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

#211

Post by Justsignedup » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

I am proud to say my company has a phone screen coding question 100% relevant to the day-to-day work you do. And also all our coding / whiteboarding / behavioral questions are geared to answer if you know how to handle challenges that daily life in the company will bring, and what sort of person you are.

To come up with the right questions was a difficult effort. We definitely avoid algo / puzzle questions like the plague, and the technical stuff we ask is more of a discussion than a quiz.

So yeah, it is important to look for the right signals.

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

#212

Post by yakshaving_jgt » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 4:24 AM UTC

PunchTornado wrote: post #99

gamma3 wrote: post #64

I've interviewed engineers on computer science problems on a whiteboard and those who did great turned out to do great on the actual job. That's a one way implication. It is possible there are people who do poorly on coding interviews but great on the job. Whiteboard coding is simply a quick test that has few false positives in my experience (around 40 interviews).

many assumptions, few facts

There are few facts to make the case in either direction, so the anecdotes are valuable.

Of course it's a bit of a shame that the one comment not subject to HN groupthink is [predictably] all the way at the bottom of the page.

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

#213

Post by neilv » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 4:39 AM UTC

One way that a takehome can align well with a business is when it selects for people who are relatively strong at "introvert" activities.

Some of our work requires high-bandwidth face-to-face collaboration, with ideas and decisions needed immediately, but a lot of our work is a natural fit for being able to go off and think through a problem by oneself (for perhaps the bulk of it; there's still interaction).

A takehome seems to favor someone good at the think-through part. (Although a takehome doesn't fully exercise someone strong at this bulk part who also has a sense of when to, say, bounce it off someone else, or ask more questions, or get feedback at that point, or call in an intense group brainstorming.)

(Of course, some people can do, say, pair-programming all day, and it energizes them, and that's great. Others, who we might roughly label "introverts", would find all-day pair programming taxing, or distracting with social awarenesses, or have a sense at times that they'd be better off thinking at their own pace or in their own directions. Both kinds have merits, and probably the organization wants some of both. My experience is that a mix of them works on a team, even with some near the extremes, though the most extreme pair types presumably need a mate to function.)

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

#214

Post by mikekchar » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 4:56 AM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #89

mtkd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That hasn't been my experience at all. The opposite in fact. Sure the biggest problems aren't solved in 5 minutes at a whiteboard, but they are solved by people who are able to think on their feet at a whiteboard discussion.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but when the decision is made on your feet at a whiteboard, only the people who are able to think on their feet at a whiteboard discussion can participate. If you have a whiteboard discussion and then say, "come back to me tomorrow with specific feedback" -- and privately ask people directly who you know are unlikely to make comments in public, I think you will get a completely different point of view (if you haven't weeded out all the good meticulous thinkers already, of course).

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

#215

Post by alangpierce » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

They acknowledge that the term "whiteboard interview"/"whiteboarding" is a simplification and a proxy for a style of interviewing they don't like, but I really wish they didn't pick "whiteboard" as that simplified negative term. Whiteboards don't get enough credit, from my experience.

I really like collaborating with someone with a whiteboard: it's fun, it's social, and it feels like a dramatically more effective form of collaboration and explanation than common alternatives like chat conversations and shared docs. I've had jobs where whiteboard-style collaboration is common, and I've had jobs where it almost never happens, and I greatly prefer to be in a culture where it's the norm. So for me, if I go through an interview process and no whiteboards were used in the process at all, it makes me worry that I wouldn't be happy there.

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

#216

Post by mikekchar » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

Where I'm currently working we do pair programming interviews (usually with ping pong). Some candidates don't like it. Sometimes we have technical hitches. However, it's been the best method I've seen in my fairly long career. I can't think of a single time that we've hired someone and been surprised when they showed up to work. The strengths we've seen have actually been there and the weaknesses as well. We may well miss some good people, but I think that's inevitable. Having a predictable hiring practice is much more valuable to me.

