Author Topic: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!  (Read 22165 times)

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Online wraper

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #50 on: April 23, 2017, 10:38:58 am »
A typical solution would read:
Canada is about 10M people. (Underestimate?)
A person eats about a pound a day of beef (over?) and a gallon of milk (over?).
.....
With such calculations based on guesses you will easily end up 20 times off the real figure. Giving an answer to such a question would mean that you will figure out some BS instead of saying you need to do a research to give a proper answer.

20 times?  See-- it's a quite accurate method, much better than guessing!

I mean, if the answer could be literally any natural number, it could be 1, it could be 1,213,796,659, it could be 2, it could be near infinity!

Getting within a factor of 20 is an improbably good guess!

Tim
If calculating purely milk cows you need to guess how much milk do people drink, how much milk one cow gives, how long one cow lives and young replacement cow grows, how much milk goes into different products like yogurt, milk powder, butter, chocolate, whatever (even glues). Guess more than just milk sold as is. That is without export and import.
 

Offline Kuro

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #51 on: April 23, 2017, 12:43:08 pm »
I have no doubt some of these interviewers think they are akin to Psychologists. Nothing can be further from the truth.

And even if they were, psychology is not a real science.  ;-]
They are just modern day witchdoctors.

No, they're just smart enough to leave the result of the interview vague enough so they can interprete it as they like and hire whichever person is most to their personal liking, the liking of the superior or whatever. I witnessed the preparation of a job interview for department at my previous employer, and the questions were made exactly to match a certain candidate which the manager hoped to get. He didn't like the other candidates (too old, female etc). He'd made up is mind in the practical exam first round, but internal rules forced him to invite at least 5 people for an interview.

The same trick was used to grant contracts (was a public company and rules are normally very strict regarding fair competition). To get the favourite candidate, a specific feature of the hard/software was listed as a must (even if we never would use it).
« Last Edit: April 23, 2017, 12:45:06 pm by Kuro »
The universe is made of protons, neutrons, electrons and morons - March for Science 2017
 

Offline vodka

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #52 on: April 23, 2017, 03:27:29 pm »
I have no doubt some of these interviewers think they are akin to Psychologists. Nothing can be further from the truth.

And even if they were, psychology is not a real science.  ;-]
They are just modern day witchdoctors.

No, they're just smart enough to leave the result of the interview vague enough so they can interprete it as they like and hire whichever person is most to their personal liking, the liking of the superior or whatever. I witnessed the preparation of a job interview for department at my previous employer, and the questions were made exactly to match a certain candidate which the manager hoped to get. He didn't like the other candidates (too old, female etc). He'd made up is mind in the practical exam first round, but internal rules forced him to invite at least 5 people for an interview.

The same trick was used to grant contracts (was a public company and rules are normally very strict regarding fair competition). To get the favourite candidate, a specific feature of the hard/software was listed as a must (even if we never would use it).


I give the sensation  that when the question of interview match  with a cadidate and the boss o manager engage the sight on him very fast without looking at to other.
That has bad signal .Here these sorts of behaviour is called "enchufados" (plugged).  These consist that the managers or  the bosses have to put to friend or son from somebody on a determinate place of the corporation. For not  be so sassy, they treat the interviews.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #53 on: April 23, 2017, 03:46:20 pm »
At the second interview he asked the weirdest question ever: "Can you please check my referees AFTER I get the job, rather than before?" :wtf: But we checked his references before and they were impressive.

Why :wtf:? Here in Blighty it's pretty normal to to not take up references until after a written job offer has been made and make a written job offer "subject to contract and satisfactory references". Otherwise you're going to alert their current employer that they're looking for a new job, which many candidates will not want, for many perfectly good reasons, and exhaust the goodwill of referees in general by asking them for references more times than are strictly necessary.

As it is, I don't put much store in references anyway. Too much opportunity for the reference to be inaccurate because of varying factors including avoiding saying bad things for liability avoidance reasons, avoiding saying good things because the candidates previous manager is an evil lying bastard who doesn't want to lose someone, to HR departments issuing bland boilerplace references based on some magic score from collected annual appraisal forms.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #54 on: April 23, 2017, 03:54:00 pm »
The same trick was used to grant contracts (was a public company and rules are normally very strict regarding fair competition). To get the favourite candidate, a specific feature of the hard/software was listed as a must (even if we never would use it).

