Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

When you worked for a company that was thoroughly immersed in Stacking in the early 1980s my best analogy was to think of myself as being in an all male prison, except the inmates in there were more clever.

One thing that was still fashionable at that time was to take the new "recruits" around to top management and have a brief, friendly conversation of maybe 20 minutes. Most all of the top managements at companies presented themselves a pretty nice people at these meetings. This company was a little different as in the majority of the top management still presented themselves as pretty nice people, but interspersed within top management were a fair number of assholes.

One day I was scheduled to meet with a management person named Dave and another newish young recruit named Walt was going to join me. Walt was from Buffalo, New York, like many of the other young recruits from decaying Great Lakes Rust Belt hellholes that had lost their manufacturing base. Walt was what I called a Glad Hander. A Glad Hander ranks at the top echelons of Ass Kissers, like at the 95th percentile of Ass Kissers and above. You can't really blame a Glad Hander for wanting to permanently escape a Rust Belt hellhole, I guess.

So we're having a conversation with this management guy who in my opinion was showing himself to be a pathetic knob and a complete asshole. He was enumerating all the company priorities that he could list, when I asked him which of those were the most important. Cleverly, as in advanced prison clever, he replied that was like asking which leg of a 3-legged stool was most important, at which time Walt, on the edge of his seat, quickly blurted out, "They're all important!" Perfect!

I just recalled another great anecdote about Walt. On some regular basis, everyone had to eventually give a presentation to our group of about 30. It was something like 3 per month. Someone gave their presentation and the person did a pretty good job but it was evident this person was slightly nervous. After the presentations were finished, people would offer comments for improvement. As I recall, there were a couple constructive comments. Then Walt offered that some of the person's intonations or pitches rose slightly at the end of some sentences. The person then smiled and asked the group if it was OK to sit down now. A few people smiled and laughed and then someone said OK, yes, you can sit down now.

[Guest]

The third level knobs will be the ones that assure Sorites paradox.
They will never sit down since they never stood up for what should of been done.

[Higgenbotham]

The third level knobs will be the ones that assure Sorites paradox.
They will never sit down since they never stood up for what should of been done.

You've already figured out where I've been heading with the last 9 posts. There are a few more things to put in place first.

[Higgenbotham]

So far as I'm aware, high tech companies like the Magnificent 7 (or any other company for that matter) will never ask an interview question that involves calculus. Let's take a look at what it's reported that they do ask.

Amazon engineering interview math question

AI Overview

Solving Amazon's Poles Distance Interview Question with Math

Amazon engineering math interviews often test applied quantitative reasoning, probability, or mathematical logic rather than pure calculus. A popular example is the "Hanging Cable" logic puzzle, which evaluates a candidate’s ability to strip away complex formulas and use spatial reasoning to find a simple solution.

The Hanging Cable Puzzle

The Problem Statement:
Imagine two 50 meter poles are standing on the ground. A cable exactly 80 meters long is strung between the two poles. Because of the cable's length, it hangs down, and its lowest point reaches exactly 10 meters above the ground. How far apart are the two poles?

The Solution:
Instead of setting up complex hyperbolic catenary curve equations, test the limits of the problem. Picture bringing the two poles directly together (with a distance of 0 meters between them). Because the cable is 80 meters long, it will go 40 meters straight down to its lowest point, and then 40 meters straight back up to the tops of the poles. Since the poles are 50 meters high, the lowest point of the cable will be at 50 - 40 = 10 meters off the ground. Since this perfectly matches the conditions of the problem, the only possible distance between the poles is 0 meters.

This question in my estimation is right at The 97th Percentile. In other words, 3 percent of the population will quickly solve this in an Amazon interview and 97 percent won't. In the case of the engineers they interview, it will be higher than 3 percent because they don't represent the population average.

OK, why do they do this? It's because they have a company to run and they have to hire people to run it. To hire people, they have to establish a cutoff. A reasonable cutoff is at The 97th Percentile. So they cut it off at that level and work with what they get.

The way I look at the problem, the level of the problem is actually high school geometry. What you do given the diagram is approximate one side as a right triangle to get an approximate answer. So they are giving the hypotenuse of the triangle in the diagram as 40 (half of 80). They are also giving one leg as 40 also (50 minus 10). Therefore, because the formula for a right triangle is a squared plus b squared equals r squared, the length of the other leg must be 0 and thus the approximation is also shown to be exact.

If Amazon were to start asking interview questions based on calculus, the bar would be so high and the number of candidates who could clear it so infinitesimally small that they would not be able to run their company. That's why the world has to run at the level of this interview question and similar.