Our practice is pretty interesting. We do a telephone pre-screen and then 2 hours of pair programming (4 25 minute pomodoros pairing with a different person each pomodoro). We generally do the pair programming remotely. I can't even remember the last time we did an in person interview. We also try to accommodate people who want to interview outside of normal business hours. It's a fairly long interview, but skipping the commute helps a bit (I hope).

Just for people who aren't familiar with ping pong, one person writes a failing test, the next person fulfills that test and then writes the next failing test. It ensures you pass the keyboard back and forth frequently and that both partners are plugged in.

Like I said, some candidates really don't like it. There is still a lot of stress having to produce while being watched. Also, not very many people have experience with pair programming and TDD, so ping pong is pretty foreign. However, the interviewer can help quite a bit, driving the process and even solving the problem. Over the period of 2 hours, hopefully the candidate can settle down and just program naturally. It also gives the interviewer a lot of leeway to ask questions like, "What do you think of this idea?" and see how they react.

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

#217

Post by agoldis » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:12 AM UTC

jboy55 wrote: post #166

agoldis wrote: post #98

"Take home" challenges are excellent - they give an opportunity to create a common platform for discussion that every party feels comfortable with. As for time investment, it's worth to dedicate 4-6 hours of your life to make sure the next few years of your employment are good for both parties. It is not whiteboard that is a problem, but pressure of being evaluated by a random dude. It's like dancing naked. Whiteboar…

All sounds great when you interview for 1 position at a time, but how does this scale if I interview for 4-5 companies in my job search? Considering every take home probably also has a full day interview afterwards, that's a lot of time investment. As a company looking for people, do you want to have your 6 hour take home project to happen after the candidate has an offer? As a candidate, are you really going to spen…

It's your choice to interview for 4-5 positions, moreover, you will have those interviews whatsoever, so it can't be an argument :) Most chances you are applying for a high paying job and do that once in 2-3 years on average, aren't you ready to invest a week of intense effort for that? If not, you could choose to apply to a FAANG and spend 2-3 weeks studying craking the code interview-style books. How much time do you think is reasonable to invest for candidate and a company to make a decision? As a company I don't see a point in giving home excercise after an offer, but why are you asking? I will spend 12 hoirs if I consider a company better than one that offerer.

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

#218

Post by nickm12 » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:38 AM UTC

> Solving CS trivia, technical puzzles, riddles, brainteasers...

I never know what people are talking about when they complain about brainteasers and riddles. In my career, I've interviewed at Amazon (x2), Google (x2), Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Dropbox, and Fitbit (5 offers, 3 hires).

At all of these companies, solving coding problems was part of the interview process, as were systems design questions, and behavioral interviewing. At none of them was I asked questions that I considered "CS trivia" let alone brainteasers and riddles. Instead the focus was on problem solving, algorithms and data structures, concurrency and other topics. You know, the things you use as a working programmer.

I get that this interview style is not to everyone's liking, but to just call it "bad interview practices" without either defining what it is or why it is bad is lazy and unhelpful. There is genuine signal that comes out of these interviews and the companies seem to be doing alright.

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

#219

Post by hizxy » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:42 AM UTC

nickm12 wrote: post #218

> Solving CS trivia, technical puzzles, riddles, brainteasers... I never know what people are talking about when they complain about brainteasers and riddles. In my career, I've interviewed at Amazon (x2), Google (x2), Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Dropbox, and Fitbit (5 offers, 3 hires). At all of these companies, solving coding problems was part of the interview process, as were systems design questions, and behavior…

Good for you?

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

#220

Post by noisy_boy » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

mlboss wrote: post #81

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…

And sometimes after you have spent so much time on take home exercise companies don’t even respond back.

Has happened to me. Was given an assignment that basically requires me to setup an entire ETL pipeline with full/incremental loading (with inputs varying from CSV/Json APIs etc), do data cleansing, create charts, data warehouse modelling + another coding assignment - all within a week's time. It was a very busy week and despite trying my best couldn't finish it. I sent what was completed - total silence with no feedback.