Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid

How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

Job: Product Manager

Answer: This is one of those questions Google asks just to see if the applicant can explain the key challenge to solving the problem.

Reader Matt Beuchamp came up with a dandy answer, writing:

I figure a standard school bus is about 8ft wide by 6ft high by 20 feet long - this is just a guess based on the thousands of hours I have
been trapped behind school buses while traffic in all directions is stopped.

That means 960 cubic feet and since there are 1728 cubic inches in a cubit foot, that means about 1.6 million cubic inches.

I calculate the volume of a golf ball to be about 2.5 cubic inches (4/3 * pi * .85) as .85 inches is the radius of a golf ball.

Divide that 2.5 cubic inches into 1.6 million and you come up with 660,000 golf balls. However, since there are seats and crap in there
taking up space and also since the spherical shape of a golf ball means there will be considerable empty space between them when
stacked, I'll round down to 500,000 golf balls.

Which sounds ludicrous. I would have spitballed no more than 100k. But I stand by my math.

Of course, if we are talking about the kind of bus that George Bush went to school on or Barney Frank rides to work every day, it
would be half that....or 250,000 golf balls.

How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
ob: Product Manager

Answer: This is one of those questions where the trick is to come up with an easier answer than the one that's seemingly being called
for. We'd say. "$10 per window."

In a country in which people only want boys…

…every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they
stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

Job: Product Manager

Answer: This one caused quite the debate, but we figured it out following these steps:

* Imagine you have 10 couples who have 10 babies. 5 will be girls. 5 will be boys. (Total babies made: 10, with 5 boys and 5 girls)
* The 5 couples who had girls will have 5 babies. Half (2.5) will be girls. Half (2.5) will be boys. Add 2.5 boys to the 5 already born
and 2.5 girls to the 5 already born. (Total babies made: 15, with 7.5 boys and 7.5 girls.)
* The 2.5 couples that had girls will have 2.5 babies. Half (1.25) will be boys and half (1.25) will be girls. Add 1.25 boys to the 7.5
boys already born and 1.25 girls to the 7.5 already born. (Total babies: 17.5 with 8.75 boys and 8.75 girls).
* And so on, maintaining a 50/50 population.

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

Job: Product Manager

Photo: delgaudm

Answer: We'd answer "However many the market dictates. If pianos need tuning once a week, and it takes an hour to tune a piano and
a piano tuner works 8 hours a day for 5 days a week 40 pianos need tuning each week. We'd answer one for every 40 pianos."

On Wikipedia, they call this a Fermi problem.

The classic Fermi problem, generally attributed to Fermi,[2] is "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" A typical solution to
this problem would involve multiplying together a series of estimates that would yield the correct answer if the estimates were correct.
For example, we might make the following assumptions:
 1. There are approximately 5,000,000 people living in Chicago.
2. On average, there are two persons in each household in Chicago.
3. Roughly one household in twenty has a piano that is tuned regularly.
4. Pianos that are tuned regularly are tuned on average about once per year.
5. It takes a piano tuner about two hours to tune a piano, including travel time.
6. Each piano tuner works eight hours in a day, five days in a week, and 50 weeks in a year.

From these assumptions we can compute that the number of piano tunings in a single year in Chicago is

(5,000,000 persons in Chicago) / (2 persons/household) × (1 piano/20 households) × (1 piano tuning per piano per year) = 125,000
piano tunings per year in Chicago.

And we can similarly calculate that the average piano tuner performs

(50 weeks/year)×(5 days/week)×(8 hours/day)×(1 piano tuning per 2 hours per piano tuner) = 1000 piano tunings per year per piano
tuner.

Dividing gives

(125,000 piano tuning per year in Chicago) / (1000 piano tunings per year per piano tuner) = 125 piano tuners in Chicago.

A famous example of a Fermi-problem-like estimate is the Drake equation, which seeks to estimate the number of intelligent
civilizations in the galaxy. The basic question of why, if there are a significant number of such civilizations, ours has never
encountered any others is called the Fermi paradox.

Why are manhole covers round?

Job: Software Engineer

Answer: So it doesn't fall through the manhole (when the plane ordinarily flush with the plane of the street goes perpendicular to the
street.)

Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco

Job: Product Manager

Answer: Again, this one is all about the interviewer seeing how the interviewee would attack the problem. We'd start our answer by
asking, "what kind of disaster are we planning for?"

