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Hiring without whiteboards

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Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#121

Post by rimliu »

et-al wrote: post #60
jonasvp wrote: post #25

I'm responsible for hiring developers at our company based in Berlin, Germany, and found it best to have a guided interview about the candidate's work experience and interesting problems that she/he solved. I never understood the whiteboard hazing/CS trivia that are so widely discussed on HN since it seems extremely disconnected from the actual work that's being done. That said, I'm always surprised how many candidat…

> That said, I'm always surprised how many candidates cannot even point to one problem they worked on they found interesting or one solution that they're proud of. It could be that this technique favors people good at telling stories. Personally, I'm a horrible storyteller. If you were to ask me what I did over the weekend, I'll offer some facts like "oh, went swimming in a river and Bob lost his hat, but we found it…

I think many will be able to tell the story if it is a story about something they care a lot about. Also, there is an opinion that good developers are good communicators.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#122

Post by bobobjorn »

ljlolel wrote: post #116
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #110

What's with all the whiteboard backlash? I ask simple questions and expect people to be able to write code unaided to express their idea. Not "implement a linked list" or "write quicksort" but basic "You have two arrays - find if a number exists in both arrays" sort of thing, primarily to reason about runtime complexity, and to make sure they can actually write code. If you tell a candidate to prepare, they should be…

What about just asking the candidate to do the same simple task on a computer that they own?

I have used both ways, and i would say the candidates in general respond better to using the whiteboard. I do ofcource not require syntacitly correct code or anything like that. Im looking for ideas not if they are a compiler.

Using their own computer way to many struggle with creating a new project or other basic things. And that dont make them comfortable either. It also takes much longer then using the whiteboard.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#123

Post by rimliu »

mikulas_florek wrote: post #101
DigitalSea wrote: post #36

The problem with whiteboards, is they're not reflective of real life. When was the last time you can honestly say you used a whiteboard to solve a programming problem instead of Googling and ending at a StackOverflow question with a great answer? I've never used a whiteboard for programming. I've used plenty of whiteboards for things one level back; planning, prioritising and visualising task related things. The real…

Everything depends on the project (e.g. programming games is different than making web apps), but: > When was the last time you can honestly say you used a whiteboard to solve a programming problem Every time there is some interesting hard problem which I want to share with the team. We used whiteboards almost daily. > Googling and ending at a StackOverflow question with a great answer I google like 5% of stuff I do,…

  > We used whiteboards almost daily.
For coding or for displaying parts/relationships between parts. We do use whiteboards. We never write code on them.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#124

Post by pavel_lishin »

ljlolel wrote: post #116
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #110

What's with all the whiteboard backlash? I ask simple questions and expect people to be able to write code unaided to express their idea. Not "implement a linked list" or "write quicksort" but basic "You have two arrays - find if a number exists in both arrays" sort of thing, primarily to reason about runtime complexity, and to make sure they can actually write code. If you tell a candidate to prepare, they should be…

What about just asking the candidate to do the same simple task on a computer that they own?

My office is a satellite of a larger one in Austin; we provide laptops for candidates to use for the "remote" part of the interview, when they interview with someone in Austin.

But in general, I think the idea of the whiteboard interview is a chance to see someone "think out loud", to see them reason through a problem. Getting a chunk of source code in an email isn't representative of that. (At worst, they paid someone to do it for them; at best, you have no idea what their approach was. Somewhere in the middle is copying and pasting most of it from SO.)

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#125

Post by rimliu »

nherment wrote: post #54
jonasvp wrote: post #25

I'm responsible for hiring developers at our company based in Berlin, Germany, and found it best to have a guided interview about the candidate's work experience and interesting problems that she/he solved. I never understood the whiteboard hazing/CS trivia that are so widely discussed on HN since it seems extremely disconnected from the actual work that's being done. That said, I'm always surprised how many candidat…

We're in Denmark and currently hiring. I'm not sure why there is such extreme hate for the whiteboard. Yes it has plenty of caveats when it comes to actual coding and recruiters should not expect any candidate to write precise code on that medium. I do use the whiteboard for trivial CS questions limited to 5-10 minutes. Think fizzbuzz and string reversal. Candidates have the option to use my laptop (not ideal because…

What is the field you hire coders for? Because for the mine (iOS) your ability to code fizzbuzz have little relevance. The knowledge of APIs, common patterns, ObjC vs. Swift, common means to handle dependencies, etc. etc. is impossible(?) to fake if you do not have relevant experience you claim you do.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#126

Post by scarface74 »

pseud0r wrote: post #104
scarface74 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view is that you can't have competence at a certain level without confidence - unless you're just an easily outsourced code slinger. I'm often at a whiteboard explaining architecture, ideas, etc. How do you do that without confidence and some semblance of emotional intelligence.

