the actual job.