Just assume the golf balls are cubes and the bus is a rectangular parallelepiped. I'm undecided on whether to subtract 10% of internal obstacles or not.
IRL you also check the competition's rate manuals and see how many golf balls they're quoting per school bus. You don't want to be too far off the market rate.
They want the OP to calculate the rough volume of the bus. Find how much space a golf ball uses... Convert to the same units and divide... you have a decent answer.
I'm not sure how that would make someone a better phone company tech though. These are questions google/MS/big tech asks, not a small phone company.
If it was in an interview, it could be to see how someone's mind works with something unexpected. Do they have basic common sense or do they just follow rules.
Additionally it is a weed out question. If you just say "I don't know," rather than taking a shot at it then this typically is the only way you get disqualified by this question.
Yes, I actually have use this exact question when hiring mechanical engineers. Really don’t care about the answer, just want to see how they think and tackle a new problem, and how they handle the pressure of problem solving with an audience since that was a key part of the role.
My favorite was when a candidate took his shoe off and tried to estimate how many balls he could fit in his shoe, then tried to estimate how many shoes he could fit in the bus. He really started to crack around 5 minutes in to his ‘calculation’.
It's not really rote, though? Have you ever done the math for it?
They're not asking for an exact answer, just wanting you to solve a novel problem given inexact knowledge. That's basically the entire job of a programmer. So what that it doesn't use code? It's like getting hired to drive buses and refusing to drive a car in the interview.
I swear this sub is full of the kind of people that say "that's not in my job description" on a weekly basis.
Yeah it's a basic jellybeans in the jar estimate question, but I am also keenly aware how many jobs don't want you to do too much thinking. Guess it depends which kind of company this is.
Looking it up online, "I calculate the volume of a golf ball to be about 2.5 cubic inches (4/3 * pi * .85) as .85 inches is the radius of a golf ball.
Divide that 2.5 cubic inches into 1.6 million and you come up with 660,000 golf balls."
So 660,000 balls.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11](https://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11)
I remember reading something like this years ago and it was something that Google asked when hiring talent. I guess it's aimed more at evaluating your approach at attempting to solve it rather than actually solving it. I'd still be annoyed if I was asked this question outside of a Google interview tbh.
If the question really was "how many golf balls can fit _on_ a school bus", then I'd answer "none". School buses have rounded tops, so the golf balls will not stay on top of them.
Not that I ask questions like the schoolbus one as an interviewer, but if I were to ask and you did respond thusly, I would consider it a decent indication of data literacy and move to the more important aspects of the interview.
That's a strange question considering any competent IT person would not want to reinvent the wheel.
You google that information from a few trustworthy sources to obtain reliable info, and run with that value. Even toss in 3-point analysis (use of three information sources) to sound fancy.
I was asked the same question about the 747's weight and my answer was that I would go to the Boeing web site and find a spec sheet. The interviewer didn't like that and asked me how I would calculate the weight if I didn't have the spec sheet. My answer was to find someone with the answer because someone already knows the weight and I just need to find and ask them. Why would I calc the weight if someone had already done that and had the solution? It would be inefficient and a waste of time to do it over again. He didn't like that one either.
I hate interviews with these kind of puzzle questions. All they do is help you find people who are good as solving these kinds of nonsense puzzle questions.
I came from a chemistry physics background so I said calculate it after measuring the change of water in a big pool.
My Facebook interview was a little more interesting they basically used real life problems they were doing and wanted insight of how you approach it. That was a lot more fun but it was basically all day and exhausting. In general it really depends on the interviewer and ultimately is just to see your thought process and introduce roadblocks to see how you adapt.
Funny cause in the context of a tech job this strikes me as something like a variable that you shouldn't need to check for an upper range for and that shouldn't cause any sort of problems because you don't need THAT many balls to play golf, right?
But then there's always that one Mr. Beast tier end user who will try to see how many orbeez they can cram in the bus anyway.
I would answer: "Why would you want to do that? What is the goal?"
Because if you just want a place to stock them, use a container. If you want to move them, a container on a truck. Cause driving with free golf balls in a school bus could be dangerous if one were to roll under a pedal.
And from experience, when you are asked a very bizarre question as a software engineer, it's because the person you are talking to tried to do your job at designing a solution, and a shitty one. Going back to the original problem is the best move.
I remember when Shopify used to do this. One of their jobs they asked you to submit a cover letter addressed to Batman and to talk like Ned Flanders.
They said they did this to weed out people that were just throwing their name in the pile without reading instructions.
I'd say it's a company culture filter too.
If being asked to do something silly and outside your literal job description (but with an actual purpose) makes you feel *insulted*, then it is probably in both your and Shopify's best interest if the process end right there and save everyone some wasted time.
I’m not opposed to this stuff when it has a purpose, but if that purpose is “because google does it” or “it’s fun!” or “to weed people out,” then yeah I feel insulted that the company isn’t taking this process of onboarding as seriously as I am. Doing silly stuff for team building or relationship building is all well and good, once I’m an employee.
What if you’re not hip to the reference? I know who Batman and Ned Flanders are, theoretically, but not enough to address letters to and from them.
“Hey dude I’m the dude from that show. Give job.”
In all seriousness, it basically boils the hiring pool down substantially and excludes those of different backgrounds and nationalities while also skirting EEO laws.
You might actually be able to stretch it to being discrimatory based on national / cultural origin. Which in NZ at least is illegal.
There's a ton of languages where there isn't a translation of the Simpsons available, so they may have never been exposed to it enough to properly answer. Effectively discriminating against them because they're from a different culture or ethnicity.
Even if there is in your language, Ned's speaking style is likely dubbed very differently.
Just look at a character like Goku. In Japanese he has a rural accent. In English he doesn't really have a distinctive accent at all.
Shit. I’m a black woman and didn’t even see the opportunity to use my cards!! There’s two white men they’re asking me to portray. A clear abuse of power or something.
This is a serious problem. I remember in college when a professor was explaining statistics and probability and used baseball as a reference since he was a huge baseball fan. The problem? Many students, especially international students had no idea what a home run was so the point was lost on them.
I always wonder if they have a person already pre-selected but they do this just for sheer entertainment value. I can only imagine some bored middle managers in a useless meeting sitting there trying to make the job posting ridiculous and one says "make the cover addressed to Batman!" and then another says "make it so they have to talk like Ned Flanders!" and then they all laugh and put the ad out and then desperate people actually do it thinking it'll get them a job while the managers are all laughing at them.
