Google's top boss is stumped by one of his own firm's interview questions | Hacker News Reader

Google's top boss is stumped by one of his own firm's interview questions

bbc.co.uk

16 pointswoliveirajr28 comments

The way I answered that question...

Was told to assume all expenses, repairs, and supplies had been paid for... and that there were no casualties to account for.

The first half of the gold... divide it evenly among the pirates. This way everyone is guaranteed an equitable base cut of the booty.

The second half of the gold... have all the pirates line up in order of how long they've been on the ship... each can then carve out as much gold as they want from the pile when it's their turn to do so. If the crew agrees (51%+ vote) with the amount taken -- cool, that's what that person gets. If the crew disagrees, then it's off to Davy Jone's Locker for the greedy pirate.

I didn't get the job.

Could be because during the second act the first person in line can take all of it. That'd disappoint the entire crew. Your second act relies on the pirates to solve the fairness issue for you, which is no desired in this scenario.

Indeed, the pirates could get an idea they can do away with you.

By the way, as stated, the solution is not the same as the pirate game, because ordering is not stated.

Interesting. I wonder how many founders of companies would struggle to pass the interview process they have for incoming employees?

I know I would struggle to pass the coding tests etc. that I have for my own company these days (I never completed my CS degrees, but have been cutting code for over 3 decades now) and I struggle to come up with other aptitude questions that I deem to be fair and a good indicator of whether the applicant would make a good employee.

I know the general idea is to hire people smarter than yourself, but I wonder if that tends to feed the 'impostor syndrome' for most founders?

This style of question has been banned at Google for more than a decade.

Questions which rely on the interviewee's understanding of recursion are banned?

It's the style of the question (not the reference to recursion) which has been banned.

Arrrrr... Pirate kind of style questions are banned at Google?

This is an old brain-teaser... when it's stated precisely enough, that is. And it's one which every developer should be able to answer; but Eric Schmidt is not a developer, so his inability to answer it -- especially off-the-cuff, as opposed to working through it in an interview -- is irrelevant.

All told, I'm calling this one clickbait.

EDIT: Here's the puzzle, and solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_game

He has a Ph.D. in computer engineering, little absurd to say "he is not a developer"

90% of computer science professors aren't developers either. A degree and a profession are not at all the same thing.

doesn't matter look at his bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Career

I see nothing there which indicates that he has written even a single line of code in the past 30 years.

He wrote lex(1). He's an old-school Unix hacker.

I think the basic point is: "If you can dish, you can take."

But that doesn't make any sense. If I wanted to hire a chef, I'd ask her to cook a few meals for me to sample; if I wanted to hire a photographer, I'd ask to see his portfolio; if I wanted to hire a physicist, I'd ask to read papers she had published. These are all perfectly valid and relevant things to ask in an interview despite the fact that I have no culinary talents, have no photographic portfolio, and have never published a paper in physics.

Except the Pirate Game isn't a work sample -- it's a brain teaser.

And even though brain teasers are now considered passé, for a long time many companies, including quite famously, Google, did ask them (in many cases very proudly) -- just like they continue to ask their modern-day equivalent: "recite a moderately, or in some cases, insanely complex algorithm for me which I just looked up, but I bet you haven't!" -- as an expedient alternative to an actual, realistic work sample.

This isn't a brain teaser; it's a logic problem. Someone who has never seen the problem before should be able to logically work through it to find the solution.

You say logic problem, I say brain teaser. The point is, it's not a work sample.

this strikes me as more of a psychology/risk management/leadership question, not a logic/math test. Who says pirates are 100% homo oeconomicus conform ?

The puzzle says that the pirates are perfectly logical, want to maximize their loot, and break ties between options which yield equal loot by voting down a proposal (because they're bloodthirsty).

They're pirates, and probably will kill you either way. Best to jump ship and hit em with some ads.

That's nothing. I would be stumped by half of my own interview questions.

Then why do you ask them?

Not OP, but I ask them such Q because I want to hire people smarter than me. Expecting that a founder hires people only up to his ability is stupid.the founder's qualification is a combination of vision risk taking , leadership and smartness.

But if you're "stumped" by a question... how can you tell whether it's a good filter, or not?

(Leaving the side of whether "filter questions" of any sort are actually any good for identifying smart, productive people).

Also not OP but the aim of an interview question isn't to tell if the candidate can produce the right answer, it's to see how the candidate produces any answer.

The process to get to the answer matters far more than just getting it right. If I give you a thinly veiled shortest-path graph problem and you rattle out Dijkstra from memory or something, that's going to mean far less to me than if you have no idea how to do a traversal but you work your way through to something reasonable in front of me.

And if you're stumped at first, generally I'd give you a hint to prod you on.

"I'd divide the money equally to deomstrate that I care about my crew, and build trust"

Escorted by security from the building

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