Estimation question

Estimate the memory needed for Nest cameras for the fiscal year 2020.

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description

What this question tests

Tests structured estimation of cloud storage requirements using device count, recording behavior, and video compression assumptions.

How to approach it

  1. State the goal: estimate the total cloud storage needed to support Nest camera video for fiscal year 2020.
  2. Estimate active Nest camera installations: assume roughly 10 million active Nest cameras in use globally during that period.
  3. Estimate recording behavior: assume each camera records an average of 4 hours of motion-triggered footage per day, since most plans use event-based, not continuous, recording.
  4. Estimate storage per hour of video: assume compressed video at roughly 1 GB per hour at typical Nest streaming resolution.
  5. Compute daily storage: 10 million cameras times 4 hours times 1 GB, about 40 petabytes of new footage generated per day.
  6. Adjust for a typical 30-day rolling retention window, giving roughly 1.2 exabytes of stored footage at any time, then sanity-check against known cloud storage scale for comparable services.

What a strong answer includes

Common mistakes

Likely follow-up questions

More estimation questions

More questions from Google

Learn the skill behind it

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.

Preparing for a specific role?

Book summaries for this kind of question

Browse all 4,000+ questions in the bank