The experiment conducted by William Cross, a MongoDB employee, aimed to determine whether employees could distinguish between regular soda and diet soda, as well as which of three glasses of cola (Coke or Pepsi) was different from the others. The study found that, on average, MongoDB employees were not significantly better or worse than random guessing machines in determining which soda was different from the other two, with success rates ranging from 36% to 62%. However, highly confident individuals did slightly better at recognizing Coke and Pepsi but still performed no better than chance. The experiment highlighted the difficulty of the task and the limitations of the study due to its small sample size and lack of rigorous methodology.