Just like the product information sheets for someone's widget ... which include a cut and paste paragraph for people to stick into the project BOM list so that their widget matches the specifications perfectly.
 

Offline vodka

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #55 on: April 23, 2017, 04:00:22 pm »
I was interviewing for a job in facilities maintenance and got the two following questions, "How do you feel about the sight of your own blood" and "Does handling dangerous animals cause you anxiety?"

I was being hired as an electrician and I'm not sure the purpose behind the questions, but I guess they liked my answers and gave me the job.  I spent two years there and neither one of those situations came up.
.

Q:How do you feel about the sight of your own blood?

A:
https://youtu.be/Y8YP65RX1-I?t=1m19s

Do you hire me ?



« Last Edit: April 23, 2017, 04:03:26 pm by vodka »
 

Offline vodka

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #56 on: April 23, 2017, 04:22:01 pm »
At the second interview he asked the weirdest question ever: "Can you please check my referees AFTER I get the job, rather than before?" :wtf: But we checked his references before and they were impressive.

Why :wtf:? Here in Blighty it's pretty normal to to not take up references until after a written job offer has been made and make a written job offer "subject to contract and satisfactory references". Otherwise you're going to alert their current employer that they're looking for a new job, which many candidates will not want, for many perfectly good reasons, and exhaust the goodwill of referees in general by asking them for references more times than are strictly necessary.

As it is, I don't put much store in references anyway. Too much opportunity for the reference to be inaccurate because of varying factors including avoiding saying bad things for liability avoidance reasons, avoiding saying good things because the candidates previous manager is an evil lying bastard who doesn't want to lose someone, to HR departments issuing bland boilerplace references based on some magic score from collected annual appraisal forms.

By logic  before hiring , the corporation  investigate to candidate and  if he seems trustworthy the corporation catch him unless that the UK corporation have a rescind  article.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #57 on: April 23, 2017, 04:45:29 pm »

By logic  before hiring , the corporation  investigate to candidate and  if he seems trustworthy the corporation catch him unless that the UK corporation have a rescind  article.

I literally, and I suspect that I'm speaking for some other people here too, cannot understand what you're trying to say.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Landrew2390

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #58 on: April 23, 2017, 09:19:07 pm »
Q:How do you feel about the sight of your own blood?

A:
https://youtu.be/Y8YP65RX1-I?t=1m19s

Do you hire me ?

Considering I found parts of two dead bodies and was shot at on one occasion while working that job, you'd probably fit right in.  The money was really good, but I decided it wasn't worth the risk.  I quit after 16 months.
Oh look, a new hobby . . .
 

Offline moz

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #59 on: April 23, 2017, 10:03:00 pm »
Q: How many cows does Canada have?

I've always wanted to be asked a question like that but never have. Working as a programmer I have spent a great deal of time in meetings where questions like this are asked entirely genuinely by people who expect to hold me to the answers.

"we want a softwares"
"Excellent. I write software."
"How long will it take?"
"that depends on what it has to do"
"we need it by the end of June"

So having a question like that in a job interview... most likely it's management by fad but ten years behind the times. Just wait for the company laser tag team-building exercise.

The only really strange questions I've had in job interviews have been about things they haven't advertised. My current role was listed as "experienced Delphi developer" so the interview was naturally about embedded C development. Unsurprisingly, I've done no Delphi development in the 3+ years since I started here.
 

Offline Delta

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #60 on: April 23, 2017, 10:23:49 pm »
Interviewer: "So what would you say is your worst attribute?"

Me: "My honesty."

I: "Well I don't think honesty is a negative attribute, in fact, I think it's a big positive."

M: "I don't give a flying fuck what you think."
 
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Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #61 on: April 24, 2017, 12:23:37 am »
At the second interview he asked the weirdest question ever: "Can you please check my referees AFTER I get the job, rather than before?" :wtf: But we checked his references before and they were impressive.

Why :wtf:? Here in Blighty it's pretty normal to to not take up references until after a written job offer has been made and make a written job offer "subject to contract and satisfactory references". Otherwise you're going to alert their current employer that they're looking for a new job, which many candidates will not want, for many perfectly good reasons, and exhaust the goodwill of referees in general by asking them for references more times than are strictly necessary.

