Folks, wanna know something fun?
I just had a phone interview with a Major Company in the Netherlands.
A long interview.I didn't get the job, I'm sure, but the questions I was asked were.. hmm.. odd. Half hour spent on tech stuff ( e.g. "what's the difference between Debug.Write and Trace.Write?" and "how would you implement a deep copy interface?" ).
One and a half hour spent on ..err.. three questions.. err.. (the following text is abridged)
Interviewer (with thick dutch accent): "Why are manhole covers round?"
G: "Come again?"
I: "Why are manhole covers round? You know the things you use to cover the holes in the ground on the streets."
G: "Err.. because the hole in the floor is round?"
I: "No other reason? Why not making them square? Or rectangular?"
G: "Err.. well, why would them make manhole covers square when the hole is round?"
I: "Is the hole always round?" (and here I started wondering if this was a joke or something, or if the guy was a lil fruity)
G: "Hmm.. a manhole cover covers a hole made so that a man has to go through it, and the cross section of a man is roundish, plus, if I recall correctly, the best shape to withstand the pressure would be a sphere, in the case of a vessel like a batisphere, or a cilinder, in the case when you need more space, like a sub, and in the case of a long tunnel, to withstand the pressure from the ground, a cilinder would do the job, so I'd say that manhole covers are always round."
I: "Ok, thanks."
Interviewer #2: "Hi, this is
G: "Howdy Fronk."
I2: "So, let's say you're in front of a door.. this door is closed, and there is a switchplate. On this plate there are three switches, each switch is attached to a light bulb inside the room. You need to check which switch controls which bulb, but you can't open the door but one time. How would you do it?"
G (who is starting to catch the drift and gettin a lil testy): "Why can't I open the door?"
I2: "Because the switches lock the moment you open the door, and closing the door again won't help."
G: "You've been asked this before, huh?"
I2: "Yes, we heard them all."
G: "Well.. hmmm.. in this case.."
I2: "Yes?"
G: "I'd ask whomever wired up the place. He should have the drawings."
I2: "Heheh. He's not around, this place is old and noone remembers what happened and who built what."
G: "Then I would turn off all the switches, remove the switchplate, rip the first cable, short the second, and leave the third be. Then put the plate up, turn everything on, and open the door. The first one will control the light that's off, the second one the light that's blown, and the third will be on."
I2: "..err.. ok.. that's a way.. but what if you want all the lights to be on?"
G: "Then I'm out of luck, the door's open by now."
I: "Yes yes, good. Listen, there're four jars, all equal, all containing the same exact number of pills, each pill is equal to the other, in color, shape, taste, etc, except that in one jar the pills are bad and they weigh the regular pill's weight plus 1. You can make only one measurement, how would you find out which jar contains the bad pills?"
G (hungry and slightly annoyed at this point): "The pills are bad?"
I:" Yes, bad."
G: "Like they taste bad, or are they poisonous? Because if they just taste bad.."
I: "No no, they taste good but they are poisonous, you can't eat them or you die."
G: "And in everything else, bar the weight, they are the same as the others?"
I: "Yes."
G: "So I read the label."
I: "Too easy. The evil mastermind made all the labels the same."
G: "Hmmm.."
I: "Go on.."
G: "How long does the poison take to kill me?"
I: "It's immediate, you don't have time to go to the ER."
G: "Do you have a dog?"
I: "Why?"
G: "Simple, I give one of each pills to the dog and see what happens."
I: "You can't do that!"
G: "You don't have a dog?"
I: "The dog doesn't want the pills!"
G: "I force feed it."
I: "That's inhumane!"
G : "I didn't say I force feed you, I said I force feed your dog."
I: "You can't kill the dog! There are no dogs, you can only weight them."
G: "How about a cat? Even a stray would do."
I: "No killing animals!"
G: "Ok, then I force feed the evil mastermind."
I: "No!"
G: "Why not? He tried to trick me, he put the wrong labels, and he won't tell me which one is the bad one, and even if he would tell me, how could I trust him?"
I: "You can't do that! You can't find the guy!"
G: "Then I take his family. At the very least, he has a mother."
I: "You can't kill anyone!!"
G: "Not even his pets?"
I: "NO!"
G: "Then I toss the pills and forget about it."
I: "You can't, you want the pills."
G: "No I don't. You want the pills, but you don't give me any way to find out. Using only the weight is not enough, because depending on the number of pills the difference could be very minimal, besides I don't see much space for error, let alone human error. Besides if the evil mastermind has changed the labels, what prevented him from adding extra weight to the other jars, or change the weight of the jar cap, or anything else that would give me a false positive? Clearly this is not a scientific lab I'm working in, otherwise I would just do some test on the pills themselves and I would be able to try more than one measurement, therefore in extreme cases, one has to rely on extreme acts." (and here I resisted from yelling "and now gimme your mutt!!", but I so wanted..)
I: "..yes.."
I2 (who had been laughing in the background since the dog question above): "Thank you, do you have any questions for us?"
And from here it was the usual pleasantries "don't call us, we'll call you" and that was it.
If I do get the job, I don't think it will be in development.
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