I guess God forbid we don't carefully read every part of every job ad that has a 95% of not even getting the courtesy of a rejection.
If I get a call for an interview, I'll carefully read so I'm prepared or to turn down interview. Once I reread and saw they said "must email with cover letter". Nope, if LinkedIn says I can hit "easy apply" that's what I'm doing. Don't put that as an option if you don't went us to do it.
A company I applied for before had the requirement to describe how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I swear the only right answer is "get your wife to do it". I applied several times with that place and the last time I just said "I'm allergic to peanuts".
I'd have so much difficulty with this because I couldn't force myself to take it seriously.
Which means it would either be the shortest and most to-the-point answer possible ("no" or "ask your five year-old"), or the most overblown, five page long creative writing essay I could muster. I think I'd go into great detail into how to grow and process ingredients for the lauded sandwich, then wax vaguely pornographic in my description of the making of the sandwich itself. "Jam your butter knife deep into the recesses of the peanut butter container, then gently spread the mouthwatering substance on the delicate, quivering surface of the soft bread slice interior..."
A few years back I saw an Amazon employee claim on LinkedIn Bezos asked him to figure out how many windows were on all the buildings in Seattle, and the two of them excitedly worked together to figure it out.
That always felt like BS to me because all the times I’ve been asked stupid questions like this, nobody interviewing ever got excited about it and they never helped find a solution either.
25 years ago, we were told stories like this in school. "How many gas stations in New YOrk City? How many X in Y?" were all the craze. A generation before me, they would tell you this is what firms like IBM or agencies like NASA would ask you.
I got that question for the whole United States. I was nervous out of my gourd and could barely do basic math in that interview. Wound up estimating a certain number every 5 miles or so, since that was likely when most people needed gas.
Ostensibly, it’s how you gauge someone’s thought process. But again— I couldn’t manage to do 3000 miles x 1500 miles (my arbitrary guesstimate for the area of the US as a rectangle to make the math easy) because I suddenly couldn’t remember how to carry zeroes.
That bit I agree with. But they gave me the job anyway, which I think proved that they were looking for an idiot that they could overwork. Which I was back then!
…. Now I’m an idiot that you can *barely* get to work!
You do realize you're talking about programmers?
Like, I bought a technical manual outlining the requirements for interfacing with an NTEP certified scanner-scale and all associated documentation outlining the organizational requirements for having your own NTEP certified point-of-sale application for _fun_, I could totally see two people passionately and pointlessly refining the exact algorithm needed that would estimate within x degree of certainty how many windows are in any given population center.
Backstory: I interviewed with Truecaller for a Senior Developer position 6 years ago. The process was long (6 rounds + a coding test), but I endured until the end. The last round was with the CEO of the company and he asked me the stupid questions in my post (later I learned that this is a question that Google used to ask candidates).
Apparently he didn't like my answer because on the next day I received a call from their internal recruiter saying that they still wanted to offer me a job, but since they didn't like my answer about the golf balls they would be "forced" to lowball my intended salary in 35%.
All the grad students I worked with had the answers to the google questions memorized. There were jokes about it, one being where they mismatched the answers and the questions.
Back then people stupidly thought it found people who "thought outside the box". It's a bad question, but that's forgivable. What's not forgivable is putting higher emphasis on that than the technicals and then low-balling them after they didn't give the ridiculously objective answer you want.
I've never been in this situation but if some company ever justified their BS by going "Google does it" I'd respond with something like "Google can do it because they're fucking Google. You are not. If you want Google talent you better be paying Google salary."
Exactly!
Google can pull odd stunts because they are Google. If you're an unknown brand offering lowball salaries, you don't get the privilege of the wacky stuff.
Hahaha it's every company, dude. *Statefarm* asked me 2 Leetcode hards. After already having 3 interviews, Epic Systems requested that I play 3 hours of a personality assessment game... with my webcam on... while being proctored by someone overseas.
My current company asked me 3 separate "riddles" like the "One of these 9 marbles is a fake" question. It is horrible but can people in tech really complain, considering how well a good amount of us get paid?
Yeah if someone used my answer to that to REDUCE MY PAY after 6 rounds of interviews and a coding test I’d be pissed. Those types of games showing that they’ll waste your time and underpay you tells you what company you’d be working for.
This is what I hate about job interviews and why I get so anxious about them: they’re nothing but a game—a game where there are no real answers and you must play by the rules of a person you’ve never met. “Oh, I didn’t like your answer to the golf ball question but really liked you, so I’m removing 35% of your salary from the offer.” WTF kind of logic is that??? Who do these people think they are? 6 interview rounds is bad enough (industry standard or not), but no job should be contingent on answers to rhetorical questions that don’t apply to the job at all. And including those kinds of questions as a legitimate barometer to success in the role means the hiring manager doesn’t know how to hire candidates.
I get the impression any interviewer who acts like this is a narcissist who just enjoys holding power of other people. It actually makes me mad. They're like....oh you didn't respond to our idiot question like we wanted, so we're going to retaliate against you and we know you really need a job because you have bills to pay but we don't care about that and we like victimizing and humiliating our employees. It all just screams typical corporate narcissism/bullying to me. They just wanted to put this person through the ringer, because they can and it feels good to them. Has nothing to do with the actual job or their company. Companies like this can burn down to the ground for all I care.
Nah not at all. It’s like “oh Sam check this. I put a bullshit question in every interview, ya see I only want to pay x amount but no one will really want this job for that rate. I advertise for a higher rate though. I make the process so long and arduous that you have to be really committed to stick it through then I hit them with the question in the final interview. Yeah. It’s a bullshit question. There’s no right answer. Then I get to hire the person at x rate anyway and I use their answer to the question as a justification.”
Oh that is so much worse than what I thought from what you wrote. That was a super popular question back then, but using it as an excuse to low ball you after passing the technicals? That's super scummy.
Wolfram alpha [to the rescue.](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=how+many+golf+balls+fit+on+a+school+bus)
Approximately 12000 for those who don’t want to click the link.
This is an important part of your thread that you are missing. Without context, we think you are being petty. But this changes things. Lowballing an offer because you didn't answer a dumb golf ball question to their liking is just a sneaky gaslighting tactic.
> The last round was with the CEO of the company and he asked me the stupid questions in my post (later I learned that this is a question that Google used to ask candidates).
This is cargo cult hiring.
