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Hiring Without Whiteboards

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Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#311

Post by ProZsolt »

genericlogic wrote: post #276
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #169

We use a 3 step process, sans whiteboard: 1. First interview, the candidate interviews us. What market we serve, what our development processes are, what our technology stack is. If they express interest by being prepared and asking good questions, we send them home with 2. a programming task. Choose 1 of 5 tasks. The tasks are not abstract problems or puzzles, but come out of the designs we've implemented. We ask fo…

A key point in your process is that you have a conversation before the homework phase. The last time I was job hunting I would be given homework without ever having a chance to talk to someone. I did that once, sent my work into an automated system and never heard anything back besides an automated thank you. I think if I was interviewing using your process I would submit code because I would guaranteed a chance to t…

Yes, if you aren't planing to invest in me. I won't do your homework. In this way you will only get desperate candidates.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#312

Post by azangru »

ShamelessC wrote: post #209
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #169

We use a 3 step process, sans whiteboard: 1. First interview, the candidate interviews us. What market we serve, what our development processes are, what our technology stack is. If they express interest by being prepared and asking good questions, we send them home with 2. a programming task. Choose 1 of 5 tasks. The tasks are not abstract problems or puzzles, but come out of the designs we've implemented. We ask fo…

How do you feel about paying candidates for the time they spend on the assignment?

I would feel bad about it.

You don't normally pay candidates for the time they spend doing the whiteboard interview, do you? You can view the take-home task as a replacement of the whiteboarding session, equally with no pecuniary obligations for the candidate.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#313

Post by usefulcat »

bob1029 wrote: post #292

I am starting to think the interview is a waste of time. Sure, you want to make sure the person is more-or-less who they claim to be on the surface, but you will never really understand their capability for reasoning with your problems until they are working in your process. One of my earlier jobs dealing with code involved a very brief interview (no whiteboard involved) followed by a 6 month contract offer. The deal…

I've seen this done before. As others pointed out, the lack of health insurance can be a problem in the U.S., although sometimes can be mitigated if the candidate still has access via COBRA.

Even considering the flaws, I think this approach is better than immediately hiring someone full time. I've seen some candidates who seemed perfect on paper and fine in interviews and then turned out to be utterly toxic to actually work with. For the interviewee, the chances of encountering that situation are even greater, since there is one interviewee but typically many future coworkers.

Some personality traits can be very difficult to surface in an interview environment. IMO interviews are worthless for getting that kind of information.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#314

Post by wildrhythms »

fiblye wrote: post #189
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #169

We use a 3 step process, sans whiteboard: 1. First interview, the candidate interviews us. What market we serve, what our development processes are, what our technology stack is. If they express interest by being prepared and asking good questions, we send them home with 2. a programming task. Choose 1 of 5 tasks. The tasks are not abstract problems or puzzles, but come out of the designs we've implemented. We ask fo…

A lot of people in other comments below are criticizing take-home tasks, but honestly, this sounds nice and balanced. I'd much rather have a couple days to think about a problem and a few hours to implement it over having to take time off work, pay to go all the way to your company at a time that works for both of us, and deal with a white board interview. It's a way bigger investment. So long as it's a small, confin…

I oppose take-home tasks as an interviewer. I don't think employees or prospective employees should be taking work home with them, ever. Instead, collaborating on a problem with the interviewee, discussing the problem and potential solutions, observing how the interviewee recognizes when they go off-track, how they respond to hints and suggestions... these are all better signals than the culmination of some homework task, and easily captured in a 30-45 minute interview.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#315

Post by fogetti »

twic wrote: post #308
fogetti wrote: post #306

Can someone explain to me why isn't it ever part of the discourse to talk about certifications? Most of the software engineers are certified right from the start when they graduate in university. All these people hold a certification in their hand, namely their diploma which proves that they are actually deemed suitable to hold any software engineering job in the industry. The whole hiring process could be replaced w…

The best programmers i've worked with don't have degrees in computer science, or anything like that. Metallurgy, civil engineering, mathematics. On the other hand, i've worked with plenty of people with CS degrees from respectable universities who were useless. A degree is not anything like a certificate, and universities simply aren't in the business of actually deeming anyone suitable to hold any software engineeri…

You completely missed the second part of my post: "The whole hiring process could be replaced with a timely renewal of accreditation."

