Hiring Without Whiteboards • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#141

Post by HALtheWise » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

bit_logic wrote: post #81

Another tech interview thread. For the side that supports these types of interviews, I've never gotten a good answer to a simple question: in the year 2020, why are we expecting people to write compilable code on a whiteboard? It's just stupid at this point. Even a laptop that boots into some micro linux distro and has nothing but nano open would be better. Or just a fresh install windows laptop with nothing but note…

As somebody that gives both phone interviews with a shared typing environment and whiteboard interviews, there are some problems I can only use with a whiteboard, but no problems that I can only use with a typing environment. In particular, whiteboards are significantly better at letting candidates describe what they're thinking about the structure of a problem before (or instead of) actually writing correct syntax. When someone is sitting in front of a computer, they have a tendency to either jump straight into coding or try to describe their thoughts in a giant block of comments, neither of which is very productive.

Maybe it's just our phone interviews that allow us to focus on higher-level concepts in person, but I've really never found a candidate who did poorly on a whiteboard but seems like they would have done well on a computer. If anything, it's the inverse where candidates jump straight into code, to their own detriment, when placed in front of a keyboard.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#142

Post by hinkley » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

matthewowen wrote: post #16

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.

Here's the thing though. It's a lot more effort to look through projects on GitHub and evaluate them. And even if you can, you then have to figure out how to cross compare that and set a consistent bar vs people who you interview because they don't have a GitHub presence. People want hiring processes to be somewhat consistent, and in that world it's really kind of a non-starter to replace tech screens with GitHub pro…

There is not that much code I wrote three, four years ago that I’m still proud of. I figured that would get better with age but it’s only by degrees, and at any rate it may indicate that I’m getting soft rather than better.

So anything on github that I might want you to look at? I’d have to be on a three year replacement cycle, permanently, which is a hell of a lot more work than you might estimate that a reasonable github presence would entail.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#143

Post by leonidasv » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:02 AM UTC

sethhochberg wrote: post #138

leonidasv wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate take-home projects more than I hate whiteboard interviews. I think the best approach would be giving the candidate a broken app and have they debug it live or in a take-home debug-and-fix or debug-and-improve exercise. Could also have some refactor assignment. Has any company tried something like this before?

We do this at String and Key (and I adopted the process from my prior teams at Digitally Imported. I've posted jobs from both here on HN in the past). Its a one-hour hands-on programing lab via screenshare - a pretty straightforward task of consuming some data from an API, processing it a little, and displaying it. We use Ruby for our work, and ask the same of our candidates in the lab. No handwritten syntax, exotic/…

I'm interested in hearing more. I'm currently in the process of improving my interview approaches — currently a live coding session with a real-world problem involving an internal dataset.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#144

Post by toadi » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:02 AM UTC

leonidasv wrote: post #123

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 hate take-home projects more than I hate whiteboard interviews. I think the best approach would be giving the candidate a broken app and have they debug it live or in a take-home debug-and-fix or debug-and-improve exercise. Could also have some refactor assignment. Has any company tried something like this before?

We are a remote company. I give take home projects too. Mostly I give them couple of days but mention they shouldn't work more then 4 hours on it.

Our test is actually quite simple and everyone that did any kind of development should have done these basic things.

But it tells me a log of the current state of the candidate. Most code samples on internet are not production ready code. Security and error handling are mostly not included. So this is where a candidate can shine... but I'm happy if you can string it together working even if it is by googling.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#145

Post by atlgator » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

Thanks for this list. I'm going to need a new job soon.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#146

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #42

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.

Our interview process is far more advanced. We place the candidate in a room with a large whiteboard for 15 minutes alone with the lights off. I then walk in with a 6 piece dresser [1] from IKEA (obviously keeping the lights out). I explain to the prospect that this particular dresser is missing one piece - BUT we need the dresser assembled then disassembled and placed back into the box [without anyone seeing]. More…

[deleted]

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#147

Post by jb775 » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

leonidasv wrote: post #123

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 hate take-home projects more than I hate whiteboard interviews. I think the best approach would be giving the candidate a broken app and have they debug it live or in a take-home debug-and-fix or debug-and-improve exercise. Could also have some refactor assignment. Has any company tried something like this before?

Take-home projects are frustrating when they basically just say "Build an app that does $xyz", and we'll be in touch if we like it.

Obviously no one is going to submit an app that doesn't accomplish the primary task. I feel like you get judged more-so on how you decided to get the initial app up and running, which likely isn't something you'll need to do working there.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#148

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

This is yet another tech interview discussion, so I'd like to highlight a subthread from the one earlier this month:

> I'm actually a little scared to leave my current FAANG gig for that exact reason tbh. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it back in the door without more leetcode grinding + repeated loops than I'm willing to do at this point in my career.

>> I'm in a similar position - a tech lead role at a Big N - and have recently been doing some interviews for senior roles at FAANG. The most frustrating thing is knowing I can't really leverage anything I've learned over the past 7 years of my career in the interview, at least at the early stages.

>>> I feel extremely little of what I'm doing in my real, actual, job, helps me in advancing in my career. Unless maybe if I choose to stay at my current company until retirement lol. Otherwise, why bother doing anything more than the bare minimum to get by at work? It would be a far better investment of time and effort to grind leetcode and practice for interviews, instead of going above and beyond to excel at my job. At least until I get into an "endgame company" where I feel it's worth staying long term.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848717

Even as we debate the validity of the metrics measured by technical interviews, it's also worth considering the metrics used to measure engineer worth in the industry at large. This existentialist "fear and loathing in FAANG" discussion was quite illuminating, and a little sad.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#149

Post by trickstra » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:09 AM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #117

perl4ever wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My former employer, a Fortune 500 company, wouldn't let me volunteer for a globally recognized charity because the boilerplate agreement the charity required volunteers sign, stated that IP created as a volunteer belonged to them, and my employer considered that everything within or outside work hours was theirs. Not that I was volunteering as a programmer anyway. My current employer doesn't have explicit rules that…

This is how I get over that hump. Not only do I not work on anything related to my day job, I mostly build things in my free time that aren't really useful to anyone but myself. Sure my company may be able to claim ownership of my Sean Connery themed programming language but will they? What on earth do they plan to do with it?

They are happy that you can't leave, because you have nothing to legally show to other interviewers and no other prospective project in your drawer. That's not a good position to be in.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#150

Post by nickwalton00 » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

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've had companies straight up pay me for doing a take home project as part of an interview. I think that's the ideal way as it gets rid of the potential for exploitation/excessive burden that can come from take home projects.