As it is, I don't put much store in references anyway. Too much opportunity for the reference to be inaccurate because of varying factors including avoiding saying bad things for liability avoidance reasons, avoiding saying good things because the candidates previous manager is an evil lying bastard who doesn't want to lose someone, to HR departments issuing bland boilerplace references based on some magic score from collected annual appraisal forms.

Blighty? Never heard of it so I Googled it. We call England "Pommyland", a land full of Poms. The etymology of Poms is debatable. The most popular (which is in fact wrong) is Prisoner Of Mother England. The most likely is Pom is a short form of Pomegranate, because that the was colour the fair skinned British convicts turned as they arrived in this sunburnt country in the 1800's. But up until the 1850's, new arrivals were called "new chums". We never hear the term "new chum" these days. The young people have no idea what it means because our schools do not teach Australian history and most, including the education department, don't care about our rich and colourful history. Well, I learnt something new today - Blighty.

I have always been suspicious of references. After all, they would generally pick their friends. Furthermore, if you have worked for a place for a long time where there is low turnover, the number and quality of references would be slim. An electronic engineer who reported to me up until recently got a terrific job in Switzerland. Even though I was his manager, I offered to be a reference. The Swiss company never asked for any references. Apparently they don't bother with them there as a general rule. In Australia, you are always asked for references.

Years ago I was called as a reference to one of the most hopeless dim-witted "engineers" I have ever come across (he was also a thief of company property and was fired). I told the truth, as it was. I was not going to lie to get this character a job. Besides, your own integrity would be on the line. I say it like it is. In the majority of cases, that would be favourable to the job seeker because most engineers and technicians I have worked with have been really good.
 

Offline Harb

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #62 on: April 24, 2017, 04:46:29 am »
Not a Job interview, but I once got asked if I could reduce my Quote on a big job any further to get closer to the opposition.........
I said No
I got the job on the spot and he said If I said yes it would be obvious I didn't understand the magnitude of what I was quoting for and he would have made me walk.......sometimes it pays to play hardball.

Sadly I have lost a few also, but got to sit back and watch the winning bidder fall on their arses lol  :-DD
 

Offline BradC

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #63 on: April 24, 2017, 07:52:58 am »
Not a Job interview, but I once got asked if I could reduce my Quote on a big job any further to get closer to the opposition.........
I said No

I used to get that a lot. I sat down with a client one day and explained that my price was both my "best Sunday price" and my only price. If he wanted to play those games then next time I was happy to submit a grossly inflated figure and let him haggle me down so he could walk away feeling like he'd "won". Never got a quibble again, and word got around town pretty quick.
 

Offline matts-uk

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #64 on: April 24, 2017, 08:43:28 am »
Military Academies also train every student to be leaders, stress handling, character, endurance... whereas most university would not require leadership training and other positive but non-academic attributes.
That's great but those positive attributes can be had from a variety of other sources.  As you say, Military training instils certain things - Regimentation, arrogance, the belief that everyone should share the same values, high regard for authority and maintaining the status quo.  So sure, if you want a conformist, with a narrow view of the World, hire the Military.

Living near a Military town I have had my share of them.  I remember one particularly earnest project manager.  He was completely flummoxed by an unassuming bloke in the technical team, who arrived late every morning, sat on the loo for a couple hours reading printouts, before telling the rest of us how to clear the snag list and going home early.  The PM spent most of his time barking at everyone for not working exactly how he would like them to, eventually disappeared up his own backside and had a nervous breakdown. 

Quote
Since you think everyone is trying to shaft you, they very well may be!  But you must look inward to figure out why you have such effect on people.
If you think how everyone might shaft you, you are a critical thinker.  If you think everyone is trying to shaft you, that is paranoia :0

HR departments do not like any type of conflict.  Engineers arguing the merits of competing technical solutions completely confuses them.  I once got a very steely look from the HR rep when I answered a question, "Well, I wish I could solve all my problems just by talking to people but computers don't do compromise, in my experience."

To answer the original questions

Q: "How many cows in Canada?"
A: "I do not know, how many cows are there in Canada?"

My favourite question.
Q: "What frustrates you?"
A: Thinks, Open ended questions in interviews is what frustrates me.

