How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

adamba writes: "Why are manhole covers round?" "How many gas stations are there in the United States?" "How would you design a remote control for venetian blinds?" "What company is famous for interview questions like those?" You might not know the answer to the first three questions, but you probably know the last one. The notion of asking "Microsoft interview questions," quick logic puzzles and brainteasers, has become accepted wisdom for many technology companies. In comparison, the questions asked during traditional interviews, such as "Describe your typical day" and "What is your greatest weakness?" seem too simplistic, too easy to handle with a prepared answer, too prone to allowing weak candidates to slip through: they simply don't reveal enough about the person. While the Microsoft questions appear to be a better way to evaluate people, the issue has never really been seriously examined. Microsoft's success would seem to make the argument pointless: Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?" Read on for an interesting look at the details and justifications for this kind of interview.

How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle
author	William Poundstone
pages	288
publisher	Little Brown & Company
rating	9
reviewer	Adam Barr
ISBN	0316919160
summary	The scoop on Microsoft interviews--with answers!

Now comes a new book, How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers by science writer William Poundstone. Poundstone talked to various people who have been involved in Microsoft hiring, including those who were interviewed, and those who gave interviews (full disclosure: I worked at Microsoft for ten years and was one of the people he talked to). He includes a lengthy list of questions, and most interestingly for many people, he also includes answers.

In the book, Poundstone traces the origins of this type of question, providing some fascinating information on the history of intelligence testing. He then chronicles how a certain type of puzzle interview caught on in the high-tech industry. Microsoft was not the first company to ask such questions, but it certainly popularized it.

Poundstone explains that responding to a problem you can't solve could be thought of as the fundamental problem in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and then continues,

"The problems used in AI research have often been puzzles or games. These are simpler and more clearly defined than the complex problems of the real world. They too involve the elements of logic, insight, and intuition that pertain to real problems. Many of the people at Microsoft follow AI work closely, of course, and this may help to explain what must strike some readers as peculiar--their supreme confidence that silly little puzzles have a bearing on the real world."

It could be--or maybe Microsoft employees assume that since they were hired that way, it's a great way to hire (and complaints from those who were not hired are just sour grapes). Most developers I knew thought of AI as a pretty academic discipline, and were more concerned with putting a dialog box up at the right location on the screen than trying to pass the Turing Test.

Nevertheless, as companies seek to emulate Microsoft, the questions have caught on elsewhere. And as Poundstone put it, such questions have now "metastasized" to other industries, such as finance.

This makes the effectiveness of these questions an important issue. Poundstone first presents evidence that "Where do you see yourself in five years" and "What are you most proud of" are fairly pointless questions. In one experiment he describes, two trained interviewers conducted interviews with a group of volunteers. Their evaluations were compared to those of another group who saw a fifteen second video of the interview: the candidate entering the room, shaking hands, and sitting down. The opinions correlated strongly; in other words, when you are sitting in an interview telling the interviewer what you do on your day off and what the last book you read was, the interviewer has already made up his or her mind, based on who knows what subjective criteria. As Poundstone laments, "This would be funny if it weren't tragic."

Puzzle interviews could hardly be worse than that, but it turns out the evidence that they are better is doubtful. Poundstone shows how intelligence tests are on very dubious scientific standing, and points out that Microsoft's interviews are a form of IQ test, even though Microsoft does not admit that publicly. In his 1972 book of puzzles Games for the Superintelligent, Mensa member James Fixx wrote, "If you don't particularly enjoy the kinds of puzzles and problems we're talking about here, that fact alone says nothing about your intelligence in general". Yet virtually every Microsoft employee accepts the "obvious" rationale, that only people who do well in logic puzzles will do well at Microsoft.

There is another important point about puzzle-based interviews: although you would think that they were naturally more objective than traditional interviews--more black or white, right or wrong, and therefore less subject to interpretation by the interviewer--in fact, interviewers' evaluation of answers can be extremely subjective. Once you have formed your impression of a candidate from the enter/handshake/sit-down routine at the start of the interview, it is easy to rationalize a candidate's performance in an interview, either positively or negatively. They needed a bunch of hints to get the answer? Sure, but they were just small hints and it's a tough problem. They got the correct answer right away? No fair, they must have seen it before.

