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Hiring Without Whiteboards

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Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#31

Post by 0xFFC »

XCSme wrote: post #24
0xFFC wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really apricate your feedback. Just one thing you should take into consideration, that is, as ESL I am not going to put that much effort on writing comments on HN to check for every grammatical error. I simply don't have that much time and energy. I do understand what you say. But that is not the case sadly.

Keep in mind that people reading your comment might not have that much time and energy either.

Completely valid point and shows my shortcoming. I hope I will improve it. But with COVID19 and danger of going homeless, it has become hard for me to manage it all. But you are completely right.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#32

Post by shiftF5 »

This seems to promote Google Docs > whiteboard, what? At least you can brainstorm or draw diagrams on a whiteboard.

IMHO the worst of these options is coderpad/hackerrank/etc. - it's robotic, discourages pseudocode, and perpetuates the idea that rote memorization is required to pass an interview.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#34

Post by johannes1234321 »

wendyshu wrote: post #5

No one enjoys whiteboard interviews but it's not clear that these companies have better alternatives. Many of them do take home projects which are time consuming. I'd prefer the employer look at my GitHub profile as there's plenty of code there already. Furthermore, I'm not a fan of "interviews" in general, I find that more information is transmitted by eating lunch with the team and talking like normal people.

I like whiteboards, if there is an interesting problem.

Going through my GitHub account however isn't good. It's full of quick one shot things, experiments and so on, very little production ready code and not representative of anything.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#35

Post by madamelic »

new_realist wrote: post #3

To a large degree, these look like no-name companies who probably have to resort to this kind of thing to make up for worse pay and benefits as compared to FAANG.

"oh no, this 'no-name company' is _only_ going to pay me $100k+ / year while I live in a low-cost of living area, boo hoo hoo"

Scrolling through there are a lot of high-quality companies (Auth0, ASOS, Blue Bottle, Basecamp, Buffer, Canonical, CircleCI... and more and more).

Just because Google or Microsoft aren't on the list doesn't mean these are backwoods operations. Those companies don't need to bring in new candidates by being on these lists.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#36

Post by kansface »

kanobo wrote: post #4

If I were a large company with money I would simply ask all qualified applicants if they would be willing to work on a small part of a real project as a contractor with the possibility of getting hired. Applicants get paid for their time, productivity is achieved, jobs might be offered, everybody is happy.

You would never hire a senior engineer like this (or anyone who is currently employed), but maybe it has its place for high risk hires.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#37

Post by chrisseaton »

vageli wrote: post #29
chrisseaton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask them some questions about it over lunch? What’s your threat model here? People making up elaborate lies about code they’ve written?

> What’s your threat model here? People making up elaborate lies about code they’ve written? Likely people making up elaborate lies about code they didn't write. It's trivial to push code of which you are not the author.

I can’t imagine a situation where you couldn’t work that out with five minutes of casual conversation about the codebase but maybe I’m naive.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#38

Post by crsv »

Here we go again perpetuating the stereotype of the whiney privileged engineer put in a position of mild discomfort by the villainous abusive white board interview boogeyman. I don’t mind whiteboard interview exercises. They’re not great, but they often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance. I think there’s bigger fish to fry in refining fair and objective interview processes, I’ll never understand the perpetual moaning around this aspect of technical interviews.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#39

Post by victor9000 »

vageli wrote: post #29
chrisseaton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask them some questions about it over lunch? What’s your threat model here? People making up elaborate lies about code they’ve written?

> What’s your threat model here? People making up elaborate lies about code they’ve written? Likely people making up elaborate lies about code they didn't write. It's trivial to push code of which you are not the author.

Which is why the interviewer should ask specific and thoughtful questions about the project, so they can gauge the candidate's level of understanding. This concern could also be addressed by introducing a trial period.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#40

Post by simonhamp »

crsv wrote: post #38

Here we go again perpetuating the stereotype of the whiney privileged engineer put in a position of mild discomfort by the villainous abusive white board interview boogeyman. I don’t mind whiteboard interview exercises. They’re not great, but they often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance. I think there’s bigger fish to fry in refining fair and objective intervie…

> they often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance

Do you have any statistically significant data to back this claim?

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