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Don't write on the whiteboard

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Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#31

Post by gldalmaso »

vl wrote: post #28
gldalmaso wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no practice that simulates anxiety. Anxiety is mostly incompatible with the mental effort one usually applies in coding. As you have put it, the white board is convenient for the interviewer, but that is missing the point of the interview which is to assess the candidate. If you do not find if that difficult, than consider yourself privileged because most people feel differently. Some people cannot speak to…

>There is no practice that simulates anxiety. Ah, but there is. Once you go through few interviews you get less anxious about the next one. Which means, that if this is a serious problem for you, and you expect some important interview in the future, then you have to go and interview with some other companies before to gain practice, and may be even get some job offer you'll like more than the one you are hoping for.…

>> Once you go through few interviews you get less anxious about the next one.

That's not really practice, it's actual experience.

It's also not guaranteed to improve your skills, it might make it worse if you have a bad experience. When that happens it's easy to make generalisations about the next ones. That's actually somewhat descriptive of where anxiety really comes from, antecipating the unknown.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#32

Post by jader201 »

thebandrews wrote: post #23
edw519 wrote: post #9

Sorry OP, I realize that you're just trying to be helpful sharing what's worked for you and I appreciate that, but frankly, I hate posts like this... I think the best preparation for any interview is to simply get good at what you do. All the rest is window dressing that distracts from that goal. Every minute spent practicing interviewing would be better spent building stuff. The natural byproduct of this will be exe…

Sorry Ed, but the best preparation for any interview is not simply getting good at what you do. Being good at what you do is a given. But there is an art to interviewing. I have bombed interviews not because of a lack of ability, but because of my failure to understand interview dynamics.

This may be true, to an extent, but to me, the best interviews do a good job at honing in on how good you are at what you do.

Good interview skills only benefit you in one area -- how good you are at interviewing. Once somebody hires me, how good I am at interviewing serves no purpose to my employer. And smart companies recognize this, and adjust their interviewing process to get to what's important.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#33

Post by troll24601 »

edw519 wrote: post #9

Sorry OP, I realize that you're just trying to be helpful sharing what's worked for you and I appreciate that, but frankly, I hate posts like this... I think the best preparation for any interview is to simply get good at what you do. All the rest is window dressing that distracts from that goal. Every minute spent practicing interviewing would be better spent building stuff. The natural byproduct of this will be exe…

The ideal candidate is not just competent, they're able to demonstrate and communicate that competence.

Many technical startups struggle with promotion, naively believing that simply being better is enough. It's not. You need to be able to clearly explain and demonstrate your value. If you can't do this you're leaving money on the table.

If somebody told you that 20% of your lifetime earnings will be based on your effectiveness during interviews and non-technical conversations with your boss, would you ignore that? Because that's true.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#34

Post by joeyh »

Seems to be a divide between those who like using whiteboards and not. I can think of several contributing factors:

* academics vs non-academics

* those who enjoy thinking on their feet vs those who enjoy thinking in a text editor

* good handwriting vs not

* right vs left handed

Regarding the last, writing left-handed on a whiteboard means you're either manipulating the pen uncomfortably from the far end, or you're smearing what you wrote. You're also tending to obscure the audience's view of what you just wrote with your hand, arm, and body.

I'm sure all of the above are part of why I prefer to avoid whiteboards, and would be much happier with my laptop on a projector. Although if I'm communicating with trusted peers I have no shame in putting up a smeared, slanted, and mostly illegible scrawl.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#35

Post by ljlolel »

dfan wrote: post #8

I like seeing interviewees write on a whiteboard because I can see how they're thinking and help them out if I see that they're running into trouble. The point when I give a whiteboard question is to engage interactively with them over the course of ~15 minutes while they solve a problem, not to sit around and be handed a piece of paper at the end. In addition, communicating with peers via whiteboard is a skill that…

So sit next to the person while they write...