Given the ease with which the answers to logic puzzles can be spun, it is highly probable that Microsoft interviewers are also making fifteen-second judgements of candidates, without even realizing it.

Three years ago Malcolm Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article about job interviews called The New-Boy Network. Gladwell quotes much of the same research as Poundstone, and relates the story of Nolan Myers, a Harvard senior who is being recruited by Tellme and Microsoft. He has done a one-hour interview with Hadi Partovi of Tellme, and spoken to Gladwell, the author, in a coffee shop for about ninety minutes. His initial interaction with Microsoft was much briefer: he asked Steve Ballmer a question during an on-campus event, which led to an exchange of emails.

As Gladwell writes, "What convinced Ballmer he wanted Myers? A glimpse! He caught a little slice of Nolan Myers in action and--just like that--the C.E.O. of a four-hundred-billion-dollar company was calling a college senior in his dorm room. Ballmer somehow knew he liked Myers, the same way Hadi Partovi knew, and the same way I knew after our little chat at Au Bon Pain."

So Steve Ballmer, who obviously does not feel that he is choosing people based on traditional interviewing techniques, and in fact was one of the originators of the "Microsoft questions," is more prone to making fifteen-second judgements than he would probably admit.

The flaw, if any, may simply be in ascribing too much value to the puzzles themselves. The actual questions may be secondary: the company might do as well asking geek-centric trivia questions, like "What was the name of Lord Byron's niece?" That does not mean Microsoft is hiring the same people that an investment bank is going to hire. The cues they look for may be different: instead of a firm handshake and the right tie, they may be looking for intelligent eyes and fast speech, or whatever non-verbal cues ubergeeks throw off.

A Microsoft interview candidate will typically talk to four or five employees, and in general must get a "hire" recommendation from all of them. Even if the employees are actually basing their recommendations not on puzzle-solving ability but on a subconscious evaluation, it is unlikely that all of them will be subconsciously using the same criteria. Emitting the proper signals to satisfy four different Microsoft employees may be as good a judge of a candidate as any, and Microsoft may be good at interviewing simply because it tends to hire people that are similar in some unknown way to the current group of employees. If another company adopts puzzle interviews, they may discover that they are not hiring the smartest people, just the people most like themselves.

In the end, the best thing that can be said about puzzle interviews is that as a screening technique, they are no worse than traditional interviews. And there are some side effects: some candidates may be more prone to accept a job with Microsoft because of the interview style, and imparted wisdom about the technique may function as a useful pre-screening of prospective applicants. And of course, employees may get a kick out of showing a candidate how smart they are, although this can have a downside: How Would You Move Mount Fuji? has several examples of interviewers who seemed more concerned with proving their intelligence than in gauging that of the candidate. One former Microsoftie admits they asked candidates a question they did not know the answer to, just to see what they would do.

Two chapters of the book, entitled "Embracing Cluelessness" and "How to Outsmart the Puzzle Interview," attempt to help interview candidates who are confronted with such puzzle questions. The official advice is scarce: Microsoft's Interview Tips page advises candidates "Be prepared to think," which isn't much help, since presumably nobody is advising the opposite. Some of the recruiters who go to college campuses have their own little tips; for example, one recruiter named Colleen offers a quote from Yoda: "Do or do not, there is no try." Other recruiter tips include "Stay awake" and "Always leave room for dessert." Luckily, Poundstone gives advice that is a bit more concrete than that.

Microsoft puzzles can be divided into two types: those where the methodology is more important than the answer, and those where only the answer matters.

The "methodology" puzzles break into two classes, "design" puzzles ("How would you design a particular product or service?") and "estimation" puzzles ("How much of a certain object occupies a certain space?"--for example, "How much does the ice in a hockey rink weigh?")

Design questions exist because at Microsoft, responsibility for product development is split between two groups, the developers and the program managers. Developers write code: program managers design the user interface, trying to balance the needs of users with the technical constraints from developers. As Poundstone points out, while estimation questions and general logic puzzles are universal, the design questions are reserved for program managers.

