No more Google brainteasers

The world loses a famous proponent of brainteasers in interviews!

The Huffington Post reports that our favorite search giant has phased out brainteasers.

TheEditor has always held the belief that  questions like "How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan?" are what a Google's senior vice president of people operations finally admitted: "A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart."

For the record, TheEditor would like to stress the reverse side of the "make the interviewer feel smart" statement.

That is: make the interviewee feel not smart.

And, between male members of our species, the statement turns into: mine is bigger than yours.

We should not expect such questions to go away completely. For a long time to come, there will be interviewers who sneak in one or two, because they can, because they want to measure something.

We do hope, though, that we will be spared a cyclical revival when the current generation of interviewers retires.

Maybe that German friend at Apple will finally get his chance. The chance he blew before because he dared to tell a brainteaser tosser that the question was a waste of time.

Good luck M.