Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay? • Hacker News Board

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#201

Post by oh-kumudo » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 11:42 PM UTC

Yes? It designs to filter people based on certain criteria. Nowadays, you just can't get a job by merely talking, the market is too hot, too many people want to get in.

I don't think design interview alone is that useful either. Someone without actual experience designing stuff could still fake it by reading other people's past solutions and answers, there are templates on the internet.

Nothing is inherently bad just because it fails you. Everyone saying Google's process is broken, blahblah, doesn't change the fact Google employees are hot AF on the job market.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#202

Post by bradenb » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 11:42 PM UTC

techwraith wrote: post #97

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…

VPE at Eaze here (the original author of the quote above) - You're 100% correct. We give our candidates the choice between working through a problem at the office (on the spot as you say) or doing a take home project asynchronously. Not everyone has the time to do homework, but not everyone wants to do an in person coding interview either. We try to stay flexible.

Thank you for the response. I appreciated your take on the situation in the original article and I am glad to hear that you accommodate developers like me that don’t perform well for strangers on the spot. This type of thing really pushes a company up the ranks if I’m interviewing with them.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#203

Post by bradenb » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

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…

Minor kvetch: quoting the way you did it makes long lines very difficult to read. I usually quote like this: > I am a quote This makes the quotation doubly-distinct, and still readable on mobile devices. === To the actual point I wanted to make: plenty of engineers at companies code on a whiteboard. They schedule a meeting, grab a room, and talk things out, while making notes, diagrams and sometimes even actually wri…

Thank you for the quote pointed. I will remember that for next time! As to you’re point, I think others have covered it well, but I will add my agreement that communicating in an environment where you are comfortable and familiar with the topics ahead of time and won’t have your career prospects put in the line is much easier. Some people like myself simply can’t prepare for an infinite number of possible whiteboard scenarios and look competent.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#204

Post by techwraith » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 11:49 PM UTC

bradenb wrote: post #202

techwraith wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPE at Eaze here (the original author of the quote above) - You're 100% correct. We give our candidates the choice between working through a problem at the office (on the spot as you say) or doing a take home project asynchronously. Not everyone has the time to do homework, but not everyone wants to do an in person coding interview either. We try to stay flexible.

Thank you for the response. I appreciated your take on the situation in the original article and I am glad to hear that you accommodate developers like me that don’t perform well for strangers on the spot. This type of thing really pushes a company up the ranks if I’m interviewing with them.

That's great to hear. I love getting feedback about this stuff, positive or negative! We're constantly evolving our process.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#205

Post by dionian » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

whiteboard is more useful for design than code, i give them a computer to code on

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#206

Post by ordinaryperson » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 12:02 AM UTC

madrox wrote: post #194

ordinaryperson wrote: post #190

Having just been through this process (landed a new job after a 2-month search), the worst part about whiteboard coding is how humiliated you feel if you don't get it right or don't know where to start. Is it really necessary to do that to candidates? I've been doing this for 15+ years professionally, have a master's in CS and I struggled to answer many questions. Just stood there blinking like a goldfish. If compani…

Asking someone with your amount of experience a coding exercise is silly. You wouldn't have lasted 15+ years if you didn't know how to code. Spend more time evaluating the "softer skills," since more experienced engineers have a bigger impact on culture and process.

Right?

Ask me about past projects. Want GitHub examples? Fine. But whiteboard coding some non-real-world problem?

I get that companies need some sort of filter, but whiteboard coding is not the answer, IMHO.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#207

Post by swyx » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 12:05 AM UTC

great article! it would have been nice to have a comparison of yays vs nays, like for example 67% of engineers say nay, whereas 50% of companies on key values do have some sort of whiteboarding in their process. with the caveat of course that the kind of companies that talk to you (keyvalues) are probably more progressive anyway so there is selection bias.

but it very much does seem like whiteboarding is on its way out.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#208

Post by amzn_82582 » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 12:06 AM UTC

spike021 wrote: post #86

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…

>I reject the idea that being put on the spot is necessarily "artificial". To the contrary, I think that the number of engineering jobs where you can assume you'll never be put on the spot or have to communicate complex ideas verbally or visually is relatively low. I think it's safe to say that being put on the spot in front of people you don't know who are judging you is quite different from being put on the spot in…

Well, when you first start your job, you won't really know the people you are working with so I don't see how it is that much different.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#209

Post by ordinaryperson » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 12:08 AM UTC

pan69 wrote: post #166

As with everything, it depends. To me, whiteboard interviewing makes sense when hiring for a role that leans toward a comp-sci background. People who do well in these roles typically have a brain that works in a certain way. The roles that lean away from a comp-sci background are usually the type of developers who don't do well with whiteboard interviewing techniques. What too often happens is that a hiring engineer…

> People who do well in these roles typically have a brain that works in a certain way.

You know this how? Intuition?

People have all different kinds of backgrounds and brains.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#210

Post by ordinaryperson » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 12:09 AM UTC

renegadesensei wrote: post #32

They're fine but they need to be understood properly. Whiteboard interviews don't really capture how well someone codes. They are better at capturing thought process, high level understanding, system architecting ability, and a candidate's communication skills. If you want to see how well someone codes, look at their code. Or ask them to write something for you. Don't do a whiteboard interview and think it is the end…

> They are better at capturing thought process, high level understanding, system architecting ability, and a candidate's communication skills.

If that were the case, ask me about a past problem and my solution and to defend it, not the proper way to invert a b-tree.