Nervous about Brain Teasers

I've been studying online for upcoming interviews and have seen some people say that they were asked different brain teasers. I know the different financial statements, how $10 depreciation would affect them, walk me through a DCF, pitch me a stock, etc., but I doubt I would be able to figure out how many windows were in an office building, or something of that nature, if I was on the spot in an interview without a pen and paper. Would I get dinged for not being able to answer these sorts of questions?

2 Comments
 

No one can say for sure- depends on who is asking you those questions, what kind of day they were having, how other people answered them.

I will say that brain teasers like you describe are not really that hard with the right mindset.  They are just about having a structured thought process, not about a correct answer.  How many windows in an office building?  Lets say a wall on the building is 200 ft wide.  A 5 ft wide window every 5 feet.  So 20 windows per wall.  4 walls per floor. So 80 per floor.  50 floors for an average skyscraper, so 4000 windows per skyscraper.  Might be way off vs reality.  Maybe there's even a math error,  But easy to follow and hard to complain about.

 

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