The reason is that program management does not require the specific skills of development. Designing software is something any reasonably intelligent person can attempt, so the design questions are aimed at finding people who are really good at design. In fact one program manager I worked with told me that the best way to distinguish a potential program manager from a potential developer was to ask them to design a house: a developer would jump right in, while a program manager would step back and ask questions about the constraints on the house.

(Developers, meanwhile, are usually asked to write code on the whiteboard, an experience that program management candidates are spared. Books exist that discuss coding problems in more detail, such as Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job by John Mongan and Noah Suojanen, which covers many standard programming questions and even includes answers to a few of the logic puzzles that Poundstone addresses).

Poundstone does include some of these design questions and provides sample answers. But the "answer" to these questions is really the process involved: ask questions, state assumptions, propose design. That's all you need to know about them. If you are wondering why Microsoft did not use this logical procedure when confronted with the question "Design a response to the open source movement," but instead seems to have spouted off the first five things that popped into its collective head--that's just more proof that performance in interviews is not necessarily a great indicator of future job performance.

Another recruiter, Stacey, gives the following interview tip: "The best interview tips I can give you are to relax and think for yourself. For a Microsoft interview, be prepared to answer both technical and problem solving questions. Ask clarifying questions and remember to think out loud. We are more interested in the way your are thinking through a problem then we are in your final answer!"

That approach works for the "methodology" questions: design and estimation. What about the other kinds--the more traditional brainteasers? For those questions, forget your methodology. What Microsoft interviewers want is the right answer.

James Fixx, writing three years before Microsoft was founded, offers some advice that may hearten potential Microsoft recruits: "One way to improve one's ability to use one's mind is simply to see how very bright people use theirs." With that in mind, we can follow along with Poundstone as he explains the solutions to the puzzles that the very bright people at Microsoft ask during interviews. He certainly delivers the goods: 100 pages of answers. Unfortunately, it's not clear whether seeing those answers help you tune up your brain to answer problems that do not appear in the book.

In his book, Fixx spends some time trying to explain what, as he so delicately puts it, "the superintelligent do that's different from what ordinary people do." For example, trying to describe how a superintelligent person figures out the next letter in the sequence "O T T F F S S", he advises people to think hard: "Persistence alone will now bring its reward, and eventually a thought occurs to him." Talking about how to arrange four pennies so there are two straight lines with three pennies in each line, he writes "The true puzzler...gropes for some loophole, and, with luck, quickly finds it in the third dimension." Further hints abound: "The intelligent person tries... not to impose unnecessary restrictions on his mind. The bright person has succeeded because he does not assume the problem cannot be solved simply because it cannot be solved in one way or even two ways he has tried." This advice sounds great in theory, but how do you apply it in practice? How do you make your mind think that way? As Poundstone quotes Louis Armstrong, "Man, if you have to ask 'What is it?' you ain't never goin' to know."

Poundstone recognizes that the flashes of insight that Fixx describes, and that Microsoft interviewers expect, are more of a hit-or-miss thing than the inevitable result of hard thinking by an intelligent person: "What is particularly troubling is how little 'logic' seems to be involved in some phases of problem solving. Difficult problems are often solved via a sudden, intuitive insight. One moment you're stuck; the next moment this insight has popped into your head, though not by any step-by-step logic that can be recounted."

During interview training I participated in when I worked there, Microsoft would emphasize four attributes that it was looking for when hiring: intelligence, hard work, ability to get things done, and vision. Intelligence was always #1, yet despite this, Poundstone says that the official Microsoft people he talked to would shy away from the word "intelligence", preferring to use terms like "bandwidth" and "inventiveness". Indeed Microsoft's Interview Tips web page says "We look for original, creative thinkers, and our interview process is designed to find those people." No mention of the word intelligence or any notion that interviews are some sort of intelligence test.

