17 Former Google Interview Questions So Ridiculous The Company Banned Them

Business Insider ^ | 07/08/2014 | Caroline Moss

[SeekAndFind]

Sometimes the hiring practices of even the biggest and most successful companies can be outright ridiculous. There can be bizarre interview questions that seemingly have no answers. There can be standards — like not hiring anyone who attended a college outside of the Ivy League — that will knock candidates out of the race before they even approach the starting line.

Google used to be the shining example of these practices. It had high standards and asked silly questions.

The questions were so nuts that they were eventually banned from being asked. That's right, banned.

In 2009, Seattle job coach Lewis Lin put together a list of 140 questions his clients were asked by Google. We've picked out some of the wildest and added a link to the whole list at the end.

Future Google employees should be grateful these questions are no longer on the table.

1. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

2. Why are manhole covers round?

3. 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 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 that Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?

4. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

[Charles Martel]

Extended, if X husbands cheat then they will be killed on day X, but not before because the victimized wives know of X-1 cheaters and will allow X-1 days to pass before they realize the number of cheaters exceed their known cheaters list.

I was thinking in that direction as well - but the wives must be able to *prove* that their husbands were unfaithful before the stab-fest commences. They only know about the indiscretions of other men, but can only kill their own husbands upon receiving proof.

What would probably happen is that each woman would write down a separate list of the cheating husbands, which would be handed in to the queen. She'd then collate the names and provide the proof of infidelity to the appropriate women. Stab, stab, stab. All on Day 1.

[faithhopecharity]

ha ha!
a very corrupted agency ...
they had to dance around it but frankly it was quie clear....they were mostly interested in assurances (!!!) that the selected candidate would help them make money (in ways not public, except when they got careless, caught of course....)

1. keep your mouth quiet if you discover anything we’re doing
(since the position was close to their “action”)
2. help us if we ask you (since the position was one of several that, by then, they were employing to conduct some of their money=making activities)
3. don’t tell us the law or your thoughts about ethics in government, we’re not interested in those things, either
4. assure us you’ll play our game when we ask you, by our rules, and keep your month shut

etc.
a difficult interview for anybody with any morals

[Oatka]

From the Reader’s Digest YEARS ago re: college students applying for a job:

What are your strengths?
I am honest, trustworthy, reliable, diligent, faithful, etc.
What are your weaknesses?
Sometimes I am not honest, trustworthy, reliable, diligent, faithful, etc.

What positive change have you noticed in yourself lately?
The sight of blood no longer excites me.

A buddy of mine looking for a job went through these endless questioning routines. When asked why he wanted this job at this company, he snapped and replied “to feed my family in the manner to which they have become accustomed to.” (He didn’t get the job.)

[Shimmer1]

That’s because he enede the sentence with a preposition!

[Shimmer1]

I meant ended. My grandsons jostled my arm as I was typing

[shotgun]

They professor asked this question on the first day of my first Intro to Engineering class.

The answer is so they can’t fall into the manhole when your taking them off/on. A square manhole cover could fall in easily because of the diagonal length across the opening of the manhole (hypotenuse)is wider than the width of the sides of the square.

[steve86]

Because sewer pipes are round so that sewage doesn’t collect in the corners

I think you're right about the sewer pipes but wrong about the access port (also circular-section pipes are strongest against compression forces). The manhole cover is round, as several have explained, so the cover can't fall in as a rectangular/square cover could. . Other than that the shape of the vertical access does not have to match the horizontal pipe. Why would it? Below the manhole cover the access is not necessarily cylindrical.

Lots of shapes out there

I guarantee the passage beneath the triangular cover isn't triangular.

[muir_redwoods]

In the question about eggs, they never specified chicken eggs. I presumed fly eggs which won’t break no matter what height they’re dropped from. Further, at the height of a nickel (I am stipulating the thickness of a nickel as the height), I could hide below the blades of the blender.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

I would ask these questions. Then, if the applicant didn’t walk out after four of them, I’d reject him.

[William Tell]

I think I have a better answer to the blender question.

If a human's linear dimensions are reduced by a certain factor (let's say 1/500), the mass of the human, assuming the density doesn't change, would be reduced by an amount equal to the factor cubed; or 1/(500*500*500).

The strength of the muscles would only be reduced by an amount equal to the square of the factor, or 1/(500*500). This means that the shrunken human's ability to leap would be increased by the ratio of the strength to the mass.

Assuming that a full size human can jump to one-third of his height, then the shrunken human would be able to leap 500 times one-third of his height, or about 170 times his height.

Assuming that a nickel is one-tenth of an inch in height, then the shrunken human would be able to leap 170 times the one-tenth inch, or about 17 inches.

My answer to the blender question is that the shrunken human, before the blender is started, simply jumps out of the blender.

The concept above explains why fleas can leap hundreds of times their body size and why dinosaurs were not able to grow to any greater size than what the fossil record indicates.