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

#191

Post by mevile » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #55

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…

> 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…

> I am in my mid 40s. Yes, I don't have nearly as much energy...

Do people in their mid 40's have less energy for some reason? Do you exercise regularly? Do you get enough sleep? Do you eat healthily? You don't mention anything about a family obligation taking up your time. I am 41 and I don't have any lack of energy issues. I don't think it's a 40's thing, more of decades of bad lifestyle decisions catching up. Which I don't think should be out of bounds for a company to consider when hiring as long as it isn't due to health issues beyond the candidate's control. I guess this distinction can get fuzzy, but I stress that there shouldn't be any reason why in your 40s you should have dramatically lower levels of energy than in your 20s.

Honestly depicting people in their 40s as having less energy does more harm than good. It's just feeding into the perception of older people as less capable when it's not true across the board. It's not OK. I don't have less energy, I have tons of energy and I'm sure many people older than me do as well.

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

#192

Post by fouc » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #72

jboy55 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole bent against white board questions is that they are unrealistic as to actual working conditions and thus are artificial. So if you are a successful engineer, using your work time efficiently, and yet, you have family obligations that prevent you from spending enough time as someone else on a take home challenge, is the take home challenge showing realistic 'working conditions'? Or is it a measure of freetim…

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…

"some" being the keyword. It's understandable if there's a scramble if the codebase you're directly responsible for goes down.

I think it depends on how much sysops/devops is involved in your job or if that's a separate team. And how robust your codebase is etc.

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

#193

Post by creato » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

pmikesell wrote: post #137

acslater00 wrote: post #71

I ask most candidates to write code on a whiteboard in front of me and I’m not apologizing for it! The problem is usually fairly easy and if the candidate cannot get to a “describe solution in words” milestone then I will guide them to one. After that I ask them to write code. I will also tell them “the code is the part I care about”. The specific competency I am evaluating here is “can you turn thoughts into code”.…

Thank you for writing this post. Whiteboard code interviews get a lot of hate on HN and I suspect that folks who have come to rely on them for part of their hiring signal have simply stopped posting. I've done a lot of lower level systems work and the fact is that even with a long career and history of very successful product I get whiteboard coding interviews when I look for a job ... and it's just fine. Yes it's no…

> Thank you for writing this post. Whiteboard code interviews get a lot of hate on HN and I suspect that folks who have come to rely on them for part of their hiring signal have simply stopped posting.

It seems like there's a population of engineers that is perpetually interviewing. I think the people that post significantly about this are people that are struggling with frequent interviews, and correctly or not, lash out at whiteboarding as why they are having trouble.

Maybe there's some large pool of otherwise qualified people that just can't pass interviews and are being passed over because of it, but I really doubt this is significant.

My personal opinion: I don't mind white board interviews. I'd do a take home test, but I would prefer a traditional interview. And being a short term contractor (also comes up frequently in these threads) as an interview process is obviously impractical.

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

#194

Post by humanrebar » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

mevile wrote: post #191

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…

> I am in my mid 40s. Yes, I don't have nearly as much energy... Do people in their mid 40's have less energy for some reason? Do you exercise regularly? Do you get enough sleep? Do you eat healthily? You don't mention anything about a family obligation taking up your time. I am 41 and I don't have any lack of energy issues. I don't think it's a 40's thing, more of decades of bad lifestyle decisions catching up. Whic…

It's more that family demands tend to be less friendly to time shifting. You can't just put off feeding your kids, grounding them for getting into trouble, or changing their wet sheets at 2 a.m.

Single people (and empty nesters to be fair) can more often skip some happy hours or some intramural games.

And to be even more fair, once employed, it seems parental excuses (my kids blah blah) get more understanding than single excuses (I need to actually date, my boyfriend blah blah). But I'll wager the interview process is more complicated for people with families.

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

#195

Post by seattle_spring » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:26 AM UTC

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…

Question for all of the people claiming ageism because companies won't make special cases for folks with kids:

I have a dog. A young dog that requires a lot of work around the clock. Do you also think I deserve concessions?