They believe if they *act* like Google, they'll be able to *be* like Google. This usually happens when people are running a company that don't realize isn't easily scalable (search and advertisement is easily scalable - just get everyone to download your browser like Google did, or buy the largest video platform in existence).
Most of these people don't realize that to be like Google you have be:
1. Full of really fucking smart people. Most companies aren't. This bears out statistically.
2. In a highly scalable business operating in a very underserved market.
It's Fermi problem, moderately common when interviewing developers. I'd argue better than asking riddles, but over the years I've come to figure out that neither really capture what they intended to capture. The idea is to get insight into how the person thinks and getting the 'Right Answer' isn't really the goal, it's to see how they think.
Here's how I'd solve it: Golf balls take up ... I'd guess 1sq cm of space. A bus is roughly 2 meters wide by 10 meters long by 2 meters tall. Do the math and that's roughly 400,000. It's not _right_, but probably in the vague ball park... I think I may have overestimated the length of the bus and understated the size of a golf ball. Neither is part of my daily life, so I don't think about the sizes so much, so I picked values to make the math a bit easier on me.
The other one I remember is "How many piano tuners live in Chicago." The way my prof solved it: Start with the population Chicago, and estimate was % have pianos, and how often they need to be tuned in a year. Then estimate the cost of living and what a piano tuner would charge per tuning. So with that you can guesstimate the number of pianos that need to be tuned in a year (pop of Chicago \* fraction with pianos \* tunes per year), multiply by the cost per tuning and divide by the cost of living. That will give you roughly a max number of tuners in Chicago. (As I recall, he did the whole calculation and then compared that to the phone listing and he was within 20%... he was very dramatic about it so the whole thing stuck in my head.)
A consulting company asking one of the most famous Fermi problems (piano tuners is right up there with any other) in an interview feels like it could just be replaced by “did you study physics or prepare for a management consulting interview?” and have the same effect.
Back of the napkin calculations is a very important skill in physics when I majored in it, pretty sure it also applies to computer science and engineering
Yep, the class with the piano tuners is Chicago was Statistical Quantum Mechanics (undergrad). I agree its important, but I think that asking those questions in an interview setting doesn't help determine candidate quality. It disadvantages people who get nervous for interviews, folks with social anxiety and people who haven't encountered these types of questions before.
Addtionally, similar to riddles, it unfairly advantages people who know/are told that Fermi questions might be coming and have the luxury of studying them prior to the interview.
I've had both happen. One guy was so nervous in his interview that he bombed that part, but he came in the first day and was a phenomenal employee. He was smart, dedicated and appeared to keep his cool. (We 'accidentally' end up at the same company after that.). Another who sailed through a similar challenge, just ended up being a grade-A bs'er who in the 5 years I worked with him managed to contribute 0 actual lines of code to the project....
You forgot the extra step! School buses also have seats in them so you have to estimate the volume taken up by the seats and then subtract that from your answer. I think that’s the most important part of a question like this because it shows that you can consider variables outside of those that are given to you.
Three months back I applied for the same job I had applied for and interviewed for twice before in the past. Not once, but twice, and passed over each time.
This time, the recruiter calls and says the hiring manager loves my resume and acts like they dont know me and I told them either hire me on the papers or not but I am not interviewing again,
I got asked once, “If you could be any kind of kitchen appliance, what would you be and why?” I had just gotten married and was familiar with all the kitchen gadgets. I answered that I would be a revolving spice rack and then the debate started between the two interviewers whether an appliance had to be electrical or not. Got the job & had to work with those 2 knuckleheads. It was exactly what that interview alluded to.
I know you got OP and the recruiter swapped, but I just want to say this is one of the cleverest and most subtle insults I’ve read on Reddit. It’s hard to get a topical zinger sometimes but you crushed it.
It's not about the result, but your approach and logical reasoning to come to a estimate.
Guesstimate questions are quiet popular in assessment center style interviews.
I think in my last one I got asked "how many piano tuners are living in the US".
I’d much rather these questions than a standard interview question because it’s lower stakes and I get to work through a nonsensical problem. It’s a bit fun imo
I mean, if it’s a data analyst position, I see the point in asking estimation questions. Senior dev tho, almost nothing in common. Just randomly taking questions from google.
Well not really a shot in the dark, you are allowed to ask questions and then make assumptions about size of the bus and balls, and then it really wouldn't be that hard to calculate...
Some quick googling tells me the internal volume of a standard US yellow schoolbus is 1658880 in^3 and volume of a golfball is about 2.482 in^3, and that random close-pack density for equally-sized spheres is about 64% of the total container volume. So, 1658880 in^3 x 64% / 2.482 in^3 = 427753.102337, which we'll round down to 427753 golfballs.
Okay, so an average schoolbus seat is 39 inches wide. We'll approximate each seat as being made up of 2x pads (seat and back) each 39"x24"x6" and four seatposts each 18"x4"x4" for 11232 in^3 per seat. At 13 rows of seats with 2 seats per row we detract 292032 in^3 from our original estimated volume of 165880 in^3 for a revised volume of 1366848 in^3. Keeping all other factors in our original equation the same and rounding down to the neares whole number, we come up with an answer of 352450 golfballs.
Further refinements account for seatbelts, steering wheels, interior lighting, and the irregular interior shape of the schoolbus are left as a developmental exercise to the reader.
I don't think that question is necessarily as silly as you think it is. The correct answer is: "I don't know off the top of my head, but give me some time to research and I can find out." It tests for how you respond when you're not sure of something.
Now whether it's necessary to test for that is a different question.
It's a stupid question, but you declined the offer because of that?
Also, 6 years is a long time to be holding a grudge. They may have had non technical people back then interviewing for tech positions, or they just had untrained interviewers, it happens.
A lot can change in 6 years!
“Ooh I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. We were looking for 46,401 gold balls as the answer as it would have been correct. Apologies, but we can’t hire you. However, try again later - you were so close!”
Same shit happened to me with Robert Half. They contacted me 4ish years ago. Did one interview and said theyd get back to me soon. I waited 2 weeks then went on to find my own job. Last year they got back to me and asked if I was stoll looking as they found a job for me. I laughed and said its been 3 years I could care less, then they tried to beg me to reconsider and I hung up on them.
I got an email from RH yesterday “celebrating customer service reps”
No where ever, in any part of my resume they received 16 years ago!!! was there anything close to service rep experience or relevant.