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#36

Post by plugindev »

Spoken like a young entrepreneur gone academic. You will be a semi-interesting success as a difficult teacher and after your long traipse through life as a researcher, you'll make a great unhappy VP in the IT department of a large ivy-league university one day. Congratulations, and thank you for the advice. I am humbled, and even more resolved to stop being a developer one day.

Everything you wrote was right on, with the exception of the no writing on the whiteboard. That is just nonsense. You could have more quickly relayed the same code on a whiteboard and the interviewer wouldn't have had to have provided a post-it. You're lucky you got the offer after that kind of stunt, and it labels you as "eccentric". Not in a good way.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#37

Post by ljlolel »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #27
edw519 wrote: post #9

Sorry OP, I realize that you're just trying to be helpful sharing what's worked for you and I appreciate that, but frankly, I hate posts like this... I think the best preparation for any interview is to simply get good at what you do. All the rest is window dressing that distracts from that goal. Every minute spent practicing interviewing would be better spent building stuff. The natural byproduct of this will be exe…

I'm sorry, but where does the OP reference anything about practising interviewing? In fact, his point seems to focus more on fundamentals than anything. My takeaway was along the lines of removing the junky presentation layer (whiteboard, etc.), and making sure that you SHOW your fundamentals. Working on Project Euler helps build those fundamentals, writing code comfortably during your interview helps show your funda…

Exactly. A lot of these replies try to summarize my points into one sentence like "show off your skills." That short phrase is insufficiently descriptive to be useful.

I give specific advice for what you can actionably do.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#38

Post by ljlolel »

joeyh wrote: post #34

Seems to be a divide between those who like using whiteboards and not. I can think of several contributing factors: * academics vs non-academics * those who enjoy thinking on their feet vs those who enjoy thinking in a text editor * good handwriting vs not * right vs left handed Regarding the last, writing left-handed on a whiteboard means you're either manipulating the pen uncomfortably from the far end, or you're s…

You should read the article. Whiteboards are just the first point, and I only denigrate them in the artificial context of interviewing.

When I teach, whiteboards are fantastic.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#39

Post by ptmx »

random42 wrote: post #5

From an interviewer's perspective, the whiteboard gives me a chance to intervene to correct, explain, or provide hints, to the interviewee sooner/at the right time, which is not possible in pen-paper solutions, as I cannot see what the interviewee is doing till she shows me her work, unless I sit at the same side of the table as herself, which is odd for general discussion/talking. My advice to interviewees:- Practic…

Perhaps I'm just neurotic, but I do find it uncomfortable to write code with someone scrutinizing my work. When figuring out how to implement an efficient algorithm, I find that it's often helpful to perform exploratory steps before actually writing the algorithm. For instance, when I attempt a projecteuler puzzle that I don't immediately know the solution to, I'll usually try to compute the desired result for a few simple inputs, or I'll quickly write down the first (naive) approach that comes to mind and then trace through it to see where it fails, etc.

I know that those are all things that I can still do during a whiteboard interview, but having the interviewer look at my intermediate work, assume that I'm making mistakes and try to correct me tends to disrupt the process. I'm confident that the algorithms that I'll ultimately produce will be good, and I'm confident that I'll produce them at a good speed, but it will still look worse to the interviewer if I write down a bunch of noise before outputting a polished algorithm.

On the other hand, on paper, I can quickly churn through some of those early steps and then show the interviewer a solid, finished product without them having to see the crude intermediate steps. Again, it's possible that my anxiety about this isn't really justified, but I can't help but get the feeling that working in this way will leave the interviewer with a worse impression of my abilities than if I have the option to "hide" the rough work and just show them the output.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#40

Post by ljlolel »

random42 wrote: post #5

From an interviewer's perspective, the whiteboard gives me a chance to intervene to correct, explain, or provide hints, to the interviewee sooner/at the right time, which is not possible in pen-paper solutions, as I cannot see what the interviewee is doing till she shows me her work, unless I sit at the same side of the table as herself, which is odd for general discussion/talking. My advice to interviewees:- Practic…

So then sit at the same side of the table...
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