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

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#361

Post by Tobani » Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

qudat wrote: post #348

Tobani wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We do whiteboard problems, BUT we also emphasize beforehand that the interviewers in the room are there to work through the problem with them. Except at the end of the day this is an interview, you are judging their answers and evaluating their performance. I have been part of white boarding sessions like this and it does not reduce anxiety and still feels completely removed from what I actually do on a daily basis…

Not judging their answers. The only thing we're judging is their ability to communicate in a group setting similar to what happens on the team on a regular basis.

We at least on a weekly basis somebody has some small problem they need help working through, it generally ends up being diagraming or pseudo-coding to figure out the best approach. If somebody can only participate by hiding in a corner typing out code, then the process worked for both sides.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#362

Post by Tobani » Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

itronitron wrote: post #286

Tobani wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are asking the candidate to compartmentalize their thoughts to solve a toy problem during a period of time when they are attempting to put various nascent clues about your organization together in order to form a better understanding and to identify how they can provide value / fit into the flow. Fizz-buzz tests have their place, but I think an onsite interview is past that point. In general I have found that whi…

Agreed. For us this is a communications/team fit exercise and not a technical exercise. It has done a good job of filtering out bad fits, like the guy who refused to talk to the women on our team regarding anything technical.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#363

Post by Tobani » Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

spike021 wrote: post #116

Tobani wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That sounds like a much better way of handling a whiteboard problem. In my most recent on-site interviews, my interview would be in a room with full floor to ceiling glass windows, the next interviewer would come in, ask one or two personal questions, and then either cut me off after a couple minutes or just simply say "we're going to move on to the whiteboard now, do this". Meanwhile people are walking by staring in…

Yeah, that's the trick. It isn't a technical exercise really. Its really a communication/team fit test.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#364

Post by Tobani » Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #227

pkteison wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time an interviewer has told me something like this, they then nitpick syntax and appear to be primarily concerned with "does my whiteboard code compile" sorts of problems. And getting stuck / asking for help feels like I get docked for getting stuck. Same with less optimized. So it's hard to trust such an explanation - clearly my interview would be better if I came up with the perfectly optimized solution, or…

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…

By the time we get to the whiteboard problem we've already assessed technical skills as well as we can. The whiteboard problem is to test their fit on the team. It has worked well for us and certainly weeded out some people who could have been problematic culturally. Is that a "failing?" Maybe we lost some more technically skilled individuals that way, but our team isn't exactly lacking because of it.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#365

Post by hueving » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 4:02 AM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #312

hueving wrote: post #287

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Ugh, communicating with a whiteboard has no overlap with developing a solution to a completely unexpected quiz (if you didn't cheat) on a whiteboard in front of someone scrutinizing your every move with your future career on the line. Whiteboard interviews rarely test the ability to communicate on a whiteboard because the interviewer knows the answer they are looking for and the presenter does not. If you defend whit…

> Whiteboard interviews rarely test the ability to communicate on a whiteboard because the interviewer knows the answer they are looking for and the presenter does not. They you are asking the wrong questions. I use whiteboard for developers, and for junior developers I give them a simple task such as reverse an array, turn a string into a palindrome (and explain what it is if they don't know). If they want to be a d…

If you think someone looking over your shoulder while you solve a problem with your future career on the line is anything like "working as a team", I weep for whatever work environment your developers work in.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#366

Post by hvidgaard » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 8:15 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #365

hvidgaard wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whiteboard interviews rarely test the ability to communicate on a whiteboard because the interviewer knows the answer they are looking for and the presenter does not. They you are asking the wrong questions. I use whiteboard for developers, and for junior developers I give them a simple task such as reverse an array, turn a string into a palindrome (and explain what it is if they don't know). If they want to be a d…

If you think someone looking over your shoulder while you solve a problem with your future career on the line is anything like "working as a team", I weep for whatever work environment your developers work in.

So a simple problem solved while communicating, asking for clarification, and telling your thoughts is "someone looking over your shoulder while you solve a problem"?

I'm not asking them to impelment van Emde Boas tree because I spend countless of hours implementing and analyzing it getting my degree. I ask them to turn a string into a palindrome, or return the sum of all even index in an array of ints, ect. They're free to ask all the questions they like. It's a litmus test to see if they know simple programming, akin to seeing if a contractor knows how to drive in a nail using a hammer.

Is it high pressure while your future career is on the line? Absolutely, but they are not special snowflakes, and it's the case for any interview for any kind of position. I'm not going to throw thousands of dollars after someone just to figure out that they have in fact never written a functioning for loop.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#367

Post by Yhippa » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

jarsin wrote: post #357

keeganpoppen wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

going through / having just gone through this process this is where i've basically ended up as well... crappy interview experiences are universal enough that they don't disqualify a company automatically (though obviously i'm not terribly fond of them :-). the one thing i'd add is that i do take particularly thoughtful / empathetic interview processes, interviewers who actually know and understand the question (rarer…

I caught an interviewer red handed once by handing him the marker and asking him to show me. He tried and failed and then his coworker tried to fix his mistake and failed. Ya I did not get that job lol.

Good for you for asking. As an interviewer myself I wouldn't dare ask a question I couldn't answer.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#368

Post by LaserToy » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

loxias wrote: post #354

LaserToy wrote: post #238

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Do you want to work for PlayStation Network team? We have plenty of open positions from DevOps to server or client side developers. And variety of work also there - commerce, social, video streaming, distributes databases, big data, ml. You name it, we are doing it.

Maybe? Sounds cool! Can you send me a very very short email (my email is on my HN profile page) as a point of contact for further communication?

done

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#369

Post by LaserToy » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #217

LaserToy wrote: post #99

Principal Engineer from huge gaming company here. White board coding interview are testing only one thing: how well candidate is prepared for it. And here what is wrong with it: The assumption that candidate should spend his/her valuable time preparing for someone's assessment is arrogant. I do understand why Google and Facebook do it (the do other arrogant things), they assume you want to work for them so much you w…

How do you interview candidates for your company?

I would talk about candidates experience, try to find some project he/she are proud of and dive deeper. I might ask to write some code, but it is not going to be CS exam and it will be in real IDE. I might ask a design question. At the end of the day I need to answer 1 main question: "are you passionate about what you do or it is just 9-5 work"? Cause if you are you will be able to learn new things, and if you don't - knowledge of merge sort not going to save you.

Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?

#370

Post by LaserToy » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

jcbrand wrote: post #304

LaserToy wrote: post #99

Principal Engineer from huge gaming company here. White board coding interview are testing only one thing: how well candidate is prepared for it. And here what is wrong with it: The assumption that candidate should spend his/her valuable time preparing for someone's assessment is arrogant. I do understand why Google and Facebook do it (the do other arrogant things), they assume you want to work for them so much you w…

Brute-force, not brood-force. Do you work for Blizzard? ;)

Heh, right :) Nope, they too far from SF