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Hiring Without Whiteboards

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Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#51

Post by mjrbrennan »

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'd much rather do a take-home project at my own pace funded by the company, seeing as how my personal GitHub is a barren wasteland (well...it was before I started working for an OSS company).

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#52

Post by madamelic »

kansface wrote: post #36
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.

You can and it happens.

source: work at a place that does this

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#53

Post by shmolyneaux »

0xFFC wrote: post #2

I am going to kill myself (exaggeration). I have maybe one of the best cv's (I am not saying that, it is feedback from industry) for last year student focused on low-level programming. But I cannot bypass recruiters. Why? because none of them even heard Boost.Beast or anything on my cv. Or any C++ thing I have done as project or my publication. They literally do bunch of find/search on the pdf. And because of that I…

If you're willing to associate your username with your personal identity, you could link to your projects/CV in your profile. Other commenters may be able to identify what recruiters are looking for and why your resume was dismissed.

Also, to the point of the post, do you consider whiteboard interviews to be good or bad for your situation? With covid it's harder for companies to find which applicants should be interviewed in the first place, and short questions are helpful for filtering out people who can't code at all.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#54

Post by vsareto »

marcinzm wrote: post #46

The advantage of leetcode is that you study once and then it applies for every job you interview for. Like democracy it's a horrible system except for all the others. Take home project? There goes 4-12 hours per company that gives you one and sometimes more. Companies have no incentive to cut it down or not give it to even marginal candidates so you'll get a lot more of them than full in-person interviews. Pair progr…

Gotta disagree on pairing, as that gives you an actual computer. If it's your own environment, you're at least comfortable with that. You don't have to worry about penmanship and can get IDE suggestions. It's frustrating not being able to get your ideas down quickly enough like when writing code on a board.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#55

Post by nicoburns »

0xFFC wrote: post #2

I am going to kill myself (exaggeration). I have maybe one of the best cv's (I am not saying that, it is feedback from industry) for last year student focused on low-level programming. But I cannot bypass recruiters. Why? because none of them even heard Boost.Beast or anything on my cv. Or any C++ thing I have done as project or my publication. They literally do bunch of find/search on the pdf. And because of that I…

Consider applying to companies directly rather than going via recruiters. Recruiters often just look at past job experience, but hiring managers will look at your actual skillset.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#56

Post by madamelic »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #18
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.

Sure - That would neatly eliminate majority of qualified candidates :-) Very few people who are successfully employed would take a risk / have a luxury to forsake their certain employment for an extremely short term contract (with all the registration, taxation, regulation etc headache this implies!) and extremely limited chance of gainful employment. (it's perspectives like these that make me realize how much of a g…

>with all the registration, taxation, regulation etc headache this implies!

It's not if you are in the US.

You will get a 1099 from where you worked, you write it on your 1040 and include the 1099 with your taxes if I recall from when I was an independent contractor for a while.

It takes maybe like 10 minutes extra and 1099-ing is incredibly common nowadays (unfortunately) so not a super weird case.

And it's not regulation. You don't need to worry about anything besides getting the 1099 like you would your W2s and appending it.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#57

Post by sangli »

mbil wrote: post #45

This is a great list. Thanks for sharing it. I actually had the pleasure of interviewing at one of these companies before. They had a take-home project, which was to choose and implement and couple enhancements to a toy app. In the subsequent conversations, we discussed how I approached the problem, details of my design, technical tradeoffs, etc -- all the sorts of things you would expect a professional sw engineer t…

I would rather spend 3-4 hours working on a take home test rather than writing on whiteboard.

Last year, I did take home test for 5 different companies and all 5 of them invited me to the next round. I yet to have a successful whiteboarding interview.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#58

Post by 0xFFC »

shmolyneaux wrote: post #53
0xFFC wrote: post #2

I am going to kill myself (exaggeration). I have maybe one of the best cv's (I am not saying that, it is feedback from industry) for last year student focused on low-level programming. But I cannot bypass recruiters. Why? because none of them even heard Boost.Beast or anything on my cv. Or any C++ thing I have done as project or my publication. They literally do bunch of find/search on the pdf. And because of that I…

If you're willing to associate your username with your personal identity, you could link to your projects/CV in your profile. Other commenters may be able to identify what recruiters are looking for and why your resume was dismissed. Also, to the point of the post, do you consider whiteboard interviews to be good or bad for your situation? With covid it's harder for companies to find which applicants should be interv…

I can send my cv privately to you.

About the leetcode thing, yes, I used to be pretty code. If you send me a link right now, I might not be able to do it, since I am living under huge stress right now, but with 1 week or 2 training I can get 80-90% in the coding challenge easily.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#59

Post by alexbanks »

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.

> but it's not clear that these companies have better alternatives.

It obviously depends on your definition of "better". And it's yet to be seen whether whiteboarding is "better" than pulling candidates out of a hat. You'll note that lots of companies that do strict whiteboard-style interviews are also extremely comfortable firing employees. Would you be "better" just hiring anyone whose resume seemed applicable, that could talk like a normal person, and then firing them if it didn't work out?

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