“Given 20 ‘destructible’ light bulbs (which break at a certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how do you determine the height that the light bulbs break?” — Asked at Qualcomm, Engineering candidate

It is a very old question, I was asked this when I was interviewing for Motorola (now Google Motorola Mobility) in 2007

The optimal solution requires only two bulbs…. and it involves minima and maxima using differential equations….

Statistically, its possible for a company to have a 99% right-wing workforce and another company to have a 99% left-wing workforce. So once the interview is over and you did or didn’t get the job, you can’t use the statistics to prove that was the aim of the question.

I was in an interview a while ago and the question pops up “What football/soccer team do you support” – “I don’t watch football” – you would be surprised at how much the atmosphere changed after answering the question. I didn’t get the job, even though 10 mins before the interviewer was praising the shit out of me for how I well I did in the aptitude test and picked up on things no other candidate did.
I can’t prove that because I don’t like football I didn’t get the job. And in all fairness it may not have been the reason I didn’t get the job. The point is, if they didn’t ask the question I would feel my interview process was more fair.

It’s kind of a good question, although simple, that tests if you take all factors into account. At first you might assume since you’re adding something to the tank it would rise, but you have to consider that the boat now weights less. Being nervous in an interview can definitely make someone miss that. One of my favorite interview questions as a mech engineer is the interviewer puts a drawing of a solid block with a square cut out of it that goes halfway though the block and asks you what’s wrong with the drawing. The answer is it’s not machinable because it contains inside corners that a endmill can’t cut. Answering that a sinker EDM could cut the part tho, gets you bonus points.

I totally agree some employers take it too far, but the point is you want an employee with a unique mind. 

My math teacher used to say “write down the working out” but I never would, I would just write down the answer. So he would give me broken equations so I would have to explain my working out and why the answer was unattainable.
He wanted to make sure my logic was sound, it’s about how you get to the answer not the answer that counts.

And if some executive dismisses you because of political ideals, don’t worry, the country probably isn’t going anywhere you wanna go anyway lol

For instance: If you want to test my problem solving skills, give me a solvable problem, don’t ask me how I would solve world hunger. 

How would you cure world hunger? – kill everyone, no people, no hunger. Do I get the job?

The interviewer is interested in seeing your approach on how you would go about solving the problem.  Do you just get flustered and refuse to answer the question?  Many do.  Or you could just make a rough estimate at the San Fran population, filter out a percentage of those who are signed up on facebook, then guess how many people work from 8 to 5 and those who don’t.  If its a friday then folks are making plans for the weekend and its end of week so folks are restless and not working as hard on their job as they should be – so facebook usage is probably heavier on friday than other days.

Use all of that then guesstimate a certain percentage of those filtered groups who could possibly be using facebook at 2:30.  Point being there is no right answer but just show that you know how to come up with solutions when faced with a problem.