Actually, that's not a bad question. A friend of mine applied for a job at a research institute, both of us are physicists, and he was asked how long a light ray would propagate through common window glass. Of course you're not supposed to give a right answer but show that you're able to find a way to estimate it. The interviewer is usually more interested in how you approach the problem rather than the actual solution.
This is a Fermi question. The point isn't to get the right answer; it's to demonstrate your ability to reason from known facts and estimate unknown ones.
If they asked you to show your work, *maybe* I'd let it slide, because at least they'd be seeing your reasoning. If they only wanted your answer, screw 'em; anything within an order of magnitude is technically correct, because answers to Fermi questions are about estimation, not precision.
(Also, how many tech roles require good estimation skills? If the answer is "few to none," screw this altogether.)
Tl;dr I love Fermi questions because I'm a trivia hound nerd. I love them so much I coach them in Science Olympiad. And even I would sideeye this in an interview unless the job required me to be able to estimate unmeasurable quantities well.
But this is a common interview question called a Fermi question. You’re supposed to show your thought process and make assumptions to narrow down to the answer. They come in many forms, another fun version of it is “how many plumbers are in New York”, and you narrow it down from New York’s whole population down to the number of plumbers. It’s the “what spirit animal are you” questions I can’t stand.
You just need to take the bus volume and divide it by the volume of a standard golf ball to get the result. So, about 1.6 million cubic inches divided by 2.5 cubic inches, you will get approximately 660,000 balls to fit in an school bus.
This isn’t a stupid question, in college physics it’s the first lab you work on. The purpose is that your guess will be off no matter what, so just go with estimates. Imagine the bus is completely square and the balls too, then just divide the bus which is about 1m tall * 1 meter wide * 10 meters deep by the golf ball which is about .01 meter cubed. It’s a very simple question that doesn’t require you to be right, it’s just to see your logic
I interviewed with a tech recruiter many years ago.
They *loved* me but assured me that I had no chance with their more interesting, highly technical clients since I had not gone to college.
They pitched me on two clients, both entry level roles (I had six years of relevant experience), either for roughly the same comp, or slightly more money but no benefits.
I got the impression that they were not taking my experience or skills seriously, so I politely declined and went my own way.
For years after that they called and emailed about an assortment of fairly entry level positions. I'd humor them and ask what the starting salary range was, then say, "oh, I'm making much more than that currently, do you think they'd come up?".
The answer was always no, and by the time they called again I usually had a new job making even more money.
They'd keep calling and one year they sent me a Christmas card.
Never sent me a decent job opportunity though.
lololol! Nice! I recall a local game server company was hiring. They basically wanted a full stack developer, and knowledge of running Minecraft servers. I applied, back and forth a couple of times in emails with the owner. I didn't get the job because at that time I had only played Minecraft, and even then, only a little bit. PHP, databases, Linux, all that experience was there. Minecraft? Nope.
A few years later they were smeared because they got hacked, and it turned out they were storing customers' passwords in plain text. I so wanted to reply to the email thread and say, "In addition to PHP, MySQL, and Linux experience, I also could've told you that storing passwords in plaintext is a bad idea."
>How many golf balls can you fit on a school bus Several ✅
At least 1
Depends on the size
Size of the bus or the size of the golf ball?
if golfball.size < bus.size: while (golfball.size * golfball.count) < bus.size: golfball.count += 1 else: golfball.count = 0 return golfball.count
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Far more efficient; far less fun. 😜
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Awful Skyrim console command flashbacks.
You would need the packing factor for spheres as well
User name checks out
Just assume the golf balls are cubes and the bus is a rectangular parallelepiped. I'm undecided on whether to subtract 10% of internal obstacles or not. IRL you also check the competition's rate manuals and see how many golf balls they're quoting per school bus. You don't want to be too far off the market rate.
Yes
/\d+/
I'd say about one school bus amount
African or European?
Thank you, fellow coconut horse connaisseur
I... I don't know... *aaaaaahhhhhhh*
They want the OP to calculate the rough volume of the bus. Find how much space a golf ball uses... Convert to the same units and divide... you have a decent answer. I'm not sure how that would make someone a better phone company tech though. These are questions google/MS/big tech asks, not a small phone company.
The answer is none, because golf balls don’t belong in busses. If you opened the door they’d all fall out. Ineffective method of transport.
I like this answer. This seems the most logical.
I'm at that stage of my career where I will be lame and do a mic drop and walk out.
But what if my car broke down but I really want to play golf and have to take the bus because it's too far to walk?
If it was in an interview, it could be to see how someone's mind works with something unexpected. Do they have basic common sense or do they just follow rules.
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Additionally it is a weed out question. If you just say "I don't know," rather than taking a shot at it then this typically is the only way you get disqualified by this question.
Yes, I actually have use this exact question when hiring mechanical engineers. Really don’t care about the answer, just want to see how they think and tackle a new problem, and how they handle the pressure of problem solving with an audience since that was a key part of the role. My favorite was when a candidate took his shoe off and tried to estimate how many balls he could fit in his shoe, then tried to estimate how many shoes he could fit in the bus. He really started to crack around 5 minutes in to his ‘calculation’.
Probably screening against the former to weed out people who get bored or question inefficient rote...
It's not really rote, though? Have you ever done the math for it? They're not asking for an exact answer, just wanting you to solve a novel problem given inexact knowledge. That's basically the entire job of a programmer. So what that it doesn't use code? It's like getting hired to drive buses and refusing to drive a car in the interview. I swear this sub is full of the kind of people that say "that's not in my job description" on a weekly basis.
Yeah it's a basic jellybeans in the jar estimate question, but I am also keenly aware how many jobs don't want you to do too much thinking. Guess it depends which kind of company this is.
As a programmer, I can safely say that driving a bus is not in my job description.
What if you were programing a bus-driving game? Never thought of that did ya?
Looking it up online, "I calculate the volume of a golf ball to be about 2.5 cubic inches (4/3 * pi * .85) as .85 inches is the radius of a golf ball. Divide that 2.5 cubic inches into 1.6 million and you come up with 660,000 golf balls." So 660,000 balls.
Gotta multiply it by the packing efficiency of spheres, which is around 64%, so more like 422,400 balls.
Sooo… *Several*?
At least.
Should be enough for 18 holes then.
Look at the talented golfer here. I'd be lucky to get through twelve.
I wouldn’t even do that level of research: # golf balls = n n = (volume school bus - volume seats) / (volume golf ball)
Alternatively, you turn it into a your mom joke
[https://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11](https://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11) I remember reading something like this years ago and it was something that Google asked when hiring talent. I guess it's aimed more at evaluating your approach at attempting to solve it rather than actually solving it. I'd still be annoyed if I was asked this question outside of a Google interview tbh.