How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

Job: Product Manager

Answer: 22 times. From WikiAnswers:

AM
12:00
1:05
2:11
3:16
4:22
5:27
6:33
7:38
8:44
9:49
10:55

PM: The same

Explain the significance of "dead beef"
Job: Software Engineer

Our (wrong) answer: Beef is always dead. Calling something "dead beef" is redundant -- a no-no for coders.

The actual answer, from a reader:

DEADBEEF is a hexadecimal value that has was used in debugging back in the mainframe/assembly days because it was easy to see
when marking and finding specific memory in pages of hex dumps. Most computer science graduates have seen this at least in their
assembly language classes in college and that's why they expect software engineers to know it. From wikipedia:

"0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef") is used by IBM RS/6000 systems, Mac OS on 32-bit PowerPC processors and the Commodore Amiga
as a magic debug value. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, it marks freed kernel memory. On OpenVMS running on Alpha processors,
DEAD_BEEF can be seen by pressing CTRL-T.[3]"

A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Job: Software Engineer

Answer: He landed on Boardwalk. (Painful, right?)

You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number…
…, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and
return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve
cannot read your phone number?

Job: Software Engineer

Answer: Since you are just "checking," you ask him to call you at a certain time. If he doesn't, he doesn't have your number.

Too simple? A reader suggest: "In that case you need a check-sum. Have Bob add all the digits of your phone number together, write
down the total, and pass that back to you."

You're the captain of a pirate ship…

…and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you
recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?

Job: Engineering Manager

Answer: You divide the booty evenly between the top 51% of the crew.

You have eight balls all of the same size…

…7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and
only two weightings?

Job: Product Manager

Answer: Reader Hyloka nailed this one first:

Take 6 of the 8 balls and put 3 on each side of the scale. If the heavy ball isn't in the group of 6, you know it's one of the remaining 2
and so you put those two in the scale and determine which one. If the heavy ball is in the 6, you have narrowed it down to 3. Of those
3, pick any 2 and put them on the scale. If the heavy ball is in that group of 2, you know which one it is. If both balls are of equal
weight, then the heavy ball is the one you sat to the side.

You are given 2 eggs…

…You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or
may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story
building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs
in the process.

Job: Product Manager

Answer: The maximum egg drops for this method is 14 times.

Instead of partitioning the floors by 10, Start at the 14th floor, and then go up 13 floors, then 12, then 11, then 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 until
you get to the 99th floor, then here. If the egg were to break at the 100th floor, it would take 12 drops (or 11 if you assume that it
would break at the 100th floor). Say, for example, that the 49th floor was the highest floor, the number of drops would be the 14th,
27th, 39th, 50th (the egg would break on the 50th floor) plus the 40, 41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48, and 49th floor for a total of 14 drops.

Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

Job: Product Manager

Answer: The point here is to test the applicant's ability to communicate complex ideas in simple language. Here's our attempt, "A
database is a machine that remembers lots of information about lots of things. People use them to help remember that information. Go
play outside."

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel…

… and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender.
The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

Job: Product Manager

Answer: This one is all about the judging interviewee's creativity. We'd try to break the electric motor.

Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife…
Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband
has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that
very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least
one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

Answer, from reader Olivier Coudert:

The cheating husband problem is a classic recursion pb.

Once all the wives know there are at least 1 cheating husband, we can understand the process recursively. Let's assume that there is
only 1 cheating husband. Then his wife doesn't see anybody cheating, so she knows he cheats, and she will kill him that very day. If
there are 2 cheating husband, their wives know of one cheating husband, and must wait one day before concluding that their own
husbands cheat (since no husband got killed the day of the announcement).

So with 100 cheating husbands, all life is good until 99 days later, when the 100 wives wives kill their unfaithful husband all on the
same day.

Job: Product Manager

If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10
minutes (assuming constant default probability)?
The trick here is that .95 is the probability for 1 or more cars, not the probability of seeing just one car.
The prob. of NO cars in 30 minutes is 0.05, so the prob of no cars in 10 minutes is the cube root of that, so the prob of seeing a car in
10 minutes is one minus *that*, or ~63%
Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night…
Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to
cross without a flashlight, and it's only strong enough to support two people at any given time. Each of the campers walks at a
different speed. One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes
to cross. How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes?

Answer, from an anonymous reader:

1 and 2 across (2 minutes)

1 goes back (3 minutes)
5 and 10 go across (13 minutes)
2 goes back (15 minutes)
1 and 2 cross (17 minutes) - and everyone safe and sound

Job: Product Manager

You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend…
Your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds
that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?

