"How many cars, do you think, are in the city?"

I am here to code, not count traffic.

What if you tossed an estimate of 1000 what'd they respond with?

They were not looking for specific number.

They ask this to see how you think.

Is that what google asks

I hate questions like that. I get it - they want to "see how you think" but at least make the problem kind of dev related. It just seems like such an academic task to figure it out.

One time an interviewer asked to figure out "how many gas stations are in the U.S." Like could you possibly come up with a more boring question? Zzzzzzzzzzz...