In fact, although I think that most Microsoft people would consider the puzzle tests to be mainly a test of intelligence, they may do better at testing some of the other desired attributes. Psychologist and personnel researcher Harry Hepner once said, "Creative thinkers make many false starts, and continually waver between unmanageable fantasies and systematic attack." Poundstone explains that you have to figure out when your fantasies have become too unmanageable: "To deal effectively with puzzles (and with the bigger problems for which they may be a model), you must operate on two or more levels simultaneously. One thread of consciousness tackles the problem while another, higher-level thread monitors the progress. You need to keep asking yourself 'Is this approach working? How much time have I spent on this approach, and how likely is it to produce an answer soon? Is there something else I should be trying?'"

This is great advice, not just for a puzzle, but for a job, and life in general. So watching someone think through a puzzle might be a great way to see how they would tackle a tough problem at work--the "hard work" and "get things done" abilities that Microsoft is also looking for. As James Fixx writes in the sequel More Games for the Superintelligent, "While the less intelligent person, unsure of ever being able to solve a problem at all, is easily discouraged, the intelligent person is fairly sure of succeeding and therefore presses on, discouragements be damned."

Unfortunately, the typical Microsoft interviewer is not looking at the approach to puzzle questions as a test of perseverence. Someone who tries five different attempts might demonstrate more resourcefulness than someone who just "gets it"--but they would get turned down. Interviewers who ask puzzle questions are probing the "intelligence" category, and they want the right answer.

The last chapter of the book is titled "How Innovative Companies Ought to Interview" and deals with a soon-to-be-problem: How will the industry be affected by the publication of this book? Will interviews still work if everyone knows the secrets?

Knowledge of Microsoft-style questions is already out there on the Internet. Since the candidates who participate in the interviews do not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, they are free to tell others the questions they were asked, and from these reports databases of questions have been built up. Poundstone includes the URLs of several sites, including Kiran Bondalapati's "Interview Question Bank", Michael Pryor's "Techinterview", Chris Sells' "Interviewing at Microsoft", and William Wu's "Riddles". These sites generally don't include answers, but certainly knowing the types of questions to expect can be an advantage.

Microsoft employees are aware of such sites. Once, when I sent email describing the questions I had asked a Microsoft candidate, I got a nasty reply from someone else at the company: Didn't I know that the question I had asked was posted on a website of known Microsoft interview questions? On the other hand, with no official internal Microsoft list of questions, some employees are undoubtedly using these sites to come up with material. Even within Microsoft there is debate about which questions are reasonable. In an unscientific survey I took of former Microsoft program managers, opinion was divided on the validity of some of the questions. A question described by one person as a good test of a candidate's ability was dismissed by another as foolish.

Poundstone does point out that some questions are silly and should not be asked ("Define the color green"), but he gives serious answers to others which I don't think are worthwhile either, including "If you could remove any of the fifty U.S. states, which would it be?" and "How do they make M&Ms?" Furthermore, I would argue that if an entire class of questions can be "tainted" by How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, they don't deserve to be asked in the first place. Estimation questions might be invalidated by the revelation that the way to solve them was to multiply together a bunch of wild guesses. The strategy of using a design question to to differentiate program management candidates from developer candidates might also go the way of the dodo. Is that necessarily a bad thing?

How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is worth reading even if you don't plan on interviewing at Microsoft. It has some interesting history, a few good Microsoft tidbits, and puzzles that are entertaining on their own. For those considering a job at Microsoft, the book may ratchet up the "arms race" of questions. Microsoft employees may assume that people interviewing have read the book--so if you are going to interview there, or anywhere else that imitates their style, you should probably read it too.

---

You can purchase How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

How Would I Move Mount Fuji?

[Anonymous Coward]

In true Zen fashion... it is not the mountain that must move, but you.

Or was it one spoonfull at a time?

I wouldn't

[Anonymous Coward]

I would just paint the mountain pink and set up a low power SEP field generator.

Probably umount...

[tha_mink]

I suppose something like...

umount /dev/fuji

i'm thinking....

[erikdotla]

$ mv mtfuji /there

Somehow I think that isn't going to get me a job at Microsoft.

in 500 words or less

[pyros]

What is Linux, and how would you kill it?

manholes

[erikdotla]

Oh, and manhole covers are round because Hollywood lobbied the sewage industry to make them that way, so that they could have movie characters like Hulk or Superman throw them at people. Somehow a spinning square piece of metal isn't as cool as a round one.