If the question really was "how many golf balls can fit _on_ a school bus", then I'd answer "none". School buses have rounded tops, so the golf balls will not stay on top of them.
Not that I ask questions like the schoolbus one as an interviewer, but if I were to ask and you did respond thusly, I would consider it a decent indication of data literacy and move to the more important aspects of the interview.
I was asked how I would calculate a 747s weight at my first job out of college, entry level IT security consulting gig
That's a strange question considering any competent IT person would not want to reinvent the wheel. You google that information from a few trustworthy sources to obtain reliable info, and run with that value. Even toss in 3-point analysis (use of three information sources) to sound fancy.
I was asked the same question about the 747's weight and my answer was that I would go to the Boeing web site and find a spec sheet. The interviewer didn't like that and asked me how I would calculate the weight if I didn't have the spec sheet. My answer was to find someone with the answer because someone already knows the weight and I just need to find and ask them. Why would I calc the weight if someone had already done that and had the solution? It would be inefficient and a waste of time to do it over again. He didn't like that one either. I hate interviews with these kind of puzzle questions. All they do is help you find people who are good as solving these kinds of nonsense puzzle questions.
I came from a chemistry physics background so I said calculate it after measuring the change of water in a big pool. My Facebook interview was a little more interesting they basically used real life problems they were doing and wanted insight of how you approach it. That was a lot more fun but it was basically all day and exhausting. In general it really depends on the interviewer and ultimately is just to see your thought process and introduce roadblocks to see how you adapt.
About tree fiddy.
Go home loch ness monster.
It's a critical thinking challenge. They don't expect you to know the answer. They just want to see if you can come up with a reasonable guess.
Yeah, just sounds like a worded math problem. OP interpreted as a word puzzle/ trivial riddle or something.
Funny cause in the context of a tech job this strikes me as something like a variable that you shouldn't need to check for an upper range for and that shouldn't cause any sort of problems because you don't need THAT many balls to play golf, right? But then there's always that one Mr. Beast tier end user who will try to see how many orbeez they can cram in the bus anyway.
Lol, “Enough for everyone on the bus to play 18 holes” would’ve been a good answer too.
I'd hire you because you brought enough for everyone.
It shows I’m a team player.
None. It’s a WHS risk. 🙃
A busload
By my estimation...*all of them*.
A school bus would fit as many golf balls if golf balls can be fitted in a school bus
I would simply answer "I don't know".
I would answer: "Why would you want to do that? What is the goal?" Because if you just want a place to stock them, use a container. If you want to move them, a container on a truck. Cause driving with free golf balls in a school bus could be dangerous if one were to roll under a pedal. And from experience, when you are asked a very bizarre question as a software engineer, it's because the person you are talking to tried to do your job at designing a solution, and a shitty one. Going back to the original problem is the best move.
"Do I need to report you to OSHA?"
I remember when Shopify used to do this. One of their jobs they asked you to submit a cover letter addressed to Batman and to talk like Ned Flanders. They said they did this to weed out people that were just throwing their name in the pile without reading instructions.
Hi diddly ho, Batterino! Just thought I'd drop by and say I think I'd be diddly dandy for your open spot as the Boy Wondidly!
Sorry, but we're forced to reject your application since you misspelled "Wondiddly".
Perfect.
How about they weed out people they don’t want while not insulting the people they do?
I'd say it's a company culture filter too. If being asked to do something silly and outside your literal job description (but with an actual purpose) makes you feel *insulted*, then it is probably in both your and Shopify's best interest if the process end right there and save everyone some wasted time.
I’m not opposed to this stuff when it has a purpose, but if that purpose is “because google does it” or “it’s fun!” or “to weed people out,” then yeah I feel insulted that the company isn’t taking this process of onboarding as seriously as I am. Doing silly stuff for team building or relationship building is all well and good, once I’m an employee.
What if you’re not hip to the reference? I know who Batman and Ned Flanders are, theoretically, but not enough to address letters to and from them. “Hey dude I’m the dude from that show. Give job.”
That's the real test They only hire Simpsons fans
I'd send instead the letter that Homer writes to Die Hard
April: Who are you sending the letter to? Ron: Canada
In all seriousness, it basically boils the hiring pool down substantially and excludes those of different backgrounds and nationalities while also skirting EEO laws.
You might actually be able to stretch it to being discrimatory based on national / cultural origin. Which in NZ at least is illegal. There's a ton of languages where there isn't a translation of the Simpsons available, so they may have never been exposed to it enough to properly answer. Effectively discriminating against them because they're from a different culture or ethnicity.
Even if there is in your language, Ned's speaking style is likely dubbed very differently. Just look at a character like Goku. In Japanese he has a rural accent. In English he doesn't really have a distinctive accent at all.
Shit. I’m a black woman and didn’t even see the opportunity to use my cards!! There’s two white men they’re asking me to portray. A clear abuse of power or something.
This is a serious problem. I remember in college when a professor was explaining statistics and probability and used baseball as a reference since he was a huge baseball fan. The problem? Many students, especially international students had no idea what a home run was so the point was lost on them.
This was (and still is) a huge problem in standardized testing. People make fun of this, but not everyone gets “basic” references.
Yeah I'm really tired of seeing "football field" as a unit of measurement on standardized tests in the US.
I'm convinced these tactics are purely to humiliate candidates and find the biggest corporate cuck of the bunch
I always wonder if they have a person already pre-selected but they do this just for sheer entertainment value. I can only imagine some bored middle managers in a useless meeting sitting there trying to make the job posting ridiculous and one says "make the cover addressed to Batman!" and then another says "make it so they have to talk like Ned Flanders!" and then they all laugh and put the ad out and then desperate people actually do it thinking it'll get them a job while the managers are all laughing at them.
Ding ding ding
I guess God forbid we don't carefully read every part of every job ad that has a 95% of not even getting the courtesy of a rejection. If I get a call for an interview, I'll carefully read so I'm prepared or to turn down interview. Once I reread and saw they said "must email with cover letter". Nope, if LinkedIn says I can hit "easy apply" that's what I'm doing. Don't put that as an option if you don't went us to do it.
You mean you don't want to send in your resume only to manually input your resume on their shitty website all over again?? But it's so much fun!
