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Hiring without whiteboards

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Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#351

Post by jordanb »

udev wrote: post #284
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…

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…

What you're describing is Power Distance.

On the whole the West tends to have lower power distance than the East. And Anglo and Germanic countries tend to have lower power distance than Romantic countries, while Scandinavia has the lowest power distance anywhere.

France has quite