There is really no comparison. Explaining architecture, ideas etc to your colleagues has pretty much no resemblance to a whiteboard interview, where you have several people staring at you and judging you. One is a discussion the other is a test, they compare like having a beer with a colleague is like holding a speech in front of a bunch of stranger.

When I'm the only developer talking to managers, directors, etc. I'm constantly being judged by whether I have good ideas and whether I can be trusted to architect a solution.

May be I am a little overconfident, but I always go into an interview and treat it as a formality to getting the job. By the time I'm in front of the whiteboard, I've already spoken to the recruiter and know what they are looking for, seen the job req to know what technologies they care about, and I've had a phone screen. Why wouldn't I be confident?

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#127

Post by collyw »

ibejoeb wrote: post #32

It really is terrible. Companies need to accept this. You're sitting behind me. Or beside me. I can smell your breath. Or you're on a webcam. It's voyeuristic. You've already solved this problem. Perhaps you even designed it. Your talking is breaking my concentration. This is not how I work. It's probably not how you work either, and if it is, I think we're done here. Now, if a company insists on an adversarial proce…

I was in our spare room coding one day. My girlfriend arrived home and sat on the sofa behind me. I couldn't concentrate just knowing she was behind me and asked her if she could leave.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#128

Post by eddieroger »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #124
ljlolel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about just asking the candidate to do the same simple task on a computer that they own?

My office is a satellite of a larger one in Austin; we provide laptops for candidates to use for the "remote" part of the interview, when they interview with someone in Austin. But in general, I think the idea of the whiteboard interview is a chance to see someone "think out loud", to see them reason through a problem. Getting a chunk of source code in an email isn't representative of that. (At worst, they paid someo…

> But in general, I think the idea of the whiteboard interview is a chance to see someone "think out loud", to see them reason through a problem.

This is exactly why I do this kind of stuff as well when interviewing. It's not about syntax or the ability to recall (regurgitate?) a function, but how does someone approach a problem and where can the conversation go from there. If you sent someone pre-work to write an array matcher, you'll see a final result, but not how they think through it, and you'll miss potential queues to further the conversation.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#129

Post by dexterdog »

Sacho wrote: post #56
lj3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's avoidable. Behavioral questions don't tend to freak engineers out. Neither do questions about their past work.

> Neither do questions about their past work. If you feel you didn't accomplish much at your last job(which would be a pretty common reason for quitting), then a question about it would be pretty stressful, since the company is evaluating you based on work you didn't find to be your best.

Then talk about work that you do consider to be your best.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#130

Post by drdaeman »

rimliu wrote: post #120
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #110

What's with all the whiteboard backlash? I ask simple questions and expect people to be able to write code unaided to express their idea. Not "implement a linked list" or "write quicksort" but basic "You have two arrays - find if a number exists in both arrays" sort of thing, primarily to reason about runtime complexity, and to make sure they can actually write code. If you tell a candidate to prepare, they should be…

So you test their ability to write code on the whiteboard. I was once programming with pen and paper too (only had access to computers at university). They I bought my own computer.

Don't know why this comment is downvoted, because he has a point. Writing actual code on whiteboard is different, unless it's pseudocode without any syntax rules and standard libraries.

I'm not a newbie (like, 15 years coding). But I haven't even bothered to properly remember standard libraries peculiarities - since they're different across the languages anyway, and with modern software stacks (that are quite diverse) it's not unusual to write Python but do some C or C++ one day (speed-ups), detour to JavaScript, try out Elm, then have a day patching some Go code that an useful tool is written in, then go learning some Elixir. Is it strpos(substring, string) or strpos(string, substring)? What does base64.encode(blob) returns, again, ASCII bytes blob or a text string? Which module/header file contains/exports that symbol? Maybe I'm doing it all wrong but I honestly never remember such details that for longer than a week or another - a proper tooling always hints those kind of things to me, so I don't even recognize I tend to forget them.

On a whiteboard, I'd have some awkward moments.

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