Google's banned interview questions- what would you say?

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You are not thinking. When the manhole is in place, covering the hole, its shape does not matter one jot. The problems arise when people have to use them for their intended purpose (manholes, remember) as access points to the underground drainage and utility system.

If you were the man below the hole, would you prefer a cover than couldn't possibly be dropped on you, or would you prefer your colleagues to be handling a wet lump of steel with frozen hands above your head?

You're getting beside the point. I never said that the manholes shouldn't be circular, I said they're circular because there are no sharp edges. If a man is in the hole the cover wouldn't really matter because it'd be already moved away from the hole so its not going to "attempt to fall in"

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Reply 41

Student403

Original post by ServantOfMorgoth

Sharp edges? What? Any shape can have sharp edges and any shape can have blunt edges. Unless your referring to corners...

Reply 42

Good bloke

Original post by ServantOfMorgoth

Why should a rectangular cover's edges be sharper than those of a round cover? That is silly.

If you believe that it is OK to endanger lives by assuming that covers would never be dropped, accidentally pushed over the hole by machinery, or even deliberately dropped with intent to injure or as a prank, you obviously have no regard for safety.

Anyway, how many manholes do you think would still be in place after a Friday night in a university town if they could be raised and dropped down their holes? The damage (to the pipes below and to cars that drop wheels into unseen holes in the dark) would be enormously costly.

Reply 43

Observatory

Google has a fabled history of asking some ridiculously out-the-box questions and brain teasers at their interviews. In fact, as reported back in 2011, some of the questions were so tough that they were banned by the company.

Lewis Lin, a career consultant who specializes in interview techniques, compiled a list containing 140 questions some of his clients were asked by Google. The posts they applied for included positions such as product managers, software engineers, and marketing managers. Most of these questions don’t strictly have an answer, but instead are designed to test your creativity and assess how you tackle the question.

Why did Google ban questions that test your creativity and assess how you tackle problems? Are those no longer desired attributes in its employees?

Reply 44

Dez

Original post by furryface12

Yeah I edited it once I saw your answer, that makes a lot of sense actually.

Another one that got me (I feel like in missing the point of this somewhere!)- what is the significance of 'dead beef?'

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It's a magic number used by very old (early 90s) computers. It's hexadecimal, which is a counting system where instead of using ten digits 0 to 9 (0123456789), you instead use sixteen digits 0 to F (0123456789ABCDEF). This means 11 becomes B, 12 becomes C, and 16 becomes 10.

Using this number system it's possible to "spell" numbers like DEADBEEF (which is 3735928559 in decimal, but that's not important). You can also have FADED, FACADE, F00D, all of which are valid hex numbers.

Binary (what computers use) is often represented as hexadecumal because it's easy to convert between the two (16 is 2⁴) and hex is much more readable than binary.

If your code should send a message readable by a developer, it makes sense to use a "magic number", basically a random, large number unlikely to be returned if the program is behaving normally but will be instantly recognisable by any human looking at the output. DEADBEEF is one such message, used by a lot of early computer systems to indicate that your program is, well, dead meat (crashed).

Magic numbers aren't used much now, although anyone who's worked with embedded systems and low-level programming would likely know about them. Programmers writing stuff in more modern languages, especially those that didn't grow up in the 90s likely wouldn't know anything about them. Which is why Google took the question off their list I suppose, since most of their work won't require coders who can write assembly.

Reply 45

ServantOfMorgoth

Original post by Good bloke

There are many rectangular manholes around. You behave as if they're death sentences. Since they exist in a relatively large amount, having rectangular manholes isn't as dangerous as you porport it to be. And circles don't have edges.

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Reply 46

ServantOfMorgoth

Original post by Student403

Sharp edges? What? Any shape can have sharp edges and any shape can have blunt edges. Unless your referring to corners...

Circles don't have edges... You're trying to say that a nic in a piece of metal would damage a car wheel? Hmmmmm

Reply 47

Student403

Original post by ServantOfMorgoth

Circles don't have edges... You're trying to say that a nic in a piece of metal would damage a car wheel? Hmmmmm

When did I say that? lmao

Reply 48

neb789

Original post by Good bloke

Wrong answer.

They are round as a round cover cannot fall into its own hole and cause injury or damage whereas a rectangular cover can.

Beat me to it!

Reply 49

ServantOfMorgoth

Original post by Student403

When did I say that? lmao

If you've been following what I've been saying all along and you respond to me your answer implies that's what you meant.

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Reply 50

chickenfoot

Original post by jneill

Google pay is somewhat more than £6-7 per hour...

(Average Google UK remuneration is over £160k.)

what

that's why i said what kind of jobs i apply for...

Reply 51

Good bloke

Original post by ServantOfMorgoth

The rectangular ones are not manhole covers, they cover much smaller cavities, through which people do not crawl; these are typically electricity and communications access hatches, meter or switch covers or water or gas pipe access points.

Manholes are specifically places where people gain bodily access through the road surface to the underground infrastructure (that is why they are called manholes).

All solid shapes have edges. All solid objects that are not variations on a spheroid have edges. You obviously don't study maths. Maybe you are confusing edges with corners.

Reply 52

Good bloke

Original post by ServantOfMorgoth

Circles don't have edges... You're trying to say that a nic in a piece of metal would damage a car wheel? Hmmmmm

The design of these objects ensures they lie flush with the road surface when properly installed. If there were a sharp edge capable of damaging a tyre it would, anyway, be immaterial whether the cover were round or rectangular.

I've said nothing about nicks but I'm not clear how a nick would occur in the normal course of events. If it happened during works I'd expect the contractor to replace the faulty item as a matter of procedure.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone has so much difficulty understanding why manhole covers have to be round and not rectangular or oval. I thought it was common knowledge (or at least blindingly obvious) why that was the case, too. I couldn't have been more wrong

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 53

Doones

Original post by Good bloke

It's the correct answer. If you were a worker and a colleague on the road above you dropped a 40kg cover that happened to fall through its hole and hit you you would not be a happy (or well) man, so it is entirely relevant to why manholes should be circular.

They are over a 100kg.

Ouch

Reply 54

Good bloke

Original post by jneill

They are over a 100kg.

Ouch

I'd believe that. I was moving some 2' square x 2" thick concrete paving slabs recently and had their horrible weight in my mind. I would not want any risk at all of one falling on my head if I were underground. Even if it slid past your body it would take your foot off.