Re:Manhole Covers

[athakur999]

All this talk of manholes has all the trolls itching to post up goatse.cx links.

typical question

[tjw]

Which of the following would you most prefer?
A: a puppy,
B: a pretty flower from your sweety, or
C: a large properly formatted data file?

My Interview

[UCRowerG]

Yes, at graduation time I was interviewed by a Microsoft guy, from their gaming department.

In one of his interview questions he asked me how many "weighings" I would need on a scale to find the one marble that was differently weighed from the other ones. I think the idea was for me to come up with some log-base-2 of n weighings. Since he didn't specify that the unique marble was specifically heavier (or lighter), he couldn't figure out why I needed an extra weighing for my result, until I explained my methodology to him.

Then he realized that he had presented the problem somewhat incorrectly and grudgingly said, "Well I guess you get that right, since I didn't explain the problem completely."

...Needless to say I was not called back for a second interview.

the answer

[DrWhizBang]

Mount Fuji should obviously be moved by shovelling it through remote controlled venetian blinds using a round manhole cover purchased at the local gas station.

Now I Understand

[PunkXRock]

From http://www.sellsbrothers.com/fun/msiview/default.a spx?content=question.htm [sellsbrothers.com] :

"If you could add any feature to Microsoft Word, what would it be?"

This explains so much...

Re:How Would I Move Mount Fuji?

[2sleep2type]

I would have a huge marketing push and go for an big event launch. That should shift anything.

Re:Probably umount...

[Quixote]

That would be the answer to "how do you flatten Mt Fuji?".

I recommend
mv /mnt/fuji /mnt/barji

You are so wrong

[been42]

Manhole covers are round to fit the holes.

Re:Manhole Covers...

[Hypno]

I thought that it was because manholes are round....

Moving Mt. Fuji?

[grub]

Pffff... I'll sit back on a lawn chair with some beer and let plate tectonics do all the work.

Re:Manhole Covers...

[Mr. Sketch]

Does microsoft want me to say that I would assemble my blinds with the latest bluetooth spec and then controll it from my computer?

No, I'm sure they want you to say that you will take the latest bluetooth spec, and extented it to add more innovation to satisfy the needs of a wider audience while making it more userfriendly. The new innovative spec based on bluetooth may not be compatible with the original spec, but oh well, that's the price of innovation.

Moving Mt. Fuji

[teslatug]

Make everyone that sees it sign an EUSA (End User Seeing Agreement) that prevents anyone from disclosing the current location of Mt. Fuji. Put out statement with new location.

If I was an interviewer I'd ask the following...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Interview Question:

1. Collect underpants.
2. ???
3. Profit!


What is step 2?

Re:My Interview

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Nah...it was probably your Linux t-shirt [bbc.co.uk]...

Re:Manhole covers

[C32]

Very good. Unfortunately you can't spell "hole". Application rejected :)

Re:Jesus.

[Skyhoper]

400 Billion Amphibians Can't Be Wrong!

Re:Manhole Covers...

[FurryFeet]

You know, I heard a story about a guy being interviewed at MS and asked "Why are manhole covers round?". His answer: "They're not", followed by a gesture out the window. It seem's manholes at Microsoft's campus are square.
Can't for the life of me remember where I read that, but I can testify that Microsoft's manhole covers are square... :)

Re:Moving mt fuji?

[Bazman]

Chop it horizontally into a load of slices, drill a big hole in the middle, build three poles big enough to stand it on, then execute the recursive Tower-Of-Hanoi algorithm, thus reducing the problem to one with a known solution.

Baz

Three ways to move Mt. Fuji...

[Dr. Zowie]

(A) Start a spam campaign claiming that Viagra is actually just ground-up Mt. Fuji basalt. Wait for the inevitable tourist crush and run on the shovel market.

(B) Plug the vent with Microsoft HR personnel. Watch as the hot spot forms another volcano elsewhere

(C) Publish your own online encyclopedia. Sell it for less than cost. After it has achieved 97% market dominance, exchange the entries for Mt. Tabor (a volcano in Portland, OR) and Mt. Fuji (a volcano in Japan). No-one will know the difference. (Note: Microsoft is pursuing this one.)

