Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hiring without whiteboards

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 372 posts

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#301

Post by jonahx »

wollstonecraft wrote: post #294

The main purpose of whiteboard is to decrease the liquidity of job search for engineers, thus depressing wages. After a few years of doing design docs and copying protobuf fields, the median engineer at a top company would need a month of prep to be able to pass whiteboard interviews again. Much more effective than secret no-poaching agreements.

While it may have the effect of decreasing job liquidity, I don't see how that effect could be the main purpose unless you believe companies are mass colluding. Because the company running the interview is highly motivated to find a good candidate quickly and reliably.

A less intriguing but probably more accurate reason is that finding good people is hard, nobody really knows how to do it, whiteboard interviews provide a rough filter, and they're what everybody else does, so we're gonna do it....

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#302

Post by andersonmvd »

alexeiz wrote: post #275
kelvin0 wrote: post #269

Imagine this. You are interviewing for a job, you walk in a room with 2 people who hand you over a sheet with a few problems. They ask you to write the solutions on the whiteboard, while they wait for you to complete. Not a word is said, they are clicking at their laptops, and staring at the whiteboard, as waiting for the genie to pop out of a bottle. All the while your mind is frozen and stuck in a bad loop. This la…

When you get stuck, start talking. You should not be silent at the whiteboard trying to flash out a complete solution all at once. Talk. Even if interviewers are not saying anything or ask you any more questions. There are multiple advantages of talking while writing code at the whiteboard. Firstly, you show the interviewers the way you think and approach the problem. It is as important as actually solving the proble…

It's a band-aid for an unfixed root cause. Solving problems by talking doesn't work for all people. It astonishes me how broken interview processes are. They just need to see if the candidate will be able to do the daily job of a current employee in that position. It's that simple. It doesn't require whiteboards, puzzles, 10 interviews. Put the candidate to work on a project that you currently facing and see his performance. Doing something other than that is bullshit.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#303

Post by Apocryphon »

alexeiz wrote: post #275
kelvin0 wrote: post #269

Imagine this. You are interviewing for a job, you walk in a room with 2 people who hand you over a sheet with a few problems. They ask you to write the solutions on the whiteboard, while they wait for you to complete. Not a word is said, they are clicking at their laptops, and staring at the whiteboard, as waiting for the genie to pop out of a bottle. All the while your mind is frozen and stuck in a bad loop. This la…

When you get stuck, start talking. You should not be silent at the whiteboard trying to flash out a complete solution all at once. Talk. Even if interviewers are not saying anything or ask you any more questions. There are multiple advantages of talking while writing code at the whiteboard. Firstly, you show the interviewers the way you think and approach the problem. It is as important as actually solving the proble…

An interview process is inherently asymmetrical- the evaluated is in a vulnerable position. So it feels like Mark Twain's not-quote([0]) would apply - "It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt."

What I'm saying is that there's an underlying fear of looking bad when spouting off your mental rough drafts, during an interview. What would be helpful if interviewers were clear about their expectations, as in, "You will be graded on your overall approach, not your initial ideas." or "We don't take points off for hints."

[0] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#304

Post by jogjayr »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #289
tezzer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely froze on a phone interview once. I opened up a co-coding application and was asked to write code to balance a binary tree as a warm-up exercise and I completely froze. Couldn't back out of my head, even with some prompting from the interviewers, and I ended up ending the phone call and writing a note of apology. The painful part is, I used to teach CS-101 and CS-102. I assigned that exact problem to my s…

That was a warm up question? Had they not heard of Fizzbuzz? Or reversing a string?

I once froze on a warm-up Fizzbuzz. Actually it was even simpler than a Fizzbuzz: print all the elements in a list.

Freezing can happen to anyone on any problem.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#305

Post by logfromblammo »

badminton1 wrote: post #264
logfromblammo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're being facetious or if you're really that naive. No company that I have worked for has ever said, "You know what? Let's look at the resumes of previous applicants, call them up, and see if they are still looking for new jobs." Every vacant position is always filled by direct, active applicants. Even backchannel applicants have to send a fresh copy of their resume to someone, so that it can be ad…

I'll ignore the insults and proceed to refute your point. I am regularly contacted by recruiters from companies where I've interviewed successfully (with offers) and unsuccessfully (no offer). They do it because it's cost efficient. The book "Cracking the coding interview" also speaks about this in the early chapters.

No insult was intended. I intended to disparage the hiring processes of the companies I have previously encountered. Your experience appears to have set different expectations than mine. Perhaps it is a regional difference?

