Google Interview Questions

kSquared · 2011-05-19T23:10:14

[edit]: If you're coming here from digg, I've posted a comment in the comments section to clarify a few points. Also, note that this thread is over a year old! I had a phone interview with Google today. I took notes; some of the questions they asked were interesting. We were allowed to ask questions. The interviewer didn't ask many questions in response to my answers, except to occasionally say "interesting". There's almost certainly more than one answer to each of these, and a few are probably wrong answers or could be improved in some way; I only include my answers for comparison. Any intermediate questions that I asked for clarification or otherwise have been omitted. Without further ado, a few of the more interesting ones: Q: "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?" (my answer): Take off all my clothes, wedge them between the blades and the floor to prevent it from turning. Back up against the edge of the blender until the electric motor overheats and burns out. Using the notches etched in the side for measuring, climb out. If there are no such notches or they're too far apart, retrieve clothes and make a rope to hurl myself out. Q: "How would you find out if a machine's stack grows up or down in memory?" (my answer): Instantiate a local variable. Call another function with a local. Look at the address of that function and then compare. If the function's local is higher, the stack grows away from address location 0; if the function's local is lower, the stack grows towards address location 0. (If they're the same, you did something wrong!) Q: "Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew." (my answer): A database is a way of organizing information. It's like a genie who knows where every toy in your room is. Instead of hunting for certain toys yourself and searching the whole room, you can ask the genie to find all your toy soldiers, or only X-Men action figures, or only race cars -- anything you want. Q: "How many gas stations would you say there are in the United States?" (my answer): A business doesn't stick around for long unless it makes a profit. Let's assume that all gas stations in the US are making at least some profit over the long run. Assume that the number of people who own more than one car is negligibly small relative to the total American population. Figure that 20% of people are too young to drive a car, another 10% can't drive because of disability or old age, 5% of people use public transportation or carpool, another 5% choose not to drive, and another 5% of the cars are inventory sitting in lots or warehouses that a dealership owns but which no one drives. There's about 280 million people in the US; subtracting 50%, that means there's about 140 million automobiles and 140 million drivers for them. The busiest city or interstate gas stations probably get a customer pulling in about twice a minute, or about 120 customers per hour; a slower gas station out in an agrarian area probably sees a customer once every 10 or 15 minutes, or about 4 customers per hour. Let's take a weighted average and suppose there's about one customer every 90 seconds, or about 40 customers an hour. Figuring a fourteen-hour business day (staying open from 7 AM to 9 PM), that's about 560 customers a day. If the average gas station services 560 customers a day, then there are 250,000 gas stations in the US. This number slightly overstates the true number of gas stations because some people are serviced by more than one gas station. [Actual number in 2003, according to the Journal of Petroleum Marketing: 237,284, an error of about 5%.] P.S. Apparently, if you make it to the next stage, you can't even tell people you're interviewing, because you sign a 6-page NDA. I haven't had to sign anything yet, though. edit: Obvious spelling mistake. tall --> tell. [Edited by - kSquared on March 5, 2006 11:48:43 PM]

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Started by kSquared February 08, 2005 05:19 PM

79 comments, last by way2lazy2care 12 years, 11 months ago

owl

376

February 08, 2005 07:00 PM

Quote:Original post by Stonicus
Quote:
Q: "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?"

I quickly realize that even if I get out, I am only the size of a nickel, and will probably never get laid again, so I place my neck on the blade and close my eyes till my 60 seconds are up.

ROFLMAO! Best answer! :):):)

I would place myself laid down in the center of the wheel.

[size="2"]I like the Walrus best.

nuvem

326

February 08, 2005 07:24 PM

One might assume that since the blender is about to be turned on, that food will soon be entering, so I'd probably just put my neck to the blade rather than be suffocated by some raunchy health drink.

Nietsnie

270

February 08, 2005 07:28 PM

Well, I would assume you would have some change on you (being Canadian with our loonies and toonies), and so I would chuck change up into the motor in hopes that it will somehow stall it. Then, I would take off all my clothes, tie them around the closest to center part of the blade, and then strap myself in between the clothes and blade under the blade. When it turns on (if it does), I would hopefully be swung round and round, probaly faint, but not die, and when it turns off I would then think of a way to get out.

Cold_Steel

835

February 08, 2005 07:39 PM

It looks like you could just stand off to the side. It doesn't look like the blades would cause too much of a vacuum in air. They just look like flat blades. Eventually, I supposed running an empty blender would kill the motor.

______________________________"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" - J.J. Rousseau

Raduprv

997

February 08, 2005 07:54 PM

Quote:Original post by Cold_Steel
They just look like flat blades. Eventually, I supposed running an empty blender would kill the motor.

Why would it kill the motor? Placing too much load might kill it, but too little wouldn't.

Anyway, to the blender question, I don't think there is any way to survive. The clothes would be so small they are unlikely to stop the motor. And even if the motor is stoped, what can you do? Your clothes are not a rope, and you can't throw them over the edge. Even if you could, you'd need some sort of anchor at the other end so they won't fall back.
The correct answer would be: "Coming at peace with yourself and with the Universe" :D

Eternal Lands (free, Open Source MMORPG)

Witchcraven

564

February 08, 2005 08:00 PM

Since you are still alive, I assume somehow your biology was preserved. So that means your muscle mass is still in proportion to your total mass. Thus, my solution would be to jump out. Should I fail to make the jump, I would probably punch a hole in the blender upon my landing. Or if the blender was on its side, I would walk out. Or jump against the side, knocking it over. Considering my density/size ratio, I wonder if I could chew through the blades.

Hell, if you shot me at 2000 feet per seoond I could probably be used as an anti tank bullet.

Why such a complex stack growth solution. In a function, declare 2 local variables. Compare addresses.

Raduprv

997

February 08, 2005 08:13 PM

Quote:Original post by Witchcraven
Since you are still alive, I assume somehow your biology was preserved. So that means your muscle mass is still in proportion to your total mass. Thus, my solution would be to jump out. Should I fail to make the jump, I would probably punch a hole in the blender upon my landing. Or if the blender was on its side, I would walk out. Or jump against the side, knocking it over. Considering my density/size ratio, I wonder if I could chew through the blades.

Hell, if you shot me at 2000 feet per seoond I could probably be used as an anti tank bullet.

Why such a complex stack growth solution. In a function, declare 2 local variables. Compare addresses.

Only that it was stated that your mass is also reduced accordingly.

Eternal Lands (free, Open Source MMORPG)

Witchcraven

564

February 08, 2005 08:20 PM

ah. I thought it said you retained your mass. guess I should read it more carefully.

Cold_Steel

835

February 08, 2005 08:21 PM

Quote:Original post by Raduprv
Why would it kill the motor? Placing too much load might kill it, but too little wouldn't.

I assume they are designed to be run with some resistance. Sort of like if you run a water pump motor dry, it will burn out. Also, I just read somewhere that they may be designed for short use time spans, and not continuous use, so they could burn out that way too after 10 or so minutes.

[disclaimer]I don't even own a blender! What do I know!?[wink]

______________________________"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" - J.J. Rousseau

Raduprv

997

February 08, 2005 08:27 PM

The water pump is different: the motor needs the water to cool itself. For a blender, it doesn't matter, because the motor cools itself with air.

Eternal Lands (free, Open Source MMORPG)

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