Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, Second Edition

Chapter 12. Counting, Measuring, and Ordering Puzzles

In addition to technical and programming problems, you will often encounter brainteasers in your interviews. Brainteasers are mathematics and logic puzzles that have no direct relation to computer programming. Some interviewers feel these problems are silly because they have no direct bearing on the job at hand and won't ask any of them. Many interviewers, though, think brainteasers are useful in assessing problem-solving ability — perhaps the most important job skill for a programmer. Interviewers may also be influenced by the knowledge that industry leaders such as Google use brainteasers in their interviews. Whatever the motivation, in some interviews as many as a third of the problems you are presented may be brainteasers.

In the authors' opinion, performance on brainteasers says a lot about your experience with working mathematical puzzles and very little about whether you will be a valuable employee. The discussion and examples in this and the next chapter aim to give you this experience so you can be successful with brainteasers. Brainteasers share many common themes, so gaining both familiarity with these commonalities and some experience with brainteasers in general can be a great help in solving these puzzles when they are presented during an interview.