How Would You Move Mount Fuji

William Poundstone's How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is a quick and easy read. Focusing on the hiring process at Microsoft, and the interviewer's use of puzzles and brain-teasers to weed out the most desirable candidates, the book offers a shallow overview on interview preparation, before getting to the interesting part: puzzles and Fermi problems, as well as the answers.

The insights and anecdotes detailing the Microsoft interview process are neither particularly illuminating or useful for anyone other than a potential interviewee, and even then, it's doubtful they'd be of much use. This book is more like an overview of typical coding interview procedure, which is at least a little interesting from a cultural anthropology standpoint.

Of course the highlights are the puzzles included here. Some of which are relatively straightforward and well-known ("How would you weigh an airliner without using scales?" "Why are manhole covers round?") Others are a little more esoteric: ("You're in a boat in the middle of a perfectly circular lake. There's a goblin on the shore who can't swim. He wants to eat you. And he can run four times as fast as your boat. How do you escape?") Most aren't quite so weird, but worth puzzling out. Since these are the kind of problems designed to be solved in an interview setting, they're pretty quick. The book closes with recommendations on how to interview, both as a prospective employee and as a hiring manager, but they're not exactly groundbreaking.