Hiring without whiteboards • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#171

Post by Kiro » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:54 PM UTC

user15672 wrote: post #161

Kiro wrote: post #13

Am I the only one who thinks the pressure a whiteboard adds is actually something valuable? In my last job there were a lot of situations where you had to solve a real problem under extreme pressure. People who couldn't handle it simply weren't cut for the job. I don't think all interviews should use it but for us it was good for filtering out candidates who would not perform in those situations.

What on earth were you doing that required solving software problems under extreme pressure?! This sounds like an incredibly toxic working environment, where developers are either being allowed to create fires on production systems, or management is completely incompetent or both. Also, being able to "handle it" has nothing to do with anything in this discussion. I'd much prefer to hire someone capable enough to not…

Toxic or not it's the reality for many companies. You speak like everyone has unlimited resources. For us it was a combination of legacy code and working with big external parties that set the rules (government APIs etc).

I personally enjoyed it but it's not for everyone.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#172

Post by flavor8 » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #165

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…

>If they can't write some simple code unaided, then I don't want to work with them. I was a copy-paste programmer once too. Lovely. Someone put up with you, but now you won't do the same and offer to teach.

If you want to learn on the job and are happy to accept an intern's salary, that's great. Most organizations will be able to accomodate you.

If you want $140k and can't code productively, most early startups won't want you. Larger organizations may be able to accomodate you.

There are a shocking number of candidates who apply to senior positions who flat out cannot code. I have hired in the past without doing the whiteboard exercise and been burned by this; never again. The whiteboard is a filter to eliminate people who misrepresent their abilities.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#173

Post by sgdread » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

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…

I've got pretty complicated exercises in whiteboarding sessions: some problems with graphs or dynamic programming. The way how I solve those in my daily work is totally different to the way I go in 45 min whiteboard interviews: in 45 min you always have to do it in top-down manner, otherwise you will fail by writing non-relevant parts of the code and running out of time. I usually prefer opposite: bottom-up approach. It's a skill. Very artificial and very dumb to my opinion since you never work this way, but interview supposed to test how you do you work.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#174

Post by scottishfiction » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

Fog Creek is listed. I once interviewed there and was asked to calculate the volume of a cylinder. Have they changed there approach?

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#175

Post by mikulas_florek » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

crush_xc wrote: post #163

drdaeman wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does everyone assume that you're asked to write perfect code on a whiteboard? I've been through 15+ interviews and have never been asked to worry about method names being right or signatures of methods being perfect and such. Most of the time people are amicably against me worrying about it. This isn't an issue.

Exactly! When I was hiring I was even asking question I did not know answers to (not as a canditate, but as an interviewer).

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#176

Post by quotemstr » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

scottishfiction wrote: post #174

Fog Creek is listed. I once interviewed there and was asked to calculate the volume of a cylinder. Have they changed there approach?

Calculating the volume of a cylinder is trivial.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#177

Post by danielhooper » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 2:13 PM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #125

nherment wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As an iOS developer, I would still get whiteboard questions ranging from "reverse this string" to "find all the anagrams in this array and print them in this specific fashion", usually with iOS specific trivia about view controller lifecycle, UIKit (whats the diff between frame and bound?), etc. sometime before or after the whiteboarding

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#178

Post by tamalsaha001 » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

I have a question. When you hire complete freshers out of school, how do you interview them without asking for CS stuff? In my experience, fresh undergrads usually do not have any real world experience.

I have experimented with short take home projects. This drastically reduces the available pool, since great freshers can get job in other places with whiteboards interview. Also, there is a sense that interview process is used to get people to do free work.

Also, non whiteboard interview processes are extremely time consuming. Non-whiteboards interviews will be better. But as a matter of practical experience, I have found it to be the only viable option for hiring fresh undergrads.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#179

Post by mdpopescu » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

andrewingram wrote: post #90

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…

Generally speaking, someone's ability to recall things is very dependent on how they're feeling. If you're happy, it's easy to recall positive things, if you're depressed it's practically impossible. A lot of developers also have imposter syndrome. After I've solved an interesting problem, within a few days i'll probably have dismissed it as not being a big deal and started to forget about it. These kind of questions…

Yes. I read about this idea a few years ago (tell a story about a project you liked) so I had to make an effort to focus on ONE story and tell it well. I've been doing it a couple dozen times so far (I'm a contractor who likes small projects, six months is starting to get too long) and I've had significant success with it.

(When I think about the problem "objectively", all I did was use SSDT to simplify deploying database changes from QA to production without having to shut down either. No big deal. However, it was something that the company had been doing manually for years, spending three error-prone days each month, and they were extremely happy with my solution.)

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#180

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 15, 2017, 2:16 PM UTC

badminton1 wrote: post #138

tluyben2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's with all the whiteboard backlash? As always, some companies spoil it for the rest; whiteboards are fine but the crazy Hackerrank kind of interviewing, coding, on a whiteboard, correct algo's you studied in uni 10+ years ago and so on got a lot of people annoyed. Nothing wrong with having someone sketch an architecture or a brief plan-of-attack on a whiteboard. But demanding someone to write a correct Bailey–…

There is a legal framework for interviews (e.g: EEO). Probably they didn't like the candidate and they dismissed that person through a question they weren't expected to answer.

If someone was making a habit of asking impossible questions to members of a protected class and not to others I very much doubt that would be legal.