Interview to Work at Google (After Eating A Sproggle of Nonsickle Cake)

Interview to Work at Google (After Eating A Sproggle of Nonsickle Cake)


Q: What do you know about Google’s products and technology?


A:
Oh wiggledy woggle
Oh briggle oh broggle
I’ve eaten a sproggle
Of nonsickle cake!
It warbles and xixpiz
It snoggles and bixiz
The brain words my
Sentences minduggle make!


Q: How would you re-position Google’s offerings to counteract competitive threats from Microsoft?


A:
 I’d bim um and bam um!
I’d slim-gog-gurzam ‘em!
They’d not know the wick-waw
That bonzopped their face!


Q: You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?


A:
Nicklety ficklety density wensity
Jumpity wumpity out of the jar!


Q: You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share, but live to enjoy it? Hint: one pirate ends up with 98% of the gold.


A:
Scallywag scuttle wench!
Bilge rat bites lubber!
Grog on a hornswaggle!
Shiver me blubber!


Q: How are cookies passed in the HTTP protocol?


A:
Chocolatey-gingersnip mim’s macadaaaamia
Criminy crumbswallow flumped acadaaaamia!


Q: Suppose we have N companies and we want to eventually merge them into one big company. How many ways are there to merge?


A: Mim’s mom merged with Marge’s morgue
Morgue’s mad marble mottled
Macy mined the maggot mag
Mimble toads are spottled.


Q: You are given the source to an application, which is crashing when run. After running it ten times in a debugger, you find it never crashes in the same place. The application is single-threaded and uses only the C-standard library. What programming errors could be causing the crash? How would you test each one?


A:
Needles weave a single thread
And books befloat the sea
Ten debuggers boldly bled
In threaded misery.


And who done kill the bugger boys?
Bald Boogie Standard did
He ripped the ribbon from their necks
And wiped a bloody bib.


Then Boogie Standard blorred remorse
Inside the libe rare ree
Cried a blorge of bildy tears
Do I deserve to be?
I borglefied the bugger boys
Best boned I too be dead.
Re-grieved, regretted, Boogie ripped
His own beneedly thread


So rub de bugger! Rub de bones!
And rubbem til they blee
The program crash, the program run
And books befloat the sea.


Q: What sort would you use if you had a large data set on disk and a small amount of ram to work with?


A:
Ram horns curly
Frisbee disc
Whisk the ram
With whiskey whisk
Tozz dee Frisbee
In dee hole
Souls belong
To Oversoul.


Q: Do you consider Google the Oversoul?


A: Certainsplee.


Welcome to Google.

Clock Face

A twelve on my forehead

A six on my chin

I can’t rub them off

They’re stuck to my skin.

My nose grew two hands

And they tick different paces

I’m the ungrateful owner

Of two different faces.

One face is my own

It shows fear, pain or gladness

The other’s a clock

And it drives me to madness.

I look in the mirror; can’t help but tell time

When the hour strikes, I burp

And it sounds like a chime

People look at my clock face

And can’t help but laugh

There’s no pity at all

For a man-chronograph.

My life is entangled

With time’s ceaseless creep

Doesn’t fly when I’m happy

Doesn’t stop when I sleep

Doesn’t live on a band

I can take off my wrist

But insists, with each burp:

I am Time. I persist.

A people-avoider, a slut, and a hoarder

A people-avoider, a slut, and a hoarder

All lived in a basement that smelled like old cheese

The people-avoider sat still in a corner

The slut and the hoarder did just as they pleased.

The hoarder kept objects, like beanbags and trainers

In plastic containers all over the place

The slut had his lovings atop the containers

The people-avoider just shielded her face.

The hoarder kept hoarding, until she came back

With ten trophies, a walrus, twelve chairs and nine trout.

This wasn’t so good for the slut and avoider

The hoarder'd essentially shoved them both out.

With nowhere to go, they went out in the snow

They split up and went on with their sorrowful lives

But deep down the hoarder adored the avoider

And deep down the slut wanted both as his wives.

So none were content, but one day all three went

To the same coffee shop to get out of the chill

“I’ve been meaning to ask…will you both be my wife?”

Asked the slut, and both friends shyly answered: “I will.”

So back in the basement, the friends became lovers

They always used rubbers (the slut had disease)

They did a deep clean so the floor could be seen

And this helped to get rid of the smell of old cheese.

The hoarder decided to donate her hoardings

The walrus she sold for two dollars, one cent

The slut stopped his slutting, avoider stopped cutting

And now, for the first time, the three are content. 

Three Types of Strangled

Sea-Strangled

I wake up, you’re on top of me and also you’re an octopus

Caressing me with those strange suckers like I’m your whiteboard

Coral grows down from the ceiling in algorithms

Water leaks in from the floorboards

“Please, why does it smell so salty?”

“You left the seaweed in the pot, boiling.”

Starfish are clinging to the window

I try to call out but my voice sounds like bubbles

Blue fish are flopping inside the pillowcase

Now your tentacles are gripping my ankles

“Just let go for a sec so I can turn off the stove…”

It wouldn’t be so bad, the suckers and the pillow-fish

If it weren’t for the starfish, and the smell of the seaweed…

And the fact that you’re whispering you love someone new…

Desert-Strangled

In this desert of pale green sand

There is nothing more beautiful than you

You are the enormous statue of the Sphinx

You are skyscrapers taller than I am

How can I climb to your broken nose

To kiss your powdery eyes?

Without a ladder, I can only sit and watch the winds erode you

The dust of you lands on my hair

I will be your open-skinned urn

After all,

I’m the one who packed you into sand.