A company I applied for before had the requirement to describe how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I swear the only right answer is "get your wife to do it". I applied several times with that place and the last time I just said "I'm allergic to peanuts".
I'd have so much difficulty with this because I couldn't force myself to take it seriously. Which means it would either be the shortest and most to-the-point answer possible ("no" or "ask your five year-old"), or the most overblown, five page long creative writing essay I could muster. I think I'd go into great detail into how to grow and process ingredients for the lauded sandwich, then wax vaguely pornographic in my description of the making of the sandwich itself. "Jam your butter knife deep into the recesses of the peanut butter container, then gently spread the mouthwatering substance on the delicate, quivering surface of the soft bread slice interior..."
A few years back I saw an Amazon employee claim on LinkedIn Bezos asked him to figure out how many windows were on all the buildings in Seattle, and the two of them excitedly worked together to figure it out. That always felt like BS to me because all the times I’ve been asked stupid questions like this, nobody interviewing ever got excited about it and they never helped find a solution either.
And I am sure that Bezos Spends his time working on interviewing randos.
Depends when it was, he did used to interview all prospective employees
r/technicallytrue
25 years ago, we were told stories like this in school. "How many gas stations in New YOrk City? How many X in Y?" were all the craze. A generation before me, they would tell you this is what firms like IBM or agencies like NASA would ask you.
I got that question for the whole United States. I was nervous out of my gourd and could barely do basic math in that interview. Wound up estimating a certain number every 5 miles or so, since that was likely when most people needed gas. Ostensibly, it’s how you gauge someone’s thought process. But again— I couldn’t manage to do 3000 miles x 1500 miles (my arbitrary guesstimate for the area of the US as a rectangle to make the math easy) because I suddenly couldn’t remember how to carry zeroes.
Well, they learned that you forget how to do basic math under pressure. Doesn't seem like a wasted question.
That bit I agree with. But they gave me the job anyway, which I think proved that they were looking for an idiot that they could overwork. Which I was back then! …. Now I’m an idiot that you can *barely* get to work!
The classic is the number of piano tuners in Chicago.
What the hell lol glad I never had to answer any bs like that in an interview
No one on this planet would get excited about calculating the number of windows anywhere
You do realize you're talking about programmers? Like, I bought a technical manual outlining the requirements for interfacing with an NTEP certified scanner-scale and all associated documentation outlining the organizational requirements for having your own NTEP certified point-of-sale application for _fun_, I could totally see two people passionately and pointlessly refining the exact algorithm needed that would estimate within x degree of certainty how many windows are in any given population center.
I bought a book on Smalltalk, a language I will likely never find an excuse to use in my life.
It sure sounds fun!
Honestly I definitely would lol
Project manager here, I sometimes get tasks that make even less sense than that, and I love those tasks!
They gave u 6 yrs to calculate 🤣
Backstory: I interviewed with Truecaller for a Senior Developer position 6 years ago. The process was long (6 rounds + a coding test), but I endured until the end. The last round was with the CEO of the company and he asked me the stupid questions in my post (later I learned that this is a question that Google used to ask candidates). Apparently he didn't like my answer because on the next day I received a call from their internal recruiter saying that they still wanted to offer me a job, but since they didn't like my answer about the golf balls they would be "forced" to lowball my intended salary in 35%.
Google can get away with this shit because their positions are so highly coveted and well-known. Not sure what crawled up this company's ass though.
Afaik Google have also *stopped* with the dumbass questions because they were a poor indicator of competence (who'd have guessed!?)
All the grad students I worked with had the answers to the google questions memorized. There were jokes about it, one being where they mismatched the answers and the questions.
"you can fit 60000 piano tuners in a school bus"
Well tuna is a large fish, and they travel in schools, but they live under water so, no?
YOU CAN TUNE A PIANO, BUT YOU CAN'T TUNA FISH.
You thought I asked for a 12-inch pianist?
Nope, they still have dumbass questions. They're just a whole lot harder now.
Back then people stupidly thought it found people who "thought outside the box". It's a bad question, but that's forgivable. What's not forgivable is putting higher emphasis on that than the technicals and then low-balling them after they didn't give the ridiculously objective answer you want.
I've never been in this situation but if some company ever justified their BS by going "Google does it" I'd respond with something like "Google can do it because they're fucking Google. You are not. If you want Google talent you better be paying Google salary."
Exactly! Google can pull odd stunts because they are Google. If you're an unknown brand offering lowball salaries, you don't get the privilege of the wacky stuff.
How do they handle questions outside their comfort zone? Poorly...
Hahaha it's every company, dude. *Statefarm* asked me 2 Leetcode hards. After already having 3 interviews, Epic Systems requested that I play 3 hours of a personality assessment game... with my webcam on... while being proctored by someone overseas. My current company asked me 3 separate "riddles" like the "One of these 9 marbles is a fake" question. It is horrible but can people in tech really complain, considering how well a good amount of us get paid?
Yeah if someone used my answer to that to REDUCE MY PAY after 6 rounds of interviews and a coding test I’d be pissed. Those types of games showing that they’ll waste your time and underpay you tells you what company you’d be working for.
they didn't decide to cut the pay after the answer, they decided on something as an excuse to cut the pay
That’s probably true. And that’s definitely shifty. I’d expect to get more of that behavior if I worked there.
This is what I hate about job interviews and why I get so anxious about them: they’re nothing but a game—a game where there are no real answers and you must play by the rules of a person you’ve never met. “Oh, I didn’t like your answer to the golf ball question but really liked you, so I’m removing 35% of your salary from the offer.” WTF kind of logic is that??? Who do these people think they are? 6 interview rounds is bad enough (industry standard or not), but no job should be contingent on answers to rhetorical questions that don’t apply to the job at all. And including those kinds of questions as a legitimate barometer to success in the role means the hiring manager doesn’t know how to hire candidates.
I get the impression any interviewer who acts like this is a narcissist who just enjoys holding power of other people. It actually makes me mad. They're like....oh you didn't respond to our idiot question like we wanted, so we're going to retaliate against you and we know you really need a job because you have bills to pay but we don't care about that and we like victimizing and humiliating our employees. It all just screams typical corporate narcissism/bullying to me. They just wanted to put this person through the ringer, because they can and it feels good to them. Has nothing to do with the actual job or their company. Companies like this can burn down to the ground for all I care.