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

#196

Post by mevile » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:29 AM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #194

mevile wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am in my mid 40s. Yes, I don't have nearly as much energy... Do people in their mid 40's have less energy for some reason? Do you exercise regularly? Do you get enough sleep? Do you eat healthily? You don't mention anything about a family obligation taking up your time. I am 41 and I don't have any lack of energy issues. I don't think it's a 40's thing, more of decades of bad lifestyle decisions catching up. Whic…

It's more that family demands tend to be less friendly to time shifting. You can't just put off feeding your kids, grounding them for getting into trouble, or changing their wet sheets at 2 a.m. Single people (and empty nesters to be fair) can more often skip some happy hours or some intramural games. And to be even more fair, once employed, it seems parental excuses (my kids blah blah) get more understanding than si…

Family obligations taking up time I can understand, but the person I am replying to just seemed to equate 40s as being in a state of having less energy without mentioning family obligations. I am taking issue with 40's being a state where you have less energy. I don't believe it is true, unless there's an underlying health condition that has little to do with age.

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

#197

Post by bfung » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:46 AM UTC

creato wrote: post #193

pmikesell wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for writing this post. Whiteboard code interviews get a lot of hate on HN and I suspect that folks who have come to rely on them for part of their hiring signal have simply stopped posting. I've done a lot of lower level systems work and the fact is that even with a long career and history of very successful product I get whiteboard coding interviews when I look for a job ... and it's just fine. Yes it's no…

> Thank you for writing this post. Whiteboard code interviews get a lot of hate on HN and I suspect that folks who have come to rely on them for part of their hiring signal have simply stopped posting. It seems like there's a population of engineers that is perpetually interviewing. I think the people that post significantly about this are people that are struggling with frequent interviews, and correctly or not, las…

The pay in software engineering, esp. in the bay area, is very high. Companies here never have enough engineers for one reason or other - the situation makes current engineers always looking for higher pay regardless of their skill level, and people not in the industry wanting to be in the high pay field.

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

#198

Post by seattle_spring » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 2:46 AM UTC

astura wrote: post #95

In at least 20 interviews over the years I've never had a white board interview, I assume that's mostly a west coast/SV/startup thing.

If you don't mind me asking: How much do you get paid, and what sort of interesting problems at scale do you get to work on?

The salary I make and the interesting stuff I get to work on is worth the song and dance I've got to perform every few years, in my opinion.

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

#199

Post by programmarchy » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

acslater00 wrote: post #71

I ask most candidates to write code on a whiteboard in front of me and I’m not apologizing for it! The problem is usually fairly easy and if the candidate cannot get to a “describe solution in words” milestone then I will guide them to one. After that I ask them to write code. I will also tell them “the code is the part I care about”. The specific competency I am evaluating here is “can you turn thoughts into code”.…

I don’t really understand the whiteboard hate either. Take home tests don’t reveal how a person communicates or collaborates. Maybe it’ll predict competency for siloed heads down work, but even for those positions you need to be able to explain solutions, get feedback on the approach, and be able to incrementally adapt to new requirements quickly. Even when programming solo I’d wager most people are using pen and paper to sketch out solutions so it’s not like it’s an implicitly unreasonable request to then do this on a whiteboard in a group setting.

And to address the OP more directly, are loops, maps, trees and graphs really “CS trivia”? They seem more like fundamentals to me, and those are usually the subjects whiteboard tests revolve around.

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

#200

Post by Ocerge » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #83

As a candidate, here's what I like about white boarding, and conversely what I dislike about take-home problems: at least with whiteboarding I'm guaranteed to be wasting the employer's time and not just my own. I've spent hours completing a code challenge only to be rejected with no explanation in the past.

This is pretty much where I've landed; the filter can go both ways. If I make dumb (minor) syntax errors on a whiteboard and it bothers the interviewer enough to not hire me, or if the question is some "cycle a red-black subtree" BS, I'd really rather not work there anyway, and not have it take 4+ hours of my personal time.