Whiteboard exercises are a terrible way to investigate coding ability (2012)

An even more waste of time is actually learning framework A, B, C, D, database A, B, C, D, bundler A, B, C, D.

The more and more I think about it, as a fullstack developer, I continuously forget documentations and how a specific technology works, but I was always able to solve problems using those in the past. I did Angular, Vue, jQuery, React, Webpack 1, 2, 3, 4, Grunt, Gulp. I did MongoDB, MySQL, S3, DynamoDB, Go, Python. Those things change all the time and I always forget how they worked. Because I genuinely like fullstack development I always switch back and forth between different technologies and I can't remember them all.

Whenever a company interview me, I'd really appreciate it if they just ask whiteboard algorithm questions instead, at the very least I don't have to scramble brushing up X if I got interviewed as an X developer. At least whiteboard algorithm and data structures questions make me stronger fundamentally as an all around developer and I just need to grind those. And after a while, grinding those aren't that difficult anymore.

P.S. I still failed FAANG interview, but I still keep grinding Leetcode. I am definitely a believer in whiteboard algorithm and data structure questions. It is simple, to the point, saves everyone time. If I were an interviewer I would also ask data structures and algorithm questions instead of nitty bitty of React hooks or Javascript promises or Golang's concurrency pattern. Those things can be learned easily if you are a decent all around developer.

I'm an average developer. I don't have the creative capability or the insights that 10x programmer has. Those people are not only good with programming, but also at mentoring, at business, at finance, at swimming, at hunting bears, at predicting the future, etc. So, in my resume I often don't have those quantitative accomplishment "implement X in Y minutes that resulted in Z performance and A savings for the company". So, whiteboard algorithm questions fits me better.

It depends.

I recently had an onsite interview where I was handed a laptop to write code on, which was great. What was not great was that the interviewer was shadowed by 2 other developers and had to write the code while screensharing to the meeting room's screen. It was basically a meeting where people were looking at me go. It was by far the weirdest experience ever (and I've been doing this for decades). I kind of missed the 1:1 with the interviewer and a whiteboard.

IQ tests scale a lot better than one-to-one whiteboard interviews do. They are specifically designed for that purpose.

How is an expensive, labor-intensive, never-validated approximation of an IQ test "better scaled" than a cheap, easy-to-administer, thoroughly validated IQ test?