I interviewed maybe 3 or 4 years ago at Google. Definitely got some questions that were not remotely programming related, but were just hard problems that probably were awesome if you already knew the answer.
I recall one was something along the lines of "You're making a bet in the final round of Jeopardy. Presume that your opponent is going to bet optimally given your bet. How much will you bet?". No matter what I bet, he bets such that if he gets it right and I get it wrong, he wins by $1, etc. There were different cases to consider, but all the hard ones boiled down to what felt like a differential equations problem.
It wasn't a programming question; it was a logic brain teaser question. And the interviewer seemed to really enjoy himself.
Didn't get the job. I now ignore Google recruiter emails.
I had a similar teaser question in an interview for a senior technical role which went something like: given a function that has a uniform distribution over N, how to create a new uniform distribution over N+k. I recalled the general idea/theory of building new distributions from old and felt confident I could find the answer with general resources (textbooks I had at my desk or a quick search). The (fairly junior) interviewer didn't recognize the idea and kept trying to push me towards a specific answer. I looked it up after the interview -- the problem is apparently well known in CS circles (it was not for a CS role) and was something I could look up in 3 minutes. I did not get the role.
Arrogant? Maybe I am, a little, sure. But I don't spend my days remembers every minute detail of every technical documentation I've come across -- I can't remember everything! What I _do_ instead is remember _how to recall_ technical items in specific contexts to quickly refresh and remind myself when the time comes.
I don't come across _too_ many arrogant or clueless interviewers, but when I do I am genuinely surprised.
I interviewed maybe 3 or 4 years ago at Google. Definitely got some questions that were not remotely programming related, but were just hard problems that probably were awesome if you already knew the answer.
I recall one was something along the lines of "You're making a bet in the final round of Jeopardy. Presume that your opponent is going to bet optimally given your bet. How much will you bet?". No matter what I bet, he bets such that if he gets it right and I get it wrong, he wins by $1, etc. There were different cases to consider, but all the hard ones boiled down to what felt like a differential equations problem.
It wasn't a programming question; it was a logic brain teaser question. And the interviewer seemed to really enjoy himself.
Didn't get the job. I now ignore Google recruiter emails.