4 ms·
I actually disagree on 10, I just estimated the population of New York then looked it up and was off by an order of magnitude. Good chance I'd do worse in an in
by Volundr 4y ago
I actually disagree on 10, I just estimated the population of New York then looked it up and was off by an order of magnitude. Good chance I'd do worse in an interview situation than sitting at home. A few more estimates with errors of this size and we've learned what? I have a poor grasp of US census data? Unless this is a realistic approximation of the kind of thing your doing with this job, the time in the interview would be better spent on a problem within your domain, but that means the interviewer has to spend time coming up with something instead of Googling "interview questions". See also: "why are manhole covers round?" Which is a real question we asked all of our candidates at a previous job right up until I got control of the process (fun fact, invalid assumption. They come in all shapes and triangles are surprisingly common)
But agreed on the rest. OP thinks they are bad, when really they are poorly worded, and they would be better off taking a moment to think what kind of information the interviewer is trying to get at with their questions. Heck if the job involves interfacing with other people the ability to do this can even be an important signal on if the candidate is right for the job. A lot of people are really bad at asking what they are looking for.
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago"why are manhole covers round" So they don't fall in. Next question.
- andirk 4y ago2023 answer: Excuse me? You mean a street-level maintenance access lid? So it can't fall in. And why are a bunch of the other similar lids not circle? I leave that one up to you vape hit
- robocat 4y agohttp://sellsbrothers.com/12395 http://sellsbrothers.com/12395
- Ekaros 4y agoRound shapes handle the pressure of the surface and soil better is the true reason I have heard.
- cowthulhu 4y agoThe goal isn’t to see how close you can get to the correct answer, it’s to see the extent to which you’re able to break down a complex problem you haven’t seen before into steps you can take to solve it.
- tgv 4y agoAnd are you sure the person on the other side of the table can assess your problem solving skills correctly? That would make them an expert on Fermi-like problems. OTOH, perhaps HR really knows how many civilizations are out there in the universe.
- cowthulhu 4y agoThere are no guarantees the other person knows anything, but they don’t need to be an expert to confirm you can break down a problem
- tgv 4y agoCorrectly? I could be bullshitting the heck out of it. I think I could teach anyone to pass such questions, if not vetted. It seems to boil down to: initial estimate, then multiply by a fraction for each narrowing specification in the question (how many red-haired, left-handed, gay piano tuners are there in New York), dependence between factors be damned, if it doesn't matter if the outcome is 1 or 500.
- trickstra 4y agothe goal of these tasks is not to provide the most correct answer, but to show how you think about problems. Even the fact that you googled the right answer after may set you apart from candidates who just don't care, and that's relevant for the job. Of course if the recruiter judges candidates based on how close they were to the correct number, then they are doing it wrong and you might want to stay away.