The Google Interview Question Everyone Gets Wrong

A massive thank you to Dan Goldman, Jeff Aguilar, Daniel Soto and Georgia Tech’s Complex Rheology And Biomechanics Lab
We’re incredibly grateful to Carl Zimmer, Gayle McDowell, and Geoffrey West

CORRECTION: Dan Goldman is a Professor of Physics not Biomechanics.

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0:00 Hard Google Interview Question
2:34 How do Geckos stick to walls?
5:58 Do physicists know the answer?
7:01 The Square-Cube Law
9:10 Tiny Superheroes
10:23 Simulating the problem
13:36 Adding Air Resistance
15:14 The End?
16:16 What would happen if you were shrunk?
17:39 What interviewers actually look for

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Try Snatoms! A molecular modelling kit I invented where the atoms snap together.

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References:

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Images & Video:

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Directed by Henry van Dyck
Written by Henry van Dyck
Edited by Peter Nelson and Nick Lear
Assistant Edited by James Stuart
Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Andrew Neet, Jakub Misiek and Emma Wright
Filmed by Henry van Dyck and Lukas Guderjahn
Additional Research by Emilia Gyles and Geeta Thakur
Produced by Derek Muller, Henry van Dyck, Zoe Heron, Rob Beasley Spence and Tori Brittain
Thumbnail contributions by Ben Powell, Ren Hurley and Henry van Dyck
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Storyblocks
Music from Epidemic Sound and Jonny Hyman

[Jameman]

10:56 “you’ve got to suspend your disbelief somewhere”

Buddy, I’ve already accepted that I’m the size of a dime in a blender. How much further do you want me to suspend it?

[LarissaWa]

HR: How do you get out of that blender?
Me: Fly.
HR: You cannot fly.
Me: I cannot be reduced to the size of a nickel either.

[griffinoconnor]

4:28 he says “I used to know all about cockroach feet” as if there’s been some crazy new updates on cockroach feet he hasn’t kept up with

[Beakerzor]

In my 35 years of being interviewed I found the best strategy is to be happy, friendly, make it fun, and watch the interviewers reaction to attempts. If I can make the interviewer leave 100 times happier than when the interview started, I would get an "I recommend hiring" vote. The worst thing you can do is give up and say "it's not possible".

[TemuJesus]

Interview: design a highly scalable architecture for a hypothetical AI product

Job: that icon should be green

[Lordike]

"If my cells remain the same in number then I will be so dense that the blade of the blender would break on me." That's the answer I gave for my interview, My back of the envelope math supported it, but I never got around to doing the full research.

[Apeiron]

"This is a dumb question and I'm not answering it."

"Correct, when can you start?"

[AlhunAydin]

I liked Derek's skepticism and stubbornness on this one. In "realistic" version of their setup, I also don't think that tiny human could jump out.

[LOLItsAJ]

"I used to know all about cockroach feet" is a pickup line I'd love to use

[thomasbachrach]

These questions that are "suspend your disbelief except for one specific cool aspect I just learnt about" are essentially how children make riddles. They're the equivalent of winning I-Spy because you called the TV the "televisual device."

[Shibbymatt]

HR Karen: "How many cow farts would it take to inflate the Hindenburg?"
Applicant: "I just want to write code..."

[helloitsnicko]

11:27 "Henry realising that his work on this video is far from done" made me laugh out loud 🤣

[Tscharlieh]

I don‘t like this question, because it ignores the effects shrinking would have on your body (for example you would suffocate immediately because the ratio between oxygen and lung surface would be too much off for your lungs and blood cells to work correctly), yet the question still expects you to make correct bio-physical assumptions like jumping, climbing, etc..

[itammarsteinberg]

Google employee: you're supposed to not overcomplicate it
Literally the rest of the video: overcomplicating it

[aspzx]

I love how the real answer to the question circled back around to agree with the intuition that most people had that it wasn't actually possible to simply jump out. Also nice to see that Google recognise that these questions don't actually acheive the things they want from an interview.

And to continue with the idea of asking silly questions, Randall Munroe's "What If" series is great for this.

[Wolf-lnml]

"You've rejected my application due to an almost certainly irrelevant question. Three days later, you find out I'm actually your boss in disguise. What do you do?"

[desromic]

Imagine my embarrassment watching you jump out of the blender after I already peed on my hands to use the surface tension of my pee to climb the walls.

[heavensgate]

I'd just use the small door in the blender to walk out of the blender. It's an imaginary situation anyway, if they can shrink me and stuff me in a blender, then I can get out any way I want

[bruzote]

Questions like this are really a measure of how much you worry about what the interview wants to hear and what you do about it.

[notNaB]

6:28 when you are a physics major and throw out every single physics jargon you have ever heard just to sound smart 😂