The accreditation would be available to anyone. Just like anyone can become a lawyer in Japan for example. You don't need to hold any diploma for that. Although it might increase your chances to get accredited if you have formal education.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#316

Post by smashface »

A thought I had recently was to shift from having candidates write code to have them review code. I'm sure it's not an original thought, but it comes with a few advantages. 1. Reading someone else's code is usually harder than writing your own and in most projects you spend more time reading code. You're seeing how they'd handle the more common work. 2. You can still pick how deep you want to go in the interview. Like some of the algo problems where interviewers keep adding new requirements, you can discuss API design, performance trade-offs, other code qualities. 3. You get to see how respectfully they can discuss a future colleague's work and how well they can communicate their own ideas.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#317

Post by fogetti »

twic wrote: post #308
fogetti wrote: post #306

Can someone explain to me why isn't it ever part of the discourse to talk about certifications? Most of the software engineers are certified right from the start when they graduate in university. All these people hold a certification in their hand, namely their diploma which proves that they are actually deemed suitable to hold any software engineering job in the industry. The whole hiring process could be replaced w…

The best programmers i've worked with don't have degrees in computer science, or anything like that. Metallurgy, civil engineering, mathematics. On the other hand, i've worked with plenty of people with CS degrees from respectable universities who were useless. A degree is not anything like a certificate, and universities simply aren't in the business of actually deeming anyone suitable to hold any software engineeri…

BTW, another thing: are you saying that computer science departments are not deemed to properly accredit people in computer science knowledge...? But no-name low-ranking SW engineers in a dim-lit meeting room in front of a whiteboard are good judges of CS knowledge?

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#318

Post by danjac »

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…

Take-home tests are fine in isolation, but if every company does that you'd pretty much be spending all your time doing take-home projects and nothing else.

Also many companies will insist on a take home project in addition to everything else, including a whiteboard interview. So you can pour time and effort into this project only to be eliminated further down the line (or just ghosted).

It's like they assume applicants are applying to one job at a time and have no other work or life commitments.

I dunno, it feels like the tech industry has forgotten how to interview candidates, as in "just chat with someone like a normal human being to see if they are a good fit for what you need", and like many other aspects of the profession have fallen for dumb processes, fads, cargo-culting, outsourcing to third parties, and dubious technical solutions in lieu of experience and social interaction. I learned this early in my career, and found I can pretty much size up someone's technical chops - assuming they're in my wheelhouse - and get a good idea of their professionalism - with a short, half hour phone/Zoom interview. Yes, I can see how this might lend itself to bias and prejudice, but it seems the solution there is to train interviewers to overcome biases and have more diversity (in all senses of the word) in your interviewing team.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#319

Post by wildrhythms »

justinlloyd wrote: post #229
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once applied at a company that started with a programming test before any human communication. I think I did a pretty good job on the test. After that I was rejected when I assume they saw my resume. They gave me $50 store credit on their website (custom sticker printing). I assume it cost them a lot less than $50 but it was still pretty cool.

This past week one of the companies on "who's hiring" sent me three challenges that "would only take 2 hours" before I ever got to talk to a human being or even got a human being responding with an email. This was a fully automated system apparently. "Take this programming test, we'll let you know if you're good enough to talk with a human." Whilst the challenges were not particularly complex, you also had to ensure…

I turned down an offer from a direct competitor company because they tried to funnel me through an automated programming "test". I told them I have years of experience at their competing company whose hiring bar is notoriously high, and they still demanded I take their weird test.

The company was Goldman Sachs. Name and shame.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#320

Post by zerr »

estomagordo wrote: post #283
Agentlien wrote: post #215

I live in Sweden and we seem to have a very different interview culture. I've never heard of whiteboards or trivia questions, here. I've only gone to four interviews (across eight years), and been lucky to get an offer each time (three of which I've accepted). They have all been primarily discussions about personal experience, hobby projects, personal interests, would-be responsibilities, benefits, and company cultur…

I saw both sides in Sweden. Including being the interviewer who discovered that senior applicants with over 15 years of experience could not for the life of them figure out how to reverse a string. Not something that I could have found out during our casual conversation about past experiences, of course.

So s/he failed the (interview) specific anxiety test.
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