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Tech-Interview Riddles
An anonymous submitter writes "A computer engineering student at UC Berkeley has made a comprehensive archive of riddles from technical interviews. Very challenging and loads of fun. Also useful for interview preparation."
I sampled a few of the "relatively hard" puzzles... They're interesting, but they only take a minute to figure out. Am I correct in thinking that these are relatively easy, or am I being an ass and flaunting my ability to solve little puzzles?
(In case of the latter, do you want to hire me? I live in Cleveland and go to Cornell University...)
I used to put this one on my programming tests. It's actually shocking how many people get it wrong...
You are writing a parser that reads a C program and translates all the variable names into new names of the form "VAR######", where ###### is an integer incremented for each unique variable name. Discuss what is needed for the case where the C program already contains a variable of the form "VAR######".
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It's Turing complete. It weeps, it bites, it smiles and it loves. It can be made, it can be had, it can be taken. It was one, it was two then it became sixty two. It needs time, it need paitence it needs to be pruned. When time comes it needs a fourier series to make it look good. What is it?
Wear one condom. Wear the 2nd one outside the first one. Have sex with 1st woman.
:-)
Remove the 2nd, outer condom, have sex with the 2nd one with just one condom (the 1st one).
Fold the just removed condom inside out and wear it over the 1st one. Have fun with the last woman.
Who says that you can't use "Economic engineering" knowledge on bed,
If this is the correct answer, then I would be at an unfair disadvantage answering this question. Because I *listened* in sex ed when they said that using two condoms at the same time was dangerous. It's too likely that air will get caught between the condoms. Some parts will stick and some parts will stretch, leading to two broken condoms.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
What is:
Greater than god
More evil than the devil
Poor people have it
Rich people want it
If you eat it, you'll die?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Karnaugh Maps (brought to you by CSE 120 at ASU):
Your problem:
!B!C !BC BC B!C
A-----------------
0 | 0 0 1 0
1 | 0 1 1 1
Answer: BC | AB | AC
Ta da!
'this industry', meaning network admins who focus on web sites only, right? Not admins or programmers in general?
Because I'd have an easy time talking about all of that stuff, but I know people as or more intelligent than I am that wouldn't simply because they haven't been exposed to any of that directly.
It seems to me your question is flawed. You're asking too much about details that can be learned by any intelligent technical individual in a matter of days. Just because they don't know the answer when you ask it doesn't say shit about how good they might be at the job, especially if the job is something more than simple web admin.
There's many possible answers, so how do I know if I've got the answer they want? He's in a heavily forested area, so grabbing a log and paddling out around the fire shouldn't be hard. Or he could dig a little moat, though that might not be too effective. So, is there some other, clever answer, I should look for, or am I done? Grrrrrrrrr!
"I am a cipher, a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce" -Jimmy James
This site contains answers to many of the microsoft questions.
i ?a ction=topics&number=3
http://www.acetheinterview.com/cgi-bin/qanda.cg
i suppose the answer to many riddles is, look it up on google?
Funny, I had a similar interview for a question at a consulting company. It was basically another 'estimation' type question.
My first answer was that I'd check google. They didn't like that at all, saying that they needed to be able to come up with these stats quickly, and that an employee shouldn't have to rely on anything. I said that part of solving a problem is knowing when to NOT reinvent the wheel and using information that's readily available.
Didn't get a second interview either. Not even a phone call saying thanks for interviewing.
Personally, I love interview puzzles and riddles. But I HATE people who refuse to accept an answer different from the one they have written down. That's not the point. An interview puzzle's supposed to give you an idea of how a person solves problems...not how quickly they solve it the "right" (*snicker*) way.
Those points are true if you're hiring a contractor to come in, do a job, and get out. They are not true if you're hiring a flexible team player who is going to handle a demanding job which is guranteed to throw new challenges on a daily basis.
Please. Do you really think some silly-ass riddles will separate the wheat from the chaff? In a previous life, I was an air traffic controller (9 years). I was thrown new challenges several times an hour. I don't recall riddles being asked on my interview.
I can tell you, however, that the three months of indoctrination in Oklahoma City was a head game unto itself. The point being it took three months to sort the psychologically strong from the weak. I seriously doubt a few puzzles on an hour-long interview is going to tell you much of anything.