I work mainly with companies with a significant physical presence in the US Midwest and near-South. The furthest west I have ever interviewed was in Denver.

A significant number of the companies I have interviewed with lack even the ability to respond to a follow-up message the day after an interview, so never mind contacting someone months later.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#306

Post by dmitrygr »

kelvin0 wrote: post #269

Imagine this. You are interviewing for a job, you walk in a room with 2 people who hand you over a sheet with a few problems. They ask you to write the solutions on the whiteboard, while they wait for you to complete. Not a word is said, they are clicking at their laptops, and staring at the whiteboard, as waiting for the genie to pop out of a bottle. All the while your mind is frozen and stuck in a bad loop. This la…

Devil's advocate:

How else will you prove that YOU shipped those things over that period?

* Github account? Ha, my code is on github in many places, mostly without attribution, none of them uploaded by me.

* Recommendations? Ha. Unless the person recommending you already works at the company, their trustworthiness is zero - they could be a paid accomplice.

* Resume? Unless you were the sole employee, there is no way to tell how much actual work YOU did.

* "Tell me about that one time you solved an interesting problem?" Ha. Can easily be a well-practiced lie.

(yes i have seen all of the above)

Turns out that the only sure way to tell if you can do X, is to make you do X and watch you yourself actually do it, in person.

Now, I am not accusing YOU of fraudulently trying to get a job, but people do. An in person interview is a good way to see.

(as always, i speak for myself only, not my employer, my cat, or our Great Lord FSM)

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#307

Post by Apocryphon »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #293
udev wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a cultural thing. I observe that anglo-saxon peoples teach their kids to voice their concerns, needs, wants, and opinions, and to expect (!) results from this. (Compare how american kids behave at airports, train station, and public places with kids from other countries, e.g. french speaking countries). This helps them approach situations in life with a healthy dose of self-worth and the baseline state of…

People are downvoting this, but the difference in cultures is real (though I wouldn't say it is confined to anglos). But udev might be exposing a case where the "anglo" culture has a genuine advantage. Engineers really should communicate clearly about technical stuff. People solving complex problems really should concepualise their approaches clearly, ideally so that can be expressed in words. People really should re…

I don't think it's just a communication thing. It's also a confidence thing. When a culture places emphasis on self-censoring behavior, then the candidate is less likely to express themselves for fear of censure.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#308

Post by GrinningFool »

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.

I find the pressure of significant code on a whiteboard to be very different even from producing under pressure.

I think it comes down to expectations - in an interview I have to focus on impressing my audience and that's always there. In real life, I can focus fully on the actual problem being solved.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#309

Post by Apocryphon »

jonahx wrote: post #301
wollstonecraft wrote: post #294

The main purpose of whiteboard is to decrease the liquidity of job search for engineers, thus depressing wages. After a few years of doing design docs and copying protobuf fields, the median engineer at a top company would need a month of prep to be able to pass whiteboard interviews again. Much more effective than secret no-poaching agreements.

While it may have the effect of decreasing job liquidity, I don't see how that effect could be the main purpose unless you believe companies are mass colluding. Because the company running the interview is highly motivated to find a good candidate quickly and reliably. A less intriguing but probably more accurate reason is that finding good people is hard, nobody really knows how to do it, whiteboard interviews provi…

Mass collusion doesn't need to involve actual individuals making agreements in smoky rooms. It can just be customs that arise as fads (whiteboarding as the answer to '90s Microsoft brain teasers), gain mass acceptance, and become standard practice.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#310

Post by JamesSwift »

wccrawford wrote: post #286
notacoward wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody has been promoted multiple times in programming roles, and especially if they have a visible open-source corpus (not necessarily GitHub BTW), then you know they can code. Making them do it in a highly artificial environment is pointless at best . Other words like "insulting" and "demeaning" also come to mind. Asking people to reason about complexity is great, but that's not the way such interviews usually…

My father often told me that there are 2 ways go get rid of a bad worker. Fire them, or promote them. Eventually, they'll be promoted into a situation where they'll have to be fired. I don't take "multiple promotions" to mean anything in itself. If they can talk about what they did and why, then I consider that they're probably good at their job. And that's the point of interviews, IMO.

Government / military like to promote problems away. Helps to keep the person away from the work that needs to get done. The good thing about that sector is that there is a lot of room for lateral promotions to other offices and so then they become someone else's problem.
Post reply on HN