“How many ants are there in the world?” -Google Interviewer
I think Google has now mostly stopped with the brain teaser questions but I could absolutely imagine this being one back in 2010 or so!
I think Google has now mostly stopped with the brain teaser questions but I could absolutely imagine this being one back in 2010 or so!
I believe those came out of microsoft interview questions from the 90s? Or at least that's how they were referred to, maybe it was just a meme.
This was, I believe, a Microsoft interview practice. Questions such as "how many golf balls can you fit in a bus?" and "how many piano tuners are in Chicago?"
Google engineering interviewing doesn't work this way and I don't think it ever did.
And that's how the Windows Update team was selected /s
BTW, the "See also" section in Wikipedia is funny, it even includes the spherical cow concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem#See_also
Also Edison, General Electric early on (like lightbulb era), had (according to one source, but it makes sense) like a prototype of an IQ test, tested memory and general knowledge. Basically how much you had read. By that point America had ample libraries thanks to Carnegie, so it was fair, before that there was no way.
Makes sense since Edison and Gates dropped out. And back then college dropouts were too educated, so for instance JP Morgan did a year in college, traveled a bit and that completed his education. I dropped out recently (technically an impasse, glitch meant I couldn't enroll again) and with that my education is complete. But back then? Dude nobody finished high school, Ford didn't, Wright Brothers said eh, like back then if you went to college you were badly overeducated.
So the "how many piano tuners are there in Chicago" question is a sanitized version of "how many kilotons of TNT did this nuclear bomb yield?". Fermi problem, I think it's called, and Fermi was great at it, got it to within a factor of 2. Wright Brothers also nailed it very well, like got 1% margins on admittedly easier math than the bomb, but with their other invention, the wind tunnel, and very very low resources initially. So the piano tuners sounds like a stupid question, otherwise it would require that special nuke clearance, get real. And it's the same thought process.