Folks on this forum mostly won't remember but about 20 years ago the in-vogue way of interviewing software engineers was to ask "puzzle questions" (e.g. "I have

Folks on this forum mostly won't remember but about 20 years ago the in-vogue way of interviewing software engineers was to ask "puzzle questions" (e.g. "I have 100 ball bearings and two are a different weight than the rest....") and "lateral thinking" questions ("why are manhole covers round?") because that's what they did at Microsoft and everyone copied Microsoft. I'm told this is still the common style of interview for mechanical engineers, which says something about what it's like to work in that industry too.