Re:Microsoft not the only one

[tomhudson]

<quote>Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?</quote>

... reminds me of the poster ... Eat shit - can 10 trillion flies be wrong?

Actually, the whole article sounds like a cross between "Management Interviewing Techniques for Dummies" and "Trolling for I.D.-10-T's" (I.D.- 10 - T error == idiot user, for the clueless)

Re:YOU FAIL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

I would use photoshop to move mt. fuji. put it right in my back yard.

How to move Mount Fuji

[Hard_Code]

1. Claim that the Japanese are hiding weapons of mass destruction in Mount Fuji

Re:Probably umount...

[shades6666]

You forgot that these are Microsoft answers...

copy \mnt\fuji \mnt\barjii
del \mnt\fuji

or better yet

open My Computer
browse to \mnt\fuji
right-click copy
right-click paste
select copy of fuji
right-click rename
type barjii
select fuji
right-click delete
close explorer
select recycle bin
right-click empty recycle bin

Who says Windows isn't simpler?

Re:i'm thinking....

[yason]

$ mv mtfuji /there Somehow I think that isn't going to get me a job at Microsoft.

Yes, the right answer is to

1. point the mouse over Fuji
2. press down first button
3. drag Fuji to C:\TEMP\
4. note that a copying gauge appears after a while, you didn't get the catch that Fuji is on the D: drive!
5. click cancel, you now have one and a half fuji
6. delete the copy from C:\TEMP\
7. right-click on Fuji and drag
8. of "Copy here", "Move here" and "Link here", choose "Move"
9. right-click on Fuji as you accidentally clicked the damn popup menu away the first time
10. choose Cut this time
11. right-click on Start button and choose Explore
12. browse to C:\TEMP\
13. right-click and choose "Paste" -- voilá, you're done!

Re:Manhole Covers

[autophile]

My guess is that a variety of factors (shape of manholes, ease of manufature, ability to roll the covers) lead to round manhole covers.

I guess I'll see you in Redmond.

--Rob

Re:Ask Slashdot?

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Interviewer: How would you move mount fuji?
Interviewee: One sec ... time passes...
Interviewer: Well?
Interviewee: *BSD is dead.
Interviewer: You're hired!

Re:How Would I Move Mount Fuji?

[B3ryllium]

I'm lazy. I'd just pick another mountain and swap names. Voila!

Re:Some of my interview questions

[Emil Brink]

I'm stumped by a one of those, so I guess you wouldn't hire me. But that's OK since I already am employed. Two observations, though:

• Did you mean that that Cray instruction did an XOR? Is it a typo, or are Crays so exotic and cool they actually have a boolean operation unknown to, well, me?
• There are no compiler bugs in reality. It's always my fault. :) Just this morning, I was staring at a piece of code, convinced I was seeing a compiler bug where it optimized away my if logic. I even showed it to a coworker, and he agreed. Then, later on, I spotted the spurious semicolon...

Paint it pink

[Tenebrious1]

And set up a cheap SEP field... oh wait, that's how you'd make it invisible...

Why are Manhole covers round?

[Laurion]

Easy. They 'cut corners' to save manufacturing costs.

Now I understand

[csguy314]

how they hire people for their security group.

Interviewer: How would you make a critical, large, distributed application more secure?

Interviewee: Round!

Interviewer: Congratulations. Welcome to Microsoft.

Re:in 500 words or less

[kakos]

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify Linux as an operating system. I realized that it is not actually a operating system. Every operating system on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but Linux does not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every user is converted. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Linux is a disease, a cancer of this planet, Linux is a plague, and Microsoft is the cure.

Remote control of Venetian blinds?

[Dr. Mu]

The blind people of Venice are human beings just like the rest of us. I find the notion of controlling them remotely not only morally repugnant, but a blatant misuse of technology. That Microsoft might have come up with this one is disappointing but -- sigh -- not such a great surprise.

Re:i'm thinking....

