271–280 of 370 posts
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…
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As a former air traffic controller and now data scientist, nothing in this career field is ever done under any real pressure.
tremendous respect to air traffic controllers. i cannot imagine the level of professionalism and responsibility these people must have! no amount of monetary compensation is enough, in my opinion.
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Coding challenges either take home or live session. Most whiteboard questions are always some esoteric algorithm any engineer worth their salt would in real life would look up before ever consider using to verify their own understanding before using it. Putting someone on the spot saying whiteboard x is not ok. However if the test is to see if they can take part in a meeting, then by all means do a white board, but a…
It's not just that real working engineers would go look it up. It's that the culture around these "prove you can code" problems got into an arms race, where companies kept trying to come up with ever more difficult problems and stringent requirements on solutions. It finally reached the point where, at some companies which use them, the bar for "can you code at all" is actually "given a problem you've never seen befo…
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>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…
We do whiteboard problems, BUT we also emphasize beforehand that the interviewers in the room are there to work through the problem with them. This is meant as more of a conversation, we're less concerned about getting to the "right, fastest, or most optimized" answer. Not a hard problem, no mindgames, no syntax rules, and no complicated pre-known algorithm work other than an if and a loop. Let's just talk about some…
I've had my share of the second kind, which were without exception some of the most unpleasant interviews I've ever gone on.
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> 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.
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> 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 communicate my ideas using a whiteboard too. But I never produce those ideas using a whiteboard in front of my coworkers under pressure of being fired.
The interviewer propmpted me along the way, it felt like a friendly conversation. The fact that it was an easy problem prevented me from stressing out, but I still felt like I was able to demonstrate some academic ideas.
I was always pretty decent at standardized tests as a kid, and this argument over whiteboarding reminds me a bit of that. I don't think it's useful for gauging general software engineering skills, but it might have some value for evaluating communication. It also feels like the sort of thing that software engineers with a strong academic background tend to enjoy more than those with more practical/industry experience, but that's just anecdotal.
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…
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All these discussions conflate a related, but separate problem with tech interviewing: most tech interviewers don't have much experience interviewing, and have never had good coaching on interviewing, and as a result mostly suck at it. Picking on whiteboard code for not compiling is not good interview technique. But it's also a common enough failing that it's hard to say a bad interviewer in that regard means a bad w…
Bad workplaces are so common though that it’s a perfectly good heuristic to guess that if a place asks you to do whiteboard questions it’s a bad engineering workplace. You’re not missing much by passing, and the heuristic probably won’t be wrong much.
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I agree with much of what you say, heck, nearly all of it -- but it's not reasonable to expect, or even ask for a _very_ short paid project. I see no reason that a possible employer should pay actual money for some useless task. If it's very short, then almost by definition it's useless. That being said I've had great results from doing, say, a tiny consulting project, and ending up with full time employment. The bes…
> I see no reason that a possible employer should pay actual money for some useless task. My time is valuable. I see no reason to work on a useless task for free.