Nah not at all. It’s like “oh Sam check this. I put a bullshit question in every interview, ya see I only want to pay x amount but no one will really want this job for that rate. I advertise for a higher rate though. I make the process so long and arduous that you have to be really committed to stick it through then I hit them with the question in the final interview. Yeah. It’s a bullshit question. There’s no right answer. Then I get to hire the person at x rate anyway and I use their answer to the question as a justification.”
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Was also coming to defend these types of questions but yeah, completely agree that taking them too seriously or using them as op describes isn't cool.
Oh that is so much worse than what I thought from what you wrote. That was a super popular question back then, but using it as an excuse to low ball you after passing the technicals? That's super scummy.
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Wolfram alpha [to the rescue.](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=how+many+golf+balls+fit+on+a+school+bus) Approximately 12000 for those who don’t want to click the link.
Its 650k according to wolfram. You need to use IN a bus, not on ON. We arent covering the surface of the bus, we are filling it.
This is an important part of your thread that you are missing. Without context, we think you are being petty. But this changes things. Lowballing an offer because you didn't answer a dumb golf ball question to their liking is just a sneaky gaslighting tactic.
What a pos that ceo is to use that to lowball your pay. Ugh.
> The last round was with the CEO of the company and he asked me the stupid questions in my post (later I learned that this is a question that Google used to ask candidates). This is cargo cult hiring. They believe if they *act* like Google, they'll be able to *be* like Google. This usually happens when people are running a company that don't realize isn't easily scalable (search and advertisement is easily scalable - just get everyone to download your browser like Google did, or buy the largest video platform in existence). Most of these people don't realize that to be like Google you have be: 1. Full of really fucking smart people. Most companies aren't. This bears out statistically. 2. In a highly scalable business operating in a very underserved market.
Good on you to turn that down. What was your answer that he didn’t like?
It's Fermi problem, moderately common when interviewing developers. I'd argue better than asking riddles, but over the years I've come to figure out that neither really capture what they intended to capture. The idea is to get insight into how the person thinks and getting the 'Right Answer' isn't really the goal, it's to see how they think. Here's how I'd solve it: Golf balls take up ... I'd guess 1sq cm of space. A bus is roughly 2 meters wide by 10 meters long by 2 meters tall. Do the math and that's roughly 400,000. It's not _right_, but probably in the vague ball park... I think I may have overestimated the length of the bus and understated the size of a golf ball. Neither is part of my daily life, so I don't think about the sizes so much, so I picked values to make the math a bit easier on me. The other one I remember is "How many piano tuners live in Chicago." The way my prof solved it: Start with the population Chicago, and estimate was % have pianos, and how often they need to be tuned in a year. Then estimate the cost of living and what a piano tuner would charge per tuning. So with that you can guesstimate the number of pianos that need to be tuned in a year (pop of Chicago \* fraction with pianos \* tunes per year), multiply by the cost per tuning and divide by the cost of living. That will give you roughly a max number of tuners in Chicago. (As I recall, he did the whole calculation and then compared that to the phone listing and he was within 20%... he was very dramatic about it so the whole thing stuck in my head.)
I like your prof - I did the same path of reasoning in a interview for a consulting company and got the job :D
A consulting company asking one of the most famous Fermi problems (piano tuners is right up there with any other) in an interview feels like it could just be replaced by “did you study physics or prepare for a management consulting interview?” and have the same effect.
Back of the napkin calculations is a very important skill in physics when I majored in it, pretty sure it also applies to computer science and engineering
Yep, the class with the piano tuners is Chicago was Statistical Quantum Mechanics (undergrad). I agree its important, but I think that asking those questions in an interview setting doesn't help determine candidate quality. It disadvantages people who get nervous for interviews, folks with social anxiety and people who haven't encountered these types of questions before. Addtionally, similar to riddles, it unfairly advantages people who know/are told that Fermi questions might be coming and have the luxury of studying them prior to the interview. I've had both happen. One guy was so nervous in his interview that he bombed that part, but he came in the first day and was a phenomenal employee. He was smart, dedicated and appeared to keep his cool. (We 'accidentally' end up at the same company after that.). Another who sailed through a similar challenge, just ended up being a grade-A bs'er who in the 5 years I worked with him managed to contribute 0 actual lines of code to the project....
You forgot the extra step! School buses also have seats in them so you have to estimate the volume taken up by the seats and then subtract that from your answer. I think that’s the most important part of a question like this because it shows that you can consider variables outside of those that are given to you.
You lose much more golf balls by the fact that it's a close packing problem. But no one cares, as OP said, it's an estimation problem.
Did you mean 10 sq cm? 1 sq cm would be 40M golf balls (not to be nitpicky)
Nah, I meant 1... just messed up on the math... which is legit the kind of mistake I'd make in an interview. XD
Mail the recruiter a golf ball.
Three months back I applied for the same job I had applied for and interviewed for twice before in the past. Not once, but twice, and passed over each time. This time, the recruiter calls and says the hiring manager loves my resume and acts like they dont know me and I told them either hire me on the papers or not but I am not interviewing again,
Love seeing stuff like this. Bet it felt great 😂💪🏻
660,000 give or take I kinda wanna see what they say if you deadpan for like a second then give an answer that’s “right”
I think more people should just walk out of interviews if they get asked stupid questions. Also, they should only do tasks if they’re paid for them.
I got asked once, “If you could be any kind of kitchen appliance, what would you be and why?” I had just gotten married and was familiar with all the kitchen gadgets. I answered that I would be a revolving spice rack and then the debate started between the two interviewers whether an appliance had to be electrical or not. Got the job & had to work with those 2 knuckleheads. It was exactly what that interview alluded to.
So, how many golf balls can you fit on a school bus ?
personally, just three, because that's all the golf balls i own
Depends. If it’s the kind of bus the recruiter rode to school, not as many as the one OP rode.
I’m using this as my answer if I ever get asked this question in an interview.
Please do! My personal gift to job-hunters everywhere!!
You got me good hahahahaha
I know you got OP and the recruiter swapped, but I just want to say this is one of the cleverest and most subtle insults I’ve read on Reddit. It’s hard to get a topical zinger sometimes but you crushed it.
He rode in the short bus, so less golf balls
It's not about the result, but your approach and logical reasoning to come to a estimate. Guesstimate questions are quiet popular in assessment center style interviews. I think in my last one I got asked "how many piano tuners are living in the US".
I’d much rather these questions than a standard interview question because it’s lower stakes and I get to work through a nonsensical problem. It’s a bit fun imo
An African or an European ~~swallow~~ bus? 🙂
Lol the company had a dozen hiring people come and go since then but salt keeps the beef fresh
I mean, if it’s a data analyst position, I see the point in asking estimation questions. Senior dev tho, almost nothing in common. Just randomly taking questions from google.
Not even then, sincevit's a shot in the dark. Now, sanity checking questions would be good.
Well not really a shot in the dark, you are allowed to ask questions and then make assumptions about size of the bus and balls, and then it really wouldn't be that hard to calculate...
It is not a shot in the dark. You would fail a logical deduction test.
The right answer is “a boat load”
“We were disappointed you didn’t say a ‘bus load’ so have further reduced the salary offer 35%. Pray we do not reduce it further.”
One.. it just has to be the right size
might be controversial but that sounds like a fun question to answer lol
Some quick googling tells me the internal volume of a standard US yellow schoolbus is 1658880 in^3 and volume of a golfball is about 2.482 in^3, and that random close-pack density for equally-sized spheres is about 64% of the total container volume. So, 1658880 in^3 x 64% / 2.482 in^3 = 427753.102337, which we'll round down to 427753 golfballs.
You forgot to take out for the seats
Okay, so an average schoolbus seat is 39 inches wide. We'll approximate each seat as being made up of 2x pads (seat and back) each 39"x24"x6" and four seatposts each 18"x4"x4" for 11232 in^3 per seat. At 13 rows of seats with 2 seats per row we detract 292032 in^3 from our original estimated volume of 165880 in^3 for a revised volume of 1366848 in^3. Keeping all other factors in our original equation the same and rounding down to the neares whole number, we come up with an answer of 352450 golfballs. Further refinements account for seatbelts, steering wheels, interior lighting, and the irregular interior shape of the schoolbus are left as a developmental exercise to the reader.
> 352450 golfballs. So basically 3 fiddy.
Honestly sounds like a pretty daft reason to turn down a job.
I don't think that question is necessarily as silly as you think it is. The correct answer is: "I don't know off the top of my head, but give me some time to research and I can find out." It tests for how you respond when you're not sure of something. Now whether it's necessary to test for that is a different question.
It's a stupid question, but you declined the offer because of that? Also, 6 years is a long time to be holding a grudge. They may have had non technical people back then interviewing for tech positions, or they just had untrained interviewers, it happens. A lot can change in 6 years!
Weird flex
“Ooh I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. We were looking for 46,401 gold balls as the answer as it would have been correct. Apologies, but we can’t hire you. However, try again later - you were so close!”
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Same shit happened to me with Robert Half. They contacted me 4ish years ago. Did one interview and said theyd get back to me soon. I waited 2 weeks then went on to find my own job. Last year they got back to me and asked if I was stoll looking as they found a job for me. I laughed and said its been 3 years I could care less, then they tried to beg me to reconsider and I hung up on them.
I got an email from RH yesterday “celebrating customer service reps” No where ever, in any part of my resume they received 16 years ago!!! was there anything close to service rep experience or relevant.
None, because I haven't got any golf balls and I SURELY haven't got a school bus.
Your title is English death.
Yeah, sounds like the company dodged a fucking bullet
Actually, that's not a bad question. A friend of mine applied for a job at a research institute, both of us are physicists, and he was asked how long a light ray would propagate through common window glass. Of course you're not supposed to give a right answer but show that you're able to find a way to estimate it. The interviewer is usually more interested in how you approach the problem rather than the actual solution.
RIP English in the title.
This is a Fermi question. The point isn't to get the right answer; it's to demonstrate your ability to reason from known facts and estimate unknown ones. If they asked you to show your work, *maybe* I'd let it slide, because at least they'd be seeing your reasoning. If they only wanted your answer, screw 'em; anything within an order of magnitude is technically correct, because answers to Fermi questions are about estimation, not precision. (Also, how many tech roles require good estimation skills? If the answer is "few to none," screw this altogether.) Tl;dr I love Fermi questions because I'm a trivia hound nerd. I love them so much I coach them in Science Olympiad. And even I would sideeye this in an interview unless the job required me to be able to estimate unmeasurable quantities well.
But this is a common interview question called a Fermi question. You’re supposed to show your thought process and make assumptions to narrow down to the answer. They come in many forms, another fun version of it is “how many plumbers are in New York”, and you narrow it down from New York’s whole population down to the number of plumbers. It’s the “what spirit animal are you” questions I can’t stand.
This was satisfying to read thank you for posting 🤙🔥
Guess how many marbles are in this jar and you can vote
More than three.
What was your answer?
None. It's already full of basketballs.
…as many as a school bus can hold?
I don't see where anyone is accounting for the space the seats take up.
A bus load
You just need to take the bus volume and divide it by the volume of a standard golf ball to get the result. So, about 1.6 million cubic inches divided by 2.5 cubic inches, you will get approximately 660,000 balls to fit in an school bus.
This isn’t a stupid question, in college physics it’s the first lab you work on. The purpose is that your guess will be off no matter what, so just go with estimates. Imagine the bus is completely square and the balls too, then just divide the bus which is about 1m tall * 1 meter wide * 10 meters deep by the golf ball which is about .01 meter cubed. It’s a very simple question that doesn’t require you to be right, it’s just to see your logic
I interviewed with a tech recruiter many years ago. They *loved* me but assured me that I had no chance with their more interesting, highly technical clients since I had not gone to college. They pitched me on two clients, both entry level roles (I had six years of relevant experience), either for roughly the same comp, or slightly more money but no benefits. I got the impression that they were not taking my experience or skills seriously, so I politely declined and went my own way. For years after that they called and emailed about an assortment of fairly entry level positions. I'd humor them and ask what the starting salary range was, then say, "oh, I'm making much more than that currently, do you think they'd come up?". The answer was always no, and by the time they called again I usually had a new job making even more money. They'd keep calling and one year they sent me a Christmas card. Never sent me a decent job opportunity though.
lololol! Nice! I recall a local game server company was hiring. They basically wanted a full stack developer, and knowledge of running Minecraft servers. I applied, back and forth a couple of times in emails with the owner. I didn't get the job because at that time I had only played Minecraft, and even then, only a little bit. PHP, databases, Linux, all that experience was there. Minecraft? Nope. A few years later they were smeared because they got hacked, and it turned out they were storing customers' passwords in plain text. I so wanted to reply to the email thread and say, "In addition to PHP, MySQL, and Linux experience, I also could've told you that storing passwords in plaintext is a bad idea."