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

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

#101

Post by nkingsy »

jboy55 wrote: post #44

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 candida…

Seems so simple to just say “let us know when you have 1 hour to do this take home and we will send it to you at that time. Sumbissions will be accepted for one hour after we send you the coding challenge”

Problem solved

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

#102

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

simplesleeper wrote: post #57
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And how do you propose a removal of all stress? Shall we hire everyone and fire them if they turn out to be dreadful after a week? That would ensure EVERYONE is under pressure all the time...

Evaluate software engineering candidates the same way virtually every other skilled profession on the planet evaluates their candidates: through a series of conversational interviews that involve technical communication about their skills and past experiences, and perhaps some version of “sample work” that ideally should just come from GitHub, school project, Stack Overflow answers, etc., and only be based on some take-home (with tons of time to complete it) in the rare cases the candidate doesn’t have any samples they want to discuss with you.

I don’t understand why people keep overthinking it and believing you need any type of timed testing aspect at all.

Through many years of leading engineer hiring for my teams, a simple conversational style has helped me successfully hire effective software engineers much, much more than traditional software tests.

Imagine asking a plumber, lawyer, or tax accountant to solve a pipe problem, law problem, or accounting problem in ~40 minutes while you watch over their shoulder and iteratively add complicating details, while telling them to use some foreign interface they never use for their own work and confusing them by saying you don’t care about syntactical correctness and just want high level communication to “see how they think,” despite the very nature of the problem being rooted in sweating micro details about correctness.

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

#103

Post by 01100011 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #49
simplesleeper wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was on a phone interview where my anxiety crossed a threshold and my brain just shut down. I literally could not comprehend the code I had just written. For a few minutes, I forgot how to program. I've programmed for 21 years professionally, across many languages, but still fell apart. I recovered after about 5-10 minutes, but at that point it was too late. A couple hours later I went back and breezed through the problem, wrote a few test cases, and ran them without issues.

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

#104

Post by 01100011 »

nxc18 wrote: post #19
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…

Ever been in a tense meeting? Most (almost all) verbal communication comes with time pressure. Speak too long (ramble) and your message is lost and your coworkers are annoyed. Don't speak fast enough and now someone else is using all the air in the room.

Yes. They're still nothing like an interview. It's a different kind of pressure.

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

#105

Post by jboy55 »

nkingsy wrote: post #101
jboy55 wrote: post #44

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 candida…

Seems so simple to just say “let us know when you have 1 hour to do this take home and we will send it to you at that time. Sumbissions will be accepted for one hour after we send you the coding challenge” Problem solved

I'd say in the list of companies, probably 2% of the 'take home projects' describe that. A one hour question is most of the time the phone screen or the replacement of it with an automated online exam.

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

#106

Post by bradleyjg »

alaithea wrote: post #73
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination? I see this sentiment fairly frequently, and TBH, it completely baffles me. I am in my mid 40s. Yes, I don't have nearly as much energy nor desire to spend all weekend doing take-home programming assignments as I did 20 years ago. But if one candidate is willing to do…

People whose kids are older may have forgotten how hard it is to get even five minutes to one's self at home, when there are infants or toddlers in the house, let alone an hour or two. Without an adequate support network in place, a parent might have to pay a babysitter to get the time to do the take-home. So yes, take-homes which are expected to be done in one's "free time" are discriminatory against those with fami…

Who says that they are expected to be done in one’s “free time”? What responsibility or business is it of an employer to know how candidates are making time for the job interview process?

If any non-zero time required to obtain a particular job is descriminatory then every existent hiring process is discriminatory. What do you suggest, drawing lots?

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

jheriko wrote: post #31

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…

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by ehsankia »

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

I'm curious to know what are the biggest companies on the GitHub list. It looks like some of these methods may work fine for a company hiring a dozen people a year, but when you're a large tech company (like your list), hiring 10,000 people a year and interviewing probably 50-100x that, you need a method that scales up and is more cheat proof.

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

#109

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

jboy55 wrote: post #84
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of jobs I've worked at have required some flexibility in working off hours. Whether it was something that went down at off hours that needed to be addressed, or an unforeseen (and unforseeable) change in a business that required a last minute scramble, these things happen. True, there may be some jobs that are truly 9-5, and if that's the case, so be it. But frankly, as someone who is willing to put…

If 'Work Hours' require someone to be oncall 24/7, you can ask that as part of your interview, but you can't infer that from other factors. Yes: "Our job requires you to be on-call 24/7, one week a month, can you commit to that?". No: "You said you didn't have time for the take home test because you have a family. The family will get in the way of 24/7 support" Also yes: "you will be traveling 5 days a week for your…

I agree with all of your examples - it is discrimination if an employer says "your family will get in the way of you working off hours."

What I find obnoxious, though, is when an employer has standard rules for everyone (e.g. "all prospective applicants must produce a 3 hour at home project as part of the interview process") and then balk at "discrimination" because you'd rather spend your time at your kid's soccer game.

This also strikes me as the height of white-collar privilege, because there are tons of other jobs (e.g. military jobs, oil rig workers, construction jobs, etc.) that require a hell of a lot more family sacrifice, but it's mainly highly paid software developers that protest so much at a couple hour non-9-5 project.

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

#110

Post by bradleyjg »

jboy55 wrote: post #91
throwaway66666 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination? And whiteboard interviews are discriminatory towards people with anxiety who have trouble thinking clearly when they are in the spotlight with all eyes on them, no? Where does the microaggressions game start and end? My current company does, -Offer choice between liv…

>And whiteboard interviews are discriminatory towards people with anxiety who have trouble thinking clearly when they are in the spotlight with all eyes on them, no? Where does the microaggressions game start and end? So Gender/Age/Disabilty discrimination are now microagrssions? It seems from your description of your hiring practice, someone has thought of the implications of take home questions given the choice bet…

> So Gender/Age/Disabilty discrimination are now microagrssions?

Do you have any cases to cite for the proposition that take home interview assignments to be per se “Gender/Age/Disability” discrimination? From any court anywhere?

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