 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #65 on: April 24, 2017, 01:21:10 pm »
One question I ask candidates is along the lines of:

You have a two identical machines and in each of them are 100 replaceable parts. You have no circuit diagrams, service manual or electrical test tools. One of the machines has a fault which is in any one of its 100 parts. The fault is always present in the faulty part when power is on. Powering off the machines, removing and replacing any number of parts, powering the machines back on and checking for the fault, takes an average of 10 minutes all up.

Your manager has given you the job to find the fault as quickly as possible. He asks you, "If you start working on it now, how much time do you need to definitely have identified the faulty part?
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #66 on: April 24, 2017, 01:44:14 pm »
In theory, one hour, in practice, one day, 'cause keeping track of 100 parts might be a daunting task.
Am I hired?

 ;D

Offline Rerouter

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #67 on: April 24, 2017, 01:47:08 pm »
Your manager has given you the job to find the fault as quickly as possible. He asks you, "If you start working on it now, how much time do you need to definitely have identified the faulty part?

well this is the point where there is a catch "any number of parts", so the logical approximation would be swap 50 of them between machines on the first go, if the fault remains, you now only have 50 left to check, and so on. taking 10 (50), 20 (25), 30 (12/13), 40 (6/7), 50, (3/4), 60 (1/2), 70 (1/1) minutes, so a little over an hour + a 1.2x modifier for shit happens. (this is the same approach i take to finding options in eeproms,
« Last Edit: April 24, 2017, 02:00:28 pm by Rerouter »
 

Offline Delta

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #68 on: April 24, 2017, 01:55:41 pm »
One question I ask candidates is along the lines of:

You have a two identical machines and in each of them are 100 replaceable parts. You have no circuit diagrams, service manual or electrical test tools. One of the machines has a fault which is in any one of its 100 parts. The fault is always present in the faulty part when power is on. Powering off the machines, removing and replacing any number of parts, powering the machines back on and checking for the fault, takes an average of 10 minutes all up.

Your manager has given you the job to find the fault as quickly as possible. He asks you, "If you start working on it now, how much time do you need to definitely have identified the faulty part?

One hour twenty minutes.

The half-split method was by far the most important concept I have ever been taught.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #69 on: April 24, 2017, 02:05:37 pm »
One question I ask candidates is along the lines of:

You have a two identical machines and in each of them are 100 replaceable parts. You have no circuit diagrams, service manual or electrical test tools. One of the machines has a fault which is in any one of its 100 parts. The fault is always present in the faulty part when power is on. Powering off the machines, removing and replacing any number of parts, powering the machines back on and checking for the fault, takes an average of 10 minutes all up.

Your manager has given you the job to find the fault as quickly as possible. He asks you, "If you start working on it now, how much time do you need to definitely have identified the faulty part?

Great question if you want to hire a mathematician or possibly a programmer, but a lousy question if you want to hire anybody practical because the question's assumption that what would in real life an O(nm) operation can be reduced to an O(1) operation is about as unrealistic as assumptions in mathematical models can get. A practical person would immediately trip at the "Hold on, that sounds ridiculous" point and, even if they have the innate maths ability to solve the question quickly or recognise it as a binary search, would be distracted by thinking "This guy/gal hasn't a clue how the real world works, do I want to have to work for them?". The only time I'd ask this if I was hiring an engineer was if the answer I was hoping for was "Your assumption is crazy".
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #70 on: April 24, 2017, 02:09:27 pm »
One question I ask candidates is along the lines of:

You have a two identical machines and in each of them are 100 replaceable parts. You have no circuit diagrams, service manual or electrical test tools. One of the machines has a fault which is in any one of its 100 parts. The fault is always present in the faulty part when power is on. Powering off the machines, removing and replacing any number of parts, powering the machines back on and checking for the fault, takes an average of 10 minutes all up.

Your manager has given you the job to find the fault as quickly as possible. He asks you, "If you start working on it now, how much time do you need to definitely have identified the faulty part?

Great question if you want to hire a mathematician or possibly a programmer, but a lousy question if you want to hire anybody practical because the question's assumption that what would in real life an O(nm) operation can be reduced to an O(1) operation is about as unrealistic as assumptions in mathematical models can get. A practical person would immediately trip at the "Hold on, that sounds ridiculous" point and, even if they have the innate maths ability to solve the question quickly or recognise it as a binary search, would be distracted by thinking "This guy/gal hasn't a clue how the real world works, do I want to have to work for them?". The only time I'd ask this if I was hiring an engineer was if the answer I was hoping for was "Your assumption is crazy".

