<story><title>If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)</title><url>https://sellsbrothers.com/12395</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>okareaman</author><text>How many ping pong balls would it take to fill a 747?&lt;p&gt;Why do you ask? What problem are you trying to solve?&lt;p&gt;We want to understand your thought process&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d think it was stupid to fill a 747 with ping pong balls and think about something else</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>conjecTech</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get the derision for these kinds of problems. And I think it&amp;#x27;s unlikely Feynman would have found this unhelpful. These are commonly referred to as Fermi problems. Fermi was a physicist of Feynman&amp;#x27;s generation - they were probably standing together at Trinity when Fermi did the famous yield approximation. The other physicists held this ability in such esteem they gave it a name and remembered him for it.&lt;p&gt;The question is meant to gauge whether you can create a simple model of a system that is completely foreign to you, but for which you are familiar with the fundamental rules governing it. The absurdity of it serves to remove bias. You don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about whether or not the candidate happens to have experience filling airplanes with ping pong balls. So much of effective programming is creating a model for the processes we are trying to automate. Coming up with effective abstractions uses many of the same skills.</text></comment>
<story><title>If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)</title><url>https://sellsbrothers.com/12395</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>okareaman</author><text>How many ping pong balls would it take to fill a 747?&lt;p&gt;Why do you ask? What problem are you trying to solve?&lt;p&gt;We want to understand your thought process&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d think it was stupid to fill a 747 with ping pong balls and think about something else</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tharkun__</author><text>In an interview, stopping at this might just make you not get the job. If you&amp;#x27;re lucky the interviewer will laugh and ask the appropriate followup question. It goes something like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Haha, awesome answer. I agree with you from a business perspective it seems stupid at first. Now I can&amp;#x27;t come up with a good reason to do this, but let&amp;#x27;s say I as your Product person have convinced you with enough good reasons that it is indeed a valuable task to fill this 747 with as many ping pong balls as you can. What would you do?
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
If you keep it at &amp;quot;I refuse to answer this question&amp;quot;, you&amp;#x27;re out. If you laugh and maybe talk about your experience with Product people asking for stupid stuff all the time and then you ask some&amp;#x2F;all&amp;#x2F;other questions like these back:&lt;p&gt;Is this a 747 in it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;raw&amp;quot; state, i.e. no seats, no overhead compartments etc, basically empty fuselage? Am I supposed to fill the wings as well (i.e. the kerosine storage areas? Is the aircraft supposed to be able to fly after this? Do I have to care about the flammability of ping pong balls? Btw. how much do ping pong balls weigh and how big are they again, just to be sure we&amp;#x27;re talking about the same thing I&amp;#x27;m thinking of here?&lt;p&gt;And the list goes on. This is just the stuff I could come up with in a minute without being in a high pressure interview situation :) One of my bosses once told me why he likes me working for him: You don&amp;#x27;t say &amp;quot;can&amp;#x27;t be done&amp;quot; you just ask back &amp;quot;How much can this cost?&amp;quot;</text></comment>