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Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

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Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#131

Post by nybblesio »

jiveturkey wrote: post #117
nybblesio wrote: post #113

A regular viewer of my daily Twitch programming stream (link is in my profile) asked me to solve a problem he was asked to whiteboard. He wasn't asked to draw diagrams or write pseudo-code so they could learn how well he communicated. He was asked to write the code and it was heavily implied that it must compile and run -- even though whiteboards don't do that. Here's my attempt: https://youtu.be/6LHqrxrC6Uo I solved…

It makes you someone that can't listen. The most important part of communication is listening. When the interviewer asks you to whiteboard a problem, they aren't asking you to "solve it". Obviously, you only have a whiteboard and you only have 15 minutes max. You might throw out some comment about size vs. time (eg) but make the decision and move on, quickly. The interviewer might decide to latch on but if not, you h…

At what point did I ever imply I don't listen?

I explicitly described the conditions of the original interview. The interviewer asked the candidate to "solve it" and it had to run. What part of that wasn't clear?

I also find it interesting that you countered with a completely different kind of whiteboard scenario. I agree that the scenario you describe is fine. I would enjoy those kinds of interviews all day and twice on Sunday. I'm not railing against an honest discussion with a potential employer. But that's not what happens most of the time, in my experience.

Also, the tone of your reply is that you reject the employer if they don't meet your definition of reasonable. That's great, but not everyone has that luxury.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#132

Post by seanmcdirmid »

remoteorbust wrote: post #45
bradenb wrote: post #2

VP of Engineering at Eaze, previously CTO at Getable and engineer at Yammer. No, not at all. Whiteboard interviews test one thing well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard. Engineers on my team never have to code on a whiteboard (whiteboards are really bad at running code), why would I make candidates do something that I don't ask the engineers already on my team to do? This comes close, but I think the re…

> Whiteboard interviews test one thing well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard. What if you consider part of someone's job to be communicating concepts to people, possibly with the help of visual aids and diagrams? I hate this concept that if it's not typing code into an editor then it's not "real work". I absolutely communicate with my coworkers using a whiteboard and pseudocode. I reject the idea that…

Then test that. Having someone code on a whiteboard, even if they are explaining what they are doing while they go along, is simply not the same thing as being good at using on the fly visual aides while communicating. In any case, that isn’t coding either.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#133

Post by [deleted] »

nybblesio wrote: post #113

A regular viewer of my daily Twitch programming stream (link is in my profile) asked me to solve a problem he was asked to whiteboard. He wasn't asked to draw diagrams or write pseudo-code so they could learn how well he communicated. He was asked to write the code and it was heavily implied that it must compile and run -- even though whiteboards don't do that. Here's my attempt: https://youtu.be/6LHqrxrC6Uo I solved…

[deleted]

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#134

Post by lambdasquirrel »

> What’s great about a white boarding session is that it is a blank piece of canvas, where the interviewee can effectively think out loud, collaborate, draw diagrams and also brainstorm with the interviewer.

Is the typical engineer conducting an interview good at contextual inquiry? At holding space for people to think out loud? Lets not kid ourselves here. The only people we’re harming are each other.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#135

Post by pavel_lishin »

scarejunba wrote: post #53
pavel_lishin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people should play CS-quizshow during whiteboard interviews. Being asked to implement a breadth-first search, or whatever, is kind of annoying - especially since there's effectively one correct answer. At best, you're testing my memory and whether I read the right interview book. I had to do that at my last interview. I got through it ok-ish. The more interesting question was a more general system desig…

Surely not BFS. That's something you can figure out from first principles and knowledge of some data structures like stacks and queues, but I'd expect knowledge of those data structures anyway.

Sure, I can, and I did, although I didn't come up with the super-hindsight-obvious solution I'm sure I learned three times over in college.

But it's the interview equivalent of your driving instructor making sure you adjust your side and rear view mirrors before you start the car.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#136

Post by readittwice »

Will_Parker wrote: post #40

Is there any engineer who you'd regret not hiring, who is unable to code FizzBuzz in real time in front of an audience? I'm skeptical.

You certainly have a point. But those whiteboard interviews people complain about are usually a bit harder than just solving FizzBuzz.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#137

Post by pavel_lishin »

lfowles wrote: post #76
pavel_lishin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you doing now?

Makin' games, burnin' savings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7MXfg2wt28&list=PLqJcvcLs4C...

Hah! I love the AXBY code-entering minigame :P This is pretty neat so far.

I, too, have a side project I'd love to quit my job to work on, but I think it's less monetizable than an actual game.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#138

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

Nay.

We have a round of interviews and then send the candidate home with a choice of 5 coding tasks. Intention is to spend no more than 2 hours. Then they return and hold a code review in front of the team and explain what they've written. That way, they code at their own pace and in a comfortable space where they can focus, much like the way they would actually work. Then they've got it all right in front of them for discussion.

The review then weeds out people who don't really understand what they've written, possibly because they borrowed it from somewhere or asked a shill to write it for them.

We've had a range of submissions, from the casual-careless-broken code to extremely complete to elegance like we've never seen before. It works well.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#139

Post by loxias »

jdc wrote: post #60
remoteorbust wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whiteboard interviews test one thing well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard. What if you consider part of someone's job to be communicating concepts to people, possibly with the help of visual aids and diagrams? I hate this concept that if it's not typing code into an editor then it's not "real work". I absolutely communicate with my coworkers using a whiteboard and pseudocode. I reject the idea that…

The point is that the interview style in question overemphasizes on-the-spot responses. How is prowess in a game of "gotcha" an important indicator of engineering skill?

> How is prowess in a game of "gotcha" an important indicator of engineering skill?

It's not; I couldn't agree more.

In real life when using engineering "skill", not only am I not anxious/stressed by trying to write on a whiteboard, but I'm using my laptop, with my editor, as well as access to man pages, docs, and google to look things up.

In addition to the overemphasis of performance responses, I think "how much do you know from memory with 10 seconds of thinking" vs "how much do you know with 10 seconds of google" is useless. The only fairly complex datastructures I can perfectly describe from memory are the ones which I used most recently...

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