[erikdotla]

Hmm.. a typical windows user would probably do the following:

First we need to locate Mt. Fuji. This is a multi-step process. Check My Documents, then check My Computer -> C Drive. The C drive being too confusing, close the window. Search for Mt. Fuji under Start -> Search. It's located, kind of - it's just an icon right there, so presumably it's irrelevant that I don't know where it is and I can drag it.

Next, determine where to move it to. We have no choice but to get the search window out of the way in order to get to My Computer to determine where we want to move it to. So, click Minimize.

Open My Computer and determine where we want it to go. Traversing some folders, we finally find the destination. However, the Search Window is gone. It's common to accidentally close a window rather than minimize it.

So, we (carefully) minimize our destination folder, and search again. Having located it, we restore the minimized Destination folder window. However, it's full screen. Our search window is gone! Wait, there it is at the bottom on the tray. Click it! Now the Destination is gone! There has to be some way to get them both on the screen at once!

We realize that button between minimize and close (damn that close button!) makes multiple windows usable at the same time. I don't know why this skill is so difficult for Windows users to master. Nonetheless, after several attempts, both windows are visible on the screen. Now it's just a matter of dragging from one window to another, right?

No! The search window doesn't show Mt. Fuji! There's a little dog with a cartoon bubble coming out of his head, asking me what I want to search for! When shrinking windows, display priority is always given to the most useless information. Even the drop area of the destination folder is obscured by goofy web-page summary stuff on the left side that has taken over the entire window!

If I could have only installed updated video drivers to run in more than 800x600! If I only knew what that was! IF ONLY I KNEW HOW TO READ!

Re:typical question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a mechanical puppy?

Re:How Would I Move Mount Fuji?

[jdray]

Given the amount of actual resources (represented as dollars) that would be required to ACTUALLY move the mountain, I would spend approx. 10% on a marketing campaign designed to convince the world that the mountain had moved and put the remaining 90% of the budget toward the company's bottom line.

I'd get a job in a minute. :^)

Re:42

[Smallpond]

But what is the average airspeed of an unladen swallow?

Re:Why are Manhole Covers Round? An answer.

[Pyrion]

Given the question, I wonder how the genius that used BLINK tags on that site answered...

Re:Manhole Covers...

[RoboOp]

That one is simple.. because any other shape would allow the cover to fall in..

Wrong. The correct answer is
" The shape of the manhole is inconsequential. The important thing is to tell the customer that while our company's manholes fit standard manholes, that we improved the design by modifying the cover so that you need a special key to get it open. This improves the security of the sewer system by limiting access to those that have the key. I then add that few sanitation engineers have ever lost their job after having purchased our manholes."

Re:Microsoft not the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know whatyou guys are doing, but I use boxers to cover my manhole.

Re:Moving Mt. Fuji

[Mezzrow]

Or maybe in the next version of windows, Microsoft could include the following section in the EULA.

"By installing this software, you agree that Mt. Fuji now resides in Minnesota rather than Japan."

That, too, will get 95% of the planet to agree that Mt. Fuji's been moved.

Re:How Would I Move Mount Fuji?

[casio282]

"I don't know, but I'm sure there's something in MS Word that will do that..."

Am I hired?

Re:Why are Manhole Covers Round? An answer.

[dfay]

How about in Soviet Russia? Anyone know the answer?

Re:Some of my interview questions

[b1t r0t]

* There are no compiler bugs in reality. It's always my fault. :) Just this morning, I was staring at a piece of code, convinced I was seeing a compiler bug where it optimized away my if logic. I even showed it to a coworker, and he agreed. Then, later on, I spotted the spurious semicolon...

--
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}

I just spent two minutes looking at your sig trying to figure out why the semicolon was spurious before I realized it was just your sig!

Ack, Microsoft BOB

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly how you'd do it in Microsoft BOB!

Re:How Would I Move Mount Fuji?

[T1girl]

I would tell it a very poignant story.

Re:Probably umount...

[H310iSe]

You might anticipate anyone who is silly enough to want to move Mt Fuji may be fickle enough to be displeased with the new location as well. Making a procedure would be wise.

