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

#41

Post by JimboOmega » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

paulmendoza wrote: post #4

Whiteboard interviews are great, just not for writing code. I want to see how you can communicate a design and have a discussion. So we always gave someone a design problem where there really wasn’t a right way to solve it but lots of ways. Then we asked them to tell us what they are thinking as they go thru it. Some people just can’t communicate their thinking or think on their feet under pressure. It was good at fi…

I recently interviewed at Square (who is on that list), and they don't have whiteboard coding challenges. There was still a design challenge that involved a whiteboard on which I could draw basic aspects of my design, which sounds like exactly what you're talking about.

This list is those that don't expect you to write code on a whiteboard, from what I gather. Not those that don't have design questions.

Though FWIW I don't view ability to "think on their feet under pressure" that important for most SWEs. It's not the military, an ER, etc. The fact that somebody gets panicky when being interviewed by strangers, and then can't think as clearly, doesn't really say anything about their ability to sit down and write code on a typical workday. It just says they're bad at being interviewed.

Communication is important, but it's important not to conflate "bad in a high pressure interview situation" with "can't communicate in a normal office environment".

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

#42

Post by simplesleeper » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:03 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…

+ we don't set a hard time limit in the interviews. The whiteboarding piece is last and the candidate can spend as much time as he would like to. Often candidates have shown something we are happy with in just 5 minutes or so.

The assumption you seem to be making is that anyone with a whiteboard is also an evil villain that wants to interrogate you violently you and pick on any mistakes that you might make. In reality, it is a higher level check to see if you can communicate at all.

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

#43

Post by hopler » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:03 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.

That's a Fermi problem, not a brain teaser. Brain teasers are problem with one solution that you solve by a spark of insight (or memory) with no solving process.

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

#44

Post by jboy55 » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

Its interesting how many of these companies have 'take home' challenges or projects. Even though the companies may say, "This should only take an hour", 99% of the time, it occupies my entire night/weekend, if not in coding but in thought. There's always something more you could do. Its presented as an objective test, but its very subjective, just as much as the whiteboard test.

With the whiteboard test, as a candidate, I know that when my hour is over, its done. Plus, I can get feedback during my whiteboard session to know if I'm on the right track, I can ask questions and get guidance on where to concentrate my efforts. With take home projects, I've woken up in the middle of the night and thought, "Wait, I know this is a full stack position, and they said that the UX just needs to be functional, but maybe my CSS knowledge is too old, and there's a better/newer way of doing the styles. I should really spend all night researching this, wait, BOM?! I should convert over to that, I don't want the front eng engineer reviewing this code and saying, OMG, this is so old, NOHIRE!"

EDIT:

Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination?

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

#45

Post by hopler » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

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…

I've easily spent more time at whiteboar in interviews than at a white hard in all my time on the actual job, over many years.

A good design discussion is written up and discussed. Ad hoc scribbles on a board don't add much anything, not in the 21st century with good computer drawing tools

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

#46

Post by softwaredoug » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #22

paulmendoza wrote: post #4

Whiteboard interviews are great, just not for writing code. I want to see how you can communicate a design and have a discussion. So we always gave someone a design problem where there really wasn’t a right way to solve it but lots of ways. Then we asked them to tell us what they are thinking as they go thru it. Some people just can’t communicate their thinking or think on their feet under pressure. It was good at fi…

> 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?

Well it’s certainly relevant if the job requires a lot of thinking on your feet. Like consulting and solutioning with clients under pressure...

None of these interview practices are by themselves good or bad, it depends on what the actual job will demand.

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

#47

Post by kappi » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

The theoretical coding interview based on undergrad CS topics has become a cottage industry by itself with books,online sites etc. Very few people know that this is used for indirect age discrimination to favor young folks. Not sure when this insanity will stop. Human beings went to moon before we had this coding interviews.

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

#48

Post by softwaredoug » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

Discussions of interviews always cast a practice as definitively “good” or “bad”. The reality is it depends what the real job will entail. If the job actually requires a lot of white boarding style problem solving, then why not a whiteboard problem solving interview? If the job is a pure heads down coding job, then a more heads down interview seems best...

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

#49

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

simplesleeper wrote: post #21

vitovito wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But communication on-the-fly, on-your-feet, in a high pressure environment, which is what a whiteboard test is, is not most communication. Most communication gets thought about, drafted, revised, critiqued, socialized, ahead of distribution. If your whiteboarding comes after hours or days of consideration and review, that sounds like a great way to vet good communicators. Otherwise, aren't you optimizing only for spe…

Of course the candidate is under more pressure than they would be at work - that's why we don't expect them to create a Leonardo masterpiece in front of us and we give the candidate the benefit of the doubt. You would be surprised at how poor some of the candidates are at this. Candidates who are unable to draw a few squares on a board to describe the last thing they worked on, and candidates who have never questione…

I think an important point is that you are assuming someone’s design communication moves along a spectrum from good to bad as you increase time pressure or stress, and so you can accordingly adjust your expectations along a spectrum and still be well-calibrated to evaluate the meaning of the candidate’s performance.

I propose it doesn’t work like that at all. Rather, if someone’s brain is loaded with time pressure or interview jitters, and they are not the type of person who thrives on stress, then it will be more like you have totally switched off the part of their brain that is good at communicating design thinking, and their performance in the interview will be entirely unrepresentative of what their performance would be in a regular day-to-day team meeting on the job.

I think the same effect is even more severe with any type of coding / mathematics / puzzle solving questions done inside a short timed session or using things like Coderpad or HackerRank.

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

#50

Post by Joeboy » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

I've been a professional developer for over 20 years and I've never been asked to do anything on a whiteboard at an interview. I guess I've done at least 20 interviews in that time (but I can't really remember). Maybe I was just very lucky. It's just as well as I have really shitty handwriting.