Answer: Ignoring seasonal upticks in births, there's about 1/365 probability that any other person has the same birthday as you and
364/365 chance that any other random person does not. Do not take this bet.

Job: Product Manager

If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not
zero!)
7.5 degrees

Every minute on the clock represents 6 degrees (360 degrees/60 minutes)

Every hour, the hour hand moves from one number to the next (in this case, it is moving from 3 to 4) which represents 30 degrees.

Since it is exactly 1/4 past the hour, the hour hand is 1/4 of the way into its 30-degree trip or 1/4 or 30 degrees....which is 7.5 degrees.

Job: Product Manager

What is the probability of breaking a stick into 3 pieces and forming a triangle?
Since this question doesn't say the sticks must intersect at their tips to form the triangle, the answer has to be 100%. Any three sticks
of any size can make a triangle.

Job: Product Manager

There's a latency problem in South Africa. Diagnose it.

This is obviously an extremely vague question, and there isn't really one correct answer. A good answer is one in which the
interviewee demonstrates familiarity with the term "latency" and enough imagination to come up with an interesting problem with an
interesting solution.

Job: Product Manager

How many lines can be drawn in a 2D plane such that they are equidistant from 3 non-collinear points?
Three. Take any two of the points. Draw a line that is parallel to the line segment made by those two points and halfway between that
line segment and the third point. Repeat for every combination of two points.
Job: Software Engineer

What's 2 to the power of 64?

1.84467441 × 1019

This is a pretty easy answer to figure out when you're not sitting in an interview with no calculator around.

Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?
There's no one answer to this. The interviewer wants to test the interviewee's imagination and creativity with problem solving.

We feel like reader "Dude" might impress a Google interview with this answer: Organize them according to types of clothes like a
HASH and then organize each type into a 2-3-4-Tree or RedBlack Tree.

Job: Software Engineer

You are given a game of Tic Tac Toe…

You have to write a function in which you pass the whole game and name of a player. The function will return whether the player has
won the game or not. First you to decide which data structure you will use for the game. You need to tell the algorithm first and then
need to write the code. Note: Some position may be blank in the game। So your data structure should consider this condition also.

Answer, from reader Dude:

The data structure that is required is a two character dimensional array. Call the function to check the 6 conditions if there are any
winners, the 6th condition is to see if there are any more spaces left. If there is a winner the characters X or O are associated with the
players, in this case you need a flag. If there is a winner return the value to the calling function to end the game. If not the run the
game.

Job: Software Engineer

How long it would take to sort 1 trillion numbers? Come up with a good estimate.
Here's another question without one answer. The idea is to test the interviewee's creativity.

We like the simple answer two readers came up with:

Merge Sort for sorting.

O(1,000,000,000,000 Log 1,000,000,000,000) - Average Case Scenario

O(1,000,000,000,000 Log 1,000,000,000,000) - Worst Case Scenario

I'd guess you can do 1 billion operations per second, thus 3000 seconds.

Job: Software Engineer

Design an algorithm to play a game of Frogger and then code the solution…
The object of the game is to direct a frog to avoid cars while crossing a busy road. You may represent a road lane via an array.
Generalize the solution for an N-lane road.

Here's the only answer we found for this one, from site Glassdoor.com:

"One approach is to write a recursive algorithm that determines when to "wait" or to "jump" to the next lane, depending if there is an
approaching obstacle in the next lane."
Job: Software Engineer

How many resumes does Google receive each year for software engineering?
This is another question that's about testing the job candidate's ability to frame the problem in a simple way and then creatively solve
it.

Our answer: A candiate for Quantitative Compensation Analyst should know that Google hired about 3,400 people in 2008. Figure
75%, or 2,550, of those hired were engineers and that, like Harvard, Google only accepted 3% of those who applied. 2,550 is 3% of
85,000.

Job: Quantitative Compensation Analyst

You are given a list of numbers…

When you reach the end of the list you will come back to the beginning of the list (a circular list). Write the most efficient algorithm to
find the minimum # in this list. Find any given # in the list. The numbers in the list are always increasing but you don’t know where
the circular list begins, ie: 38, 40, 55, 89, 6, 13, 20, 23, 36.

Here's our favorite answer, from reader "dude":

Create temporary pointer and start from the root. (Most of the time circular lists have a front and back pointers.) Check if front is
larger or if back is larger. If front is larger then you know you are at the end of the list and at the front of the list. If front is larger then
traverse the opposite direction and compare numbers. If there is no root or a pointer pointing to any part of the list then your data is
lost in memory.

Job: Quantitative Compensation Analyst