@echo off
j:
cd \.
rem make room for the mountain
if exist j:\south goto skipmake
md south
[colon]skipmake
rem note the /q switch is important to
rem avoid environmental activists /y deals with
rem unwilling legislatures and /e is included due
rem to arcane union rules requiring payment for
rem for moving things even if they don't exist
xcopy j:\north\mt\fuji*.* j:\south\mt\fuji*.* /e /q /k /c /i /h /r /y
dir j:\south\mt\ /s >> surveyorecords.txt
del | y j:\north\mt\fuji*.*
I haven't written a batch file in a decade but i think that's what they look like.

Re:Reminds me of another ridiculousinterview quest

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine the correct answer would be to hide behind Big Foot since he's never been known to kill people. The raptor will attack the wolves since Big Foot is not the natural enemy of the raptor and because raptors can more easily swallow wolves whole. Either the pack of wolves will win or the raptor. If the wolves win, they will be so full from eating that raptor that they won't be interested in eating you. If the raptor wins, it'll be so full that it couldn't eat anymore. Just in case either is hungry, you're hiding behind big foot so if anyone goes next, it's him.

See, there's a solution. It's called the "sick marketing against the tech support people and QA people" approach to project management. While their fighting each other, you can safely reduce the problem down to something reasonable.;-)

Sorry.

[lucifuge31337]

I can't believe I just thre away the modding I've done so far to post this.

14.) Profit!

My very own moderation stalker!

[ergo98]

Every now and then I get a moderation stalker, and it gives me the warm fuzzies inside knowing that I've inspired someone. Someone, presumably offended by something I've stated as of late, just went through my message history moderating them all "troll". I wish like Kuro5hin you could see the moderators as I really do get a kick out of rather psychotic actions like that.

you win!

[twitter]

Bing Bing Bing! Your answers are SO Microsoft that I am hearby authorized to hire you as Steve Baller's Replacement! Not only have you wasted your time and energy with such mental masturbation, you have come up with answers we approve of. Let's examine:

If asked to move Mount Fuji relative to myself, I could just walk.

Double Pluss Good! You have simply convinced yourself that it moved. Fuji is Fuji but you are ours. Other correct answers involve name changes and crossing your eyes.

If you need to move by only a small amount relative to some other mountain, and movement is judged according to the centre of gravity, then moving one rock from the side of the mountain to the other side would shift the centre of gravity a little and so count as moving.

Again, you see clearly the Microsoft spirit, do nothing and say it is changed! Once you have decieved yourself, you can lie to others as well.

We love you! With that kind of thinking, you could pass five, fifteen or fifty M$ employees without earning a blackball. When can you start, bright man? We will ink a copy of our 500 page unilaterally changeable NDA's and employee contracts right away. Welcome to the world's smartest soon to be extinct company, where delusions of moving Fugi are matched only by visions of world conquest and neo-Darwinian madness.

what are *you* thinking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... All of these unanswerable questions! Has Microsoft been talking to my girlfriend?.

Manhole covers are round,

[geekoid]

because manholes are round. duh.

Actually its so the manhole cover won't fall in. Its not like they wanted to spend time looking at every odd shape.
I thin it went something like this:
wavey line wavey line wavy line

[man glanes at co-workers paper]
"uhh Bob, if you make the manhole square, the cover will fall in if they turn it sideways"
"why would someone do that?"
"I don't know, but it is a hazard"
"So, then they deserve to have it happen"
"umm, you could just make it round"
"Thats stupid, Al"
"why?"
"just is"
"what are you, a software developer? just make it round"
[Bob grumbles ]
"Fine."

[6 month later--Bobs boss comes walking in]

"Bob, that was genius making those covers round, you're now VP of RnD"

[Al jumpsout of window]

Re:How Would I Move Mount Fuji?

[oe1kenobi]

1. Wait for God to ask me to. 2. Say, "Move thou hence." 3. Prophet! -Russ

Re:Manhole Covers...

[jolyonr]

Ah yes, but in Microsoft Manhole Cover Service Pack 3 they have solved the 'falling down hole' problem by filling up the hole with dirt before putting cover back on.

Windows crashes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Windows just crashed on me because the guy who coded the bug knew why manhole covers are round?!