Before getting too critical, I would establish the context of this question.

That will have a rather LARGE effect on the sort of answers that could be offered.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #71 on: April 25, 2017, 12:23:03 am »
Great question if you want to hire a mathematician or possibly a programmer, but a lousy question if you want to hire anybody practical because the question's assumption that what would in real life an O(nm) operation can be reduced to an O(1) operation is about as unrealistic as assumptions in mathematical models can get. A practical person would immediately trip at the "Hold on, that sounds ridiculous" point and, even if they have the innate maths ability to solve the question quickly or recognise it as a binary search, would be distracted by thinking "This guy/gal hasn't a clue how the real world works, do I want to have to work for them?". The only time I'd ask this if I was hiring an engineer was if the answer I was hoping for was "Your assumption is crazy".

In actual fact the answers I get are quite interesting. Seventy minutes is the best answer, although 80 is OK if you assume some initial fault observance time, but putting in a fudge factor is also acceptable. One applicant said 1000 minutes, because you have to swap out each board one at a time. Not good. When we did a reference check back to the US where he had worked, the response was not good either. He did not get the job.

In my opinion, good engineers are highly practical people. In fact, I find impractical engineers to be pretty hopeless, especially if they are given the job of designing a serviceable machine. That is why often the best engineers are those who have also worked as service technicians - debugging boards or fixing machines in the field for example. That is a plus in winning a job. I have seen some really terrible machines designed by mechanical engineers or electronics engineers who had no real world practical experience, managed by people who have no clue either.

A good practical question: "Why would you back annotate a PCB?"
Another good practical question: "Why would you NOT back annotate a PCB?"
 

Offline moz

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #72 on: April 25, 2017, 12:28:59 am »
You have a two identical machines and in each of them are 100 replaceable parts. ... Powering off the machines, removing and replacing any number of parts, powering the machines back on and checking for the fault, takes an average of 10 minutes all up.

I would ask: what is the probability of breaking something when changing a part? Then: how many of those replaceable parts are necessary for the machine to function. Can we open it up, leave the covers and fasteners on the desk, and expect it to work? Of those 100 replaceable parts, probably about 20 are necessary for it to work and the other 80 hold everything else together.

I've never seen a machine where taking it apart, fiddling with it, then putting it back together could never ever break anything. The converse is also true: taking it apart and putting it back together might clear the fault. Or as AvE says: if it's not broken we'll keep fixing it until it is.

« Last Edit: April 25, 2017, 12:30:57 am by moz »
 

Offline vk6zgo

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #73 on: April 25, 2017, 02:42:44 am »
You have a two identical machines and in each of them are 100 replaceable parts. ... Powering off the machines, removing and replacing any number of parts, powering the machines back on and checking for the fault, takes an average of 10 minutes all up.

I would ask: what is the probability of breaking something when changing a part? Then: how many of those replaceable parts are necessary for the machine to function. Can we open it up, leave the covers and fasteners on the desk, and expect it to work? Of those 100 replaceable parts, probably about 20 are necessary for it to work and the other 80 hold everything else together.

I've never seen a machine where taking it apart, fiddling with it, then putting it back together could never ever break anything. The converse is also true: taking it apart and putting it back together might clear the fault. Or as AvE says: if it's not broken we'll keep fixing it until it is.

My reaction,too-------So easy to end up with two faulty machines!

No test gear & so on is a pretty good approximation of where a home mechanic is when fixing a particular type of car the first time, yet people do that all the time, without the aid of a spare "good" car!

After all, we have our eyes, ears, sense of smell, & that of touch.

The first thing I would do is, first, listen (if the thing works at all), then take off the covers & look,   sniff, & feel(with the power off).
 

Online RoGeorge

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Re: Strangest and most bizzare work interview question and answer!
« Reply #74 on: April 25, 2017, 12:40:04 pm »
Seventy minutes is the best answer

The shortest time is 60, and the longest is 70, because one can not replace a fraction of a component. One need to work with integers. Example: 100, 50, 25, 12, 6, 3, 1.
Each comma has a cost of 10 minutes, so 60 minutes for the above example. The probability of finding the defect in 60 minutes is almost fifty-fifty (43.75%).

Why do you consider 70 to be the best answer?


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