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Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#21

Post by kenrikm »

eranation wrote: post #16

My two cents: (not hiring for a well known west coast company, but still) This is how I rank candidates. Let's say for a common question such as lowest common ancestor in a BST. 1. if they know the solution already and tell me they know it - major points, most interview prep books include it and they came prepared and they are also honest. I let them implement it still (and add some twist of my own) 2. If they don't…

This is just my opinion, but If you're asking questions that can be found in "interview prep books" you're doing it wrong. Why not just ask questions that can be found by you know.. actually having experience developing software?

Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#22

Post by time_is_scary »

1. Everyone will say they want to "see how you think"

2. You will not get an offer if you do not get a solution

3. Everyone ever: "White board interviews can be awful, but my company actually does a pretty good a job and I find them useful."

edit: for a slightly less snarky comment (and to expand on point 2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9522400

Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#23

Post by eranation »

kenrikm wrote: post #21
eranation wrote: post #16

My two cents: (not hiring for a well known west coast company, but still) This is how I rank candidates. Let's say for a common question such as lowest common ancestor in a BST. 1. if they know the solution already and tell me they know it - major points, most interview prep books include it and they came prepared and they are also honest. I let them implement it still (and add some twist of my own) 2. If they don't…

This is just my opinion, but If you're asking questions that can be found in "interview prep books" you're doing it wrong. Why not just ask questions that can be found by you know.. actually having experience developing software?

I do that too, but this type of questions serve two purposes. If they know it, I know that they do research before they approach a project, see what was done before, and take life seriously. Also it shows that they can learn something and actually implement it. Unless they memorized the solution, I can learn if they can actually code, not just talk. Second if someone didn't know that question, it still shows how they think and behave. I usually leave these to the end, but it's not always easy to come up with experience related questions that differentiate good candidates from great candidates. Think of it this way, most of the day you don't need the skills tested in the interview, just like in college usually you don't need the stuff they test in SATs, right? You still need to find the right candidate somehow. Asking them about more practical / knowledge based questions is much harder. People come from different backgrounds. Also most people will know well basic software engineering questions. I'm left off with basic CS stuff (data structures and algorithms) to really find the difference point. My experience shows that great SEs will know to answer, not so great ones, won't. No explanation why. Perhaps great ones want to learn more than they need for their job. Good ones just do their jobs well. But when something new comes, or if they need to improve a slow algorithm, they give it up. Seen it happen many times to great "craftsmen" they can code CRUD and UI very well, but they can write an algorithm out of a paper bag. Sometimes this is exactly what I am looking for in a candidate. Depends on the role.

Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#24

Post by aaron695 »

> I know that whiteboard coding exercises are in low regard these days

I wouldn't say this. The hive mind holds them in low regard perhaps, but people hiring have to actually get the job done and in different companies different approaches are possible.

Why do you think it was the whiteboard? Perhaps you were just up against a really good candidate pool.

Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#26

Post by sown »

eranation wrote: post #16

My two cents: (not hiring for a well known west coast company, but still) This is how I rank candidates. Let's say for a common question such as lowest common ancestor in a BST. 1. if they know the solution already and tell me they know it - major points, most interview prep books include it and they came prepared and they are also honest. I let them implement it still (and add some twist of my own) 2. If they don't…

> f you can't figure it out yourself but ask me questions, if you try a simpler problem first, if you talk and explain what you are doing, if you run your ideas with me asking what I think, if you are determined to figure it out, ask for hints and immediately understand them and get this "aha" moment of how didn't I think of it rather than oh sucks I didn't think of it.

I don't understand what you mean with this sentence. Is this a good thing or not?

> If you are excited about the solution more than the fact I gave you hints for it,

Is this the best way? Gauging a person's emotional response? I'm pretty reserved in general and don't show emotions, but I do get fascinated internally by things, even if I don't intuitively show it. I just don't know how.

It feels like I'm being discriminated against because I'm not an extrovert cheerleader. Now that I know this, I can certainly act happy and excited, just for you.

But that's it: it's acting. I don't understand.

Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#27

Post by crdb »

I used to (and, a few years ago, turned away smart people who failed them), but realized they were the wrong test for a small company. I switched initially to getting people to complete a task in their own time with the resources they liked and send us the code, and now entirely on network (i.e. who our CTO has already worked with and knows).

Big companies can't afford that luxury though. If big companies set tasks, the tasks would eventually leak because of the sheer number of people applying (both per position and over time). By necessity, you need the same task for all candidates to compare them effectively (ours was "build an inventory management system in Haskell for shoes", and we checked for things like documenting code, error management, and the sensible shortcuts someone might take), so you can't switch tasks around, and people will eventually learn what you like, work hard at faking the knowledge (e.g. copying and lightly modifying the code from other applicants), and you'll get loads of false positives.

So a big company needs to find relatively generalist questions that correlate roughly with later performance, and it seems that whiteboard CS questions are those by testing existing knowledge; through the sheer breadth of the exercise, it's a lot more time consuming to "revise" to fake that knowledge, and harder when on the spot to prove understanding. Are algorithm (and, less often mentioned, "fit") questions relevant to the job, maybe not, but you have to see the context and the hiring problem facing Microsoft or Google.

Of course, my opinion is that smaller companies asking whiteboard questions are just aping what they know from Google (as I was) and that there are better ways to hire when you have only 10 employees and 2 openings, but I might be wrong or at a local optimum.

I certainly regret not hiring a certain Masters in Statistics from Columbia who was very competent but who wasn't familiar with neural nets and admitted so in the interview/whiteboard... she'd have saved me at least 3 months on things I had to build later! Conversely, I later hired a guy who failed some of the whiteboard questions, but said it had caused him to learn more about the topic, which he did over a few months, at which point he came back to us, demonstrated competence and got an offer.

Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#28

Post by olso »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #11
EliRivers wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the value of an engineer is understood to be higher ($Millions in equity) This would be at hip, happening startups in which you take a gamble on awful pay and terrible hours in the hope of being the unicorn, is it? Because in the vast majority of coding jobs, you're not worth millions.

Even at my small CRUD software company, there are 8 devs for a company bringing in $14million a year in revenue. That is certainly skirting the million range.

Care to share the company?

Re: Ask HN: Do you expect interviewees to “ace” whiteboard coding exercises?

#29

Post by Margh »

soham wrote: post #6
curtis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this partly depends on how hard the coding question is. If they give you FizzBuzz, I think you're pretty much required to ace it, even if you've never seen it. FizzBuzz is really simple though. At Facebook I was getting I guess what you'd call classic algorithm questions but with an extra twist thrown in. If you combine that twist with excessive time restrictions (the Facebook interviews were strictly 45 minu…

Yeah, that hope from them is baseless. Truth is, you're competing with candidates who have practiced a lot. They know it, and candidates know it too. I'll re-iterate: Technical interviews are a competition. You cannot go unprepared. Testing your "raw" skill is stupid and a myth. It's as stupid as saying you want to see Usain Bolt (and everyone else) compete without practice. Those days are gone.

What they are describing is putting Usain Bolt at the beginning of an obstacle course and then saying he's not an Olympic level athlete when he trips on a tire.
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