A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#31

Post by jheriko » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

if you find an interview in front of a whiteboard to be a high pressure situation where it is difficult to communicate... maybe that is the problem and something to work on.

it really is the case, then you are unsuitable for work in a lot of roles... aside from that being able to communicate under pressure is extremely valuable everywhere.

on the other hand... plenty of roles don't need this. sitting behind your desk doing code is usually pretty different to anything you come across in interviews :I

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#32

Post by dmitrygr » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

mykowebhn wrote: post #3

Some companies list a take-home assignment as an alternative. IMO, that's worse than a whiteboard interview. My time is valuable, and I don't want to spend my evenings or weekends on an assignment.

When a company insists on a take-home assignment, I send them a quote at my standard contracting rate.

Curiously enough, some agree

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#33

Post by simplesleeper » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #27

alasdair_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The giant companies who whiteboard are full of people who have a strong incentive to reach the conclusion that the process that selected themselves over other people is a good one. Unconcious bias is a tough thing to control for.

These companies are also full of Directors and VPs whose very jobs, and their millions of dollars in salary, and their image as successful managers, rely on successful hiring choices. It's definitely not hard to imagine such people being biased toward whiteboard. It's also not hard to imagine them hiring outside firms to conduct studies and collect data. Speaking of bias, there's a lot of it around here toward the id…

"it's not hard to imagine that A" does not mean that A is happening. It doesn't even mean that P(A) is high.

Your first paragraph also goes directly against what you are trying to prove. If their success relies on good hiring, then they would pick the best methods. If they haven't, they wouldn't be successful and would be replaced.

What a load of twaddle .

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#34

Post by nilkn » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #25

hota_mazi wrote: post #23

Instead of this subjective us/them mentality, I'd be more interested in some hard data showing that not using a white board leads to higher quality hires. I'm really not convinced this is the case. Besides, that list is not what the title is. It's a list of companies that don't do brain teasers. But a lot of them use white boards. And to be honest, using a white board is important. You will be doing that a lot in any…

> It's a list of companies that don't do brain teasers Facebook, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Netflix, etc don't do brain teasers and they're not on this list. EDIT: whoops, Netflix is on this list, my bad

While the term isn’t very precise, in this context “brainteaser” means precisely the kind of questions asked by Google, etc.

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#35

Post by ajkjk » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

This makes me realize that a giant list of every tech company would have been really great when I was last looking for a job. I looked for weeks for every small company in the Seattle area and didn't find a few of the ones on this list.

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#36

Post by courtf » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

mtkd wrote: post #30

pmiller2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people just can't ... think on their feet under pressure. It was good at finding that. What was the relevance of finding that? Do you always do system design under a strict clock at your company?

In my experience some of the biggest problems are solved best by the slowest thinkers Those slow thinkers might have a good idea of the answer they likely want to give straight away - but maybe want to take another day or two before committing Short meetings around a table can be quite frustrating for people that think slow - which is why many discussions can reach a better conclusion using email and time

Completely agree. My best decisions are not made on my feet, and I have often been responsible for difficult technical tasks. I also prefer to "communicate my thinking" in the form of readable, well-tested code that can be verified by a machine.

If that code is unsatisfactory for some reason, I'd rather figure that out after writing it, based on concrete evidence, than during an upfront design meeting with folks who likely won't be doing the actual work, but often feel the need to impose themselves in arbitrary ways. When a team focuses on excellent communication through writing, I find less planning and verbalizing is necessary, and a lot more gets done.

As a partial aside, one of my greatest annoyances when starting a new job is when after being grilled for technical skills during the interview, they walk you in to a messy, amateur codebase, where many of the ideals discussed during the interview clearly haven't been applied, but no one seems to acknowledge it. This has happened to me repeatedly, enough so that when these sorts of questions come up during the interview, I mentally start preparing for the disappointment. People sometimes seem to take more pride in trying to rattle candidates than they do in building anything admirable. Luckily, there are many fine places to work where the team can be honest with itself and with candidates. I don't really care about the current state of projects when I'm starting; I don't mind being a janitor (except in extreme cases). Just don't start our relationship off with a load of BS. I feel like this is such an elephant in the industry. A lot of our code is bad, real bad, but we can't admit it.

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#37

Post by hota_mazi » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #34

jfasi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a list of companies that don't do brain teasers Facebook, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Netflix, etc don't do brain teasers and they're not on this list. EDIT: whoops, Netflix is on this list, my bad

While the term isn’t very precise, in this context “brainteaser” means precisely the kind of questions asked by Google, etc.

Mmmh, no, I don't think so.

Brain teasers are typically understood as questions such as "How many ping pong balls can you put into an airplane?", and other silly, non-coding related questions.

This type of question has been banned in most tech companies for years.

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#38

Post by andrestc » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #25

hota_mazi wrote: post #23

Instead of this subjective us/them mentality, I'd be more interested in some hard data showing that not using a white board leads to higher quality hires. I'm really not convinced this is the case. Besides, that list is not what the title is. It's a list of companies that don't do brain teasers. But a lot of them use white boards. And to be honest, using a white board is important. You will be doing that a lot in any…

> It's a list of companies that don't do brain teasers Facebook, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Netflix, etc don't do brain teasers and they're not on this list. EDIT: whoops, Netflix is on this list, my bad

Netflix is in the list.

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#39

Post by simplesleeper » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #29

simplesleeper wrote: post #7

I interview a lot of candidates and we do whiteboarding - to see how candidates can communicate architecture designs and decisions. The interviews have made me realise that countless candidates are unable to: 1. Give a high level overview of a product 2. Critique design choices and suggest improvements 3. Communicate well as to what the value of components are to the broader business. Many of the developers can expla…

However, just like like whiteboard coding is completely unrelated to real-world coding, this type of whiteboard design is also completely unrelated to the real-world whiteboard design people do in non-interview settings. How many times has a scenario like this happened to anyone: Your manager pulls you in with no warning into a conference room and asks you to architect on the whiteboard a new product completely unrel…

... You are making a load of assumptions that are wrong.

We ask the candidate to describe a system they have recently built. Therefore they should have product context, they are not being tested on inventing whatsoever (unless they are actually doing an impressive con, in which case, they'll have to be extra skillfull). As mentioned below, we give candidates the benefit of the doubt, but quite a lot of candidates are unable to give even a simple explanation of what they've worked on.

As for the amount of pressure - all of the pressure is circumstantial. We try as hard as possible to put candidates at ease. Obviously it's not entirely possible, but we try our best. Secondly, scenarios like that happen all the time. Maybe I won't get fired, but if there is a pressing issue, for example, I often need to draw diagrams to explain what is happening to a part of a distributed system. It is impossible to do without diagrams. And communicating these issues clearly and concisely often leads to quicker resolution times and happier clients/stakeholders

Re: A listing of companies that don't do whiteboard job interviews

#40

Post by nilkn » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

hota_mazi wrote: post #37

nilkn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the term isn’t very precise, in this context “brainteaser” means precisely the kind of questions asked by Google, etc.

Mmmh, no, I don't think so. Brain teasers are typically understood as questions such as "How many ping pong balls can you put into an airplane?", and other silly, non-coding related questions. This type of question has been banned in most tech companies for years.

Given that you are the one who used the term, I’m curious why you used it in the way I described then and not the way you just did. The article here clearly is including LeetCode style questions as “whiteboard questions” — this is explicitly stated. Maybe you hadn’t read the article? That is fairly likely, given that your comments about physical whiteboards are addressed in the article as well.