Hacker News Comments on
How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers
·
4
HN comments
- This course is unranked · view top recommended courses
Hacker News Stories and Comments
All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.Interestingly, Microsoft was actually one of the more prolific early-adopters of these techniques, back when PageRank was just a gleam in Larry's eye.http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount-Microsofts-Puzzle/dp/...
If anyone is interested in answering such questions, or are interviewing for positions that would require them to answer such questions, they should read the following book:http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount-Microsofts-Puzzle/dp/...
In my past life, I used to work in private equity, and as such before landing that job has a lot of interviews which posed such questions for trading, banking, quant hedge funds etc.
The ridiculousness of these questions amazes me; most companies spit out the same 1000 questions or so across multiple candidates, and eventually people just learn the answers to such questions and memorize them.
I think case interviews, where you actually have to solve problems are much more effective, and can be used towards different positions.
You can do useful mental exercises for Google interviews, or other interviews, by working through "puzzle questions" and similar problems. But if a world of limited time, this might not be the best use of your prep time.A good source for the history of these questions and interview style, as well as a bevy of sample questions, can be found in "How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?" http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount-Microsofts-Puzzle/dp/...
⬐ ianlThe best exercises are to look for ACM Programming Contest Questions.Here are some programming contest questions from 2005 from an Atlantic Canada programming contest http://projects.cs.dal.ca/apics/contest05/
There is a book that has some of the same questions, and a lot more. It's "How would you move Mount Fuji" by William Poundstone (http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount-Microsofts-Puzzle/dp/...). As stated in some of the comments already posted, asking this kind of questions in interviews is by now "deprecated" (or even "considered harmful"), because they are in the public domain.