so then i stare at the interviewer, saying not a word, for 3 minutes. and then i hear “okay! thanks for coming in!”
In these sorts of problems, the lies/deceptions/red herrings are part of the “game.” Like specifying the number of decimal places when the answer is “0.0m apart”
I still hold that games of gotcha are a poor interview technique, and goodly bits of the industry has (in my direct experience) moved away from the why-are-manholes-round thought exercises in favor of let’s-whiteboard-a-code-sample problems, or live exercises via CoderPad or the like.
No matter what the problem is, talking through the solving process will score you better than suffering in silence, trying to remember that equation or play find the trick. Table-flipping and flouncing is rarely recommended. The interviewer should be checking to see if you’re someone that could attend a meeting or brainstorming session in real life, with real problems, and apply some strategy to it. But I think that gets lost in the process of training the interviewers and they fixate on the “'right” answer.
“I’m sorry, you made a poor guess at the number of ping-pong balls required to fill a 747. You are being passed over as a UI designer.”
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Yeah like I alluded to, in a sense these questions are a test for the interviewer in terms of exhibiting what sort of answers they (and the company they represent) find acceptable. I do think there’s some value in doing non-code examples (for code specific jobs) so as to avoid putting too much benefit on candidates with specific coding experience.
Seems a tad hostile to me. And a flat unwillingness to give them the benefit of any doubt. A better way to ask this question would be, “Could you tell me how this question relates to the job I’m interviewing for?” There could be a completely valid reason for them asking the question even if it doesn’t represent a “real problem” you might encounter in that position.
Maybe all you’re interested in is talking about code, but the truth is that a prospective employer is going to be interested in many more things about you than just your raw technical skills. Like, can you work in a team, how are your communication abilities, are you an easy or a difficult person to work with, etc. I’m not a software engineer but I do soft skills training for them and I can tell you from personal experience that A LOT of them need help in this area.
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YMMV. For junior-level positions, maybe but for senior or management level postions… is this a good use of everyone’s time? Candidate’s and interviewers’? On-site time is precious, and I feel there’s better, relevant ways to gauge a candidate’s problem management skills.
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Well, to be more accurate if we are talking about reality then there is pretty much no way the cable would get to 10m from the ground even both ends were attached to the same spot on the same poll. We all know a cable hung in that fashion would hang:
Now I wonder how to calculate how close it would actually be to the ground (you’d certainly need more information than was given in the question).
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Huh? My resume says I’m a mathematician, and I remembered that the catenary formula is y = a (cosh x - 1); so in demonstrating that I’m a mathematician by knowing the formula and how to integrate arc length, I’m suddenly padding things? I’m confused…
Or are you saying that I’m too smart to work at Amazon? (If so, you’ve got me there - I am.)
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It was a dumb word play on “hyperbole”, and yes, better suited to my adolescent intelligence level. 
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Good call. Cable has stiffness. A chain could reach if it had circular links.
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How about we set the bar a little higher, and answer when the government removes the loopholes large corporations are otherwise legally using to not pay taxes?
You know, so no one can do this going forward?
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At the risk of stating common knowledge, and without even answering your question ( 
), Randall Munroe’s book ‘What If’ (or, for the cheapskates amongst you, the website on which it was based) is a really good primer for generalised problem solving thinking. IIRC, he never answers any of the questions exactly, but does repeatedly reinforce general problem solving approaches that will get you to a reasonably robust good-enough answer.
Some years ago I went though a recruitment process that extended over several days. One of the tasks was to solve a physical problem using limited resources by organising a group of co-aspirants. The problems consisted of things like "get this barrel over this high wall’, or ‘retrieve that box from the far side of the ditch using these too-short pieces of wood and some rope.’ They were explicitly testing for ability to organise and lead a group of people in a semi-complex task to which there was no obvious solution. They were also looking - when it wasn’t your turn to lead - for your ability to contribute and follow when required. What they explicitly weren’t looking for was whether you solved the problem - which was good since when it was my turn I absent mindedly stepped into the lava river and ‘died’, but still passed the activity because I’d applied a process, and crucially had briefed the team so they could carry on with my plan even after I died, even though they were ultimately unsuccessful at the nominal task.
I didn’t bother letting on that I already knew that the task couldn’t be achieved using my plan. I could get to about halfway, but couldn’t figure out the second half … /whistles_innocently
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The US Army calls this a Leadership Reaction Course 
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That’s just crazy talk, Sir Thomas.
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Fair enough, but my point is this: the way you’ve phrased your response tells the interviewer, “This is going to be a difficult person to work with.” Why would you want to project this kind of image of yourself in an interview?
Also, “better, relevant ways to gauge a candidate’s problem management skills” is actually just your opinion, which your employer might not share. For example, did you watch the video linked to this post? It turns out that Amazon actually had a pretty good reason for asking a variation of the 10m question. Now, whether or not this sort of thing should be tested during an interview is another matter, but you can definitely see their reasoning for asking it when you look at it from their point of view.
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