Blood-Strangled

I didn’t give a coin to the beggar

In fact he didn’t ask me for a coin

He asked if I could lick what was dripping from his bony wrist

“Okay, sure, but that could be blood or urine.

I’m not sure how sterile you are, Sir.

You smell like one of those striped brown lizards

That’s been dead for weeks or years.”

Jar Man and Squiggle-Clod Read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The jar man looked inside a jar

He saw a wriggly thing

It looked all squiggly-wroggly-rot

Like squid that barfed up string.

‘Good lord,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d put

My kidney beans in here.

Instead, I find this squiggle-clod

How twimberingly queer.’

The squiggle-clod, when it breathed out

Made all the jar-glass fog

Its skin was moist and pinkish-gray

Like thick mid-morning smog.

‘What do you want, then, squiggle-clod?’

The clod said, with a wince

‘I want for you to read to me

The book The Little Prince.

But don’t say ‘prince’; say ‘jar man’

Not ‘fox,’ but ‘squiggle-clod’

You understand?’ the jar thing asked

The jar man gave a nod

He looked around his bookshelf

His eyes began to bleed

He broke the binding, wiped the blood

And then began to read:

 “So the jar man tamed the squiggle-clod. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

“Ah," said the squiggle-clod, "I shall cry."

“It is your own fault," said the jar man. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ."

“Yes, that is so," said the squiggle-clod.

“But now you are going to cry!" said the jar man.

“Yes, that is so," said the squiggle-clod.

“Then it has done you no good at all!" said the jar man.

“It has done me good," said the squiggle-clod, "because of the color of the wheat fields.” 

Unicorn Cat

I heard a sad ‘meow’ in the woods near my house

And ran off to see where it led

To my wondrous surprise, I encountered a cat

With a sparkly horn on its head.

Why do you cry, cat? You ought to be glad.

Aren’t you pleased you’ve got such a nice horn?

“No, I am not,” mewed the unicorn cat

I used to be unicorn full

With muscular legs and a glittery mane

And a tail of silver and gold.”

What happened then, cat? You must have transformed.

Were you cursed? Were you punished? Bewitched?

“I’d just learned to fly,” moaned the unicorn cat

“‘Twas the very first time that I flew.

“Fly near to the rainbow,” my mother had said

“But never, don’t ever, fly through.”

What happened then, cat? Did you go very high?

Or get blown by tumultuous wind?

“I flew to the rainbow as quick as I could,”

Said the cat with its mythical prong

“I thought rainbows were silent, but this one was not

It broke into a beautiful song.

Its voice was enchanting; it pierced through my heart

And turned all my muscles to glue

The song had two words, and they echoed like bells:

“Fly through!” sang the rainbow. “Fly through!”

What happened then, cat? Did you manage to flee?

Did the rainbow keep singing its song?

“I pictured my mother: her silver-white face

Her voice saying: Never go through…

But her image went *poof * and then all I could see

Was red, orange, yellow, green, blue.

I passed through the rainbow; the feeling was bliss

The world was a colorful blur

And when I arrived on the arc’s other side

I was tiny and covered in fur.”

What happened then, cat? Did you tumble and fall?

How is it now you’re alive?

“The woods broke my fall, and I landed on leaves

And now all I do is meow

I want to find meaning and joy as a cat

But I’ve honestly no idea how.”

Do you want to be mine? You would be a good pet

I could feed you and polish your horn.

“That won’t work,” said the cat

“I’m a unicorn, see? I must live my life in the sky

I have to be magical, wondrous, and free

But I don’t even think I can fly.”

Have you tried or attempted? Perhaps you still can

With the magic that’s found in your horn

The cat scrunched its face, and made low growling sounds

The strangest I ever have heard

It managed to summon its magic, I guess

‘Cause it flew to the sky like a bird!

It had rained hard that morning, and then there’d been sun

So there now was a rainbow of course

I saw the small kitten fly straight through the red

And I thought it’d emerge as a horse!

Instead it came out as the cat that it was

And so, for a sec, I was sad

It’s no magical horse with a glittering mane

But hey, for a cat, it’s not bad.

Wonkbeast and Blinkworm

Wonkbeast, antlers big as goats

Skin like barnacles on boats

Teeth are yellow, eyes are red

Maggots dwell upon his head

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.

Blinkworm, handsome, thin and tall

Skin as perfect as a doll

Smells like fresh-baked cakes and sweets

Silver slippers on his feet

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.

Wonkbeast, shy and good at math

Never learned to take a bath

Stutters when he tries to speak

Hairy wart upon his cheek

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.

Blinkworm, extroverted, loud

Loves to talk in front of crowds

Drives a brand new Rolls Royce

Has a lovely singing voice

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.

Wonkbeast, gentle, clumsy, fat

Cooks his oatmeal in a vat

Rescues birds that fall from nests

Knits scum-colored sweater vests

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.

Blinkworm’s wallet’s full of dough

(Where’d he get that money, though?)

Throws a giant public fair

With circus girls and dancing bears

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.

Wonkbeast lives to ninety-three

Sits beneath a willow tree

There he sucks his final breath

And, alone, succumbs to death

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast

Blinkworm leaves a paper trail

Of laundered money; goes to jail

But someone with a lot of clout

Proudly bails the blinkworm out

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.

Wonkbeast’s corpse has turned to dust

Blinkworm dies, as blinkworms must

Hordes of mourners come in waves

To sob upon the blinkworm’s grave

Everyone cries when the blinkworm dies

But none shed a tear for the wonkbeast.