[Udo]

There are questions that are actually fun and I can sort of see them starting a conversation with the right kind of interviewer that tells both parties a lot about who they're dealing with. From the article:

  > How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

Basic economics estimating - probably not that useful and a bit dull, but hey why not. At least the problem has several angles to it that might be fun to explore.

  > Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco

That's a nice one. Kind of open-ended, a lot of things to consider, a lot of ideas to be had.

  > How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

Why? What happens to the interview after you counted them (possibly on a whiteboard)? It's a dead end and the question is dull.

  > A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?

Now this has the potential to be great or absolutely horrible, depending on the intent behind the question and the nature of the interviewer. If it's taken as a "fill in the blanks" kind of challenge it would be a fun way to explore the candidate's imagination. But I'm guessing it's not. It's probably one of those "clever" questions that have only one "right" answer that makes no real sense except creating a few moments of uncomfortable silence.

  > You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so 
  > as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. 
  > The blades will< start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

Again, this could be a fun physics and chemistry question and I see a couple of possible solutions that might or might not work out - might be fun exploring them. But again, it sounds more like a trick question with one standardized answer. Bad.

The problem with trick questions and standardized answers is that the nature of the question makes the candidate uneasy and even if they eventually figure it out, nobody will have learned anything during the process. It's more like a hazing, not a hiring interview.

[fduran]

> A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?

horrible question, it took me a few seconds to figure out they are talking about the game Monopoly.

[Udo]

Yeah, but why? Nobody should be surprised that familiarity with Monopoly rules is a bad predictor for job performance (and I'm not only saying that because I suck at these).

[yen223]

Not sure what the point of this question is. It seems all it does is to test whether the candidate has heard of Monopoly.

[jimmaswell]

I'm familiar with Monopoly and I didn't think of Monopoly when I read the question.

[s_kilk]

Simple, the point is to boost the interviewers ego, nothing more. This example is the kind of mean-spirited bullshit that leads me to loathe brain-teasers.

[ctdonath]

A horrible question for many reasons. It requires not just knowledge of Monopoly, but instant recollection thereof. It says more about the questioner's limited world view (presumes everyone knows about X, where X is irrelevant to the job) than the interviewer's intelligence. It is a learnable answer: skim How Would You Move Mt. Fuji? and similar "clever question" books and you can recall the answer rather than deducing it (the latter being far more important to the job). The worst part, I think, is the automatic dismissal of any creative & applicable "wrong" answer; before seeing the "Monopoly" reference, I was imagining some despairing ex-executive cashing out his life savings, putting it in the car with a can of gasoline, pushing it down a hill into the offending hotel and watching it all go up in smoke ... but because I didn't say "Monopoly", no credit for creativity etc.

On that last point, I recall interviewing at Microsoft: Asked questions about automatic control of venetian blinds, for one question I knew I was missing some obvious simple checkbox-type answer. I told her "I know I'm missing the obvious here, so I'm just gonna pick some alternative solution and talk thru it so you can see how I think" and proceeded to elaborate on a complex yet viable & marketing-impressive implementation. Wasn't gonna let some "correct" answer stand in my way...

[chinpokomon]

Oh, that's what I was supposed to get out of that question? I was probably 5 the last time I played the actual board game. I've played computer versions since then, so pushing the car wasn't even a verb that I'd use to describe the game play. The only interesting aspects of the game for me are the studies about game balance for particular properties. I never aspired to be a great monopoly player, and that shows when I'd play my friends. As an interview question, this one seems pretty lousy.

[moron4hire]

how horribly culturally specific.

[Plutor]

Not necessarily (and actually that would be a terrible answer. The highest rent in Monopoly with a hotel is $2000, and I would hardly call that a "fortune".

The point of the question is to establish how well you gather additional information when the initial description is unsatisfactory. Anyone who's been an engineer knows you have to do this every single day.

(Not that it's a good interview question.)

[ant512]

Monopoly was first published in 1935 and the prices haven't increased since. That makes the cost of a stay at the most expensive hotel $34,000 in today's money, which is far more than I'd ever pay to stay at a real hotel...

Ignoring inflation, you can compare the price of staying at that hotel with buying the land it's built on for a relative estimation of the cost.

[wavefunction]

Especially since I always picked the top-hat.

[127001brewer]

It's more like a hazing, not a hiring interview.

It seems like a hazing but perhaps it's a bias on the part of the person interviewing. Meaning, the interviewer wants to work with people very much like themselves, instead of hiring the best candidate.

I think one of the best interview strategies was a recent posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5779406

...or anything similar to the FizzBuzz problem.

[chinpokomon]

I think Vaughn and Wilson had the best answer to the blender question in the Internship trailer I saw... just lie down. those blades will just spin over your head and the motor will eventually overheat and fail. I'm sure there is something about densities they are looking for, but it doesn't strike me as a great question. Manhole covers being round is more interesting, but not really a good indicator about how well you can code.