Ask HN: Can engineers from Google or Facebook solve whiteboard questions easily?

We don't hate whiteboard problems because they aren't fun. They're obviously fun for some people.

We hate them for interviews because they're a terrible signal for hiring, they're often poorly administered, they're humiliating, they discriminate against introverts, and they've become frustratingly common.

They unfairly mess with people's livelihoods. It is a really big, life-altering issue for some people.

BALL-PITS and CLOWN NOSES

I worked with a guy, Bob, in our college computer room. Bob had returned to get his BS after many years in industry. He had great stories. He also had great advice. He taught me that you can learn a lot about how a company will treat their employees by paying attention to the way they treat you during the interview. He suggested several sign that indicated it was best to just "walk away".

If you go into a restaurant for a professional lunch meeting and they have a ball-pit / swing set /etc. it might not be the most professional place to hold the meeting. Just walk away.

If you go to a 5 star restaurant and they want you to wear a clown nose (Everybody Does It!) Just walk away.

The big scam is "We hire the best and the brightest". "We mandate a whiteboard test (Everybody Does It)". It is my opinion (based on experience) that companies that insist on a whiteboard test, despite years of programming on your resume and open source code, are either Ball-Pit companies (who don't know what it means to be a professional) or Clown-Nose companies (who know what it means to be a professional but still treat you like a commodity). Just walk away.

When you object, please reference one study in a journal that shows that whiteboard tests are effective in any measure when used during interviews.

I understand why Google does it. I've even interviewed there. They get thousands of resumes (which they never read, at least nobody did at my interviews). They have to weed out the "learn coding in 6 weeks" crowd. But you're a professional. You should expect to be treated like one. You don't ask your surgeon to cut up hams in an interview. You don't ask your builder to nail two boards together. Professional accountants are not interviewd by bank tellers and ask to count change.

Google, like Microsoft before it (remember the "why are manholes round? quizes?"), have combined the marketing claim "We hire the best and brightest" with the ball-pit mentality of whiteboarding. Google HR (sorry, People Resource?) SHOULD be embarrassed but apparently they, and upper management, LIKE ball-pits.

A real professional interview involves a discussion about what the company does, what it current problems are (aka why are they hiring), and a discussion of if you, as a professional, have the skills to solve the problem. What do they need? How can you contribute? It is likely that your interviewer has no idea what you are being interviewed for and cannot answer these basic questions.

We, as professionals, should consider whiteboarding as an insult.

Just walk away.

I worked for FB. I like the whiteboard problems and many other engineers like them too, and I enjoyed discussing or solving similar problems over lunch. That's probably why they're so prevalent in interviews -- I don't believe they actually predict a candidate's success in a company. Btw in college, I used to compete on websites like topcoder, spoj, etc for fun. The interview processes of many companies drastically favor ppl who did that in college, at least while hiring in the edit: also worked for google, same story

edit2: I believe most people can learn to solve these problems because a lot of it is mixing and matching algorithms/techniques that you've practiced. It just takes time and practice and exposure to a wide variety of problems and crucially, confidence. I've seen people who somehow strongly believe that they're not the "algorithmic type" and will never be able to solve these even if they spend months working on it. :( I've tried and failed multiple times to convince those ppl that this is a very learnable skill.

Interesting, I've found my opinions align pretty well with who gets hired and who does well, but I'm interested in this research. Will reach out internally.

How do I force myself to find doing those problems to be fun? To me they just seem painful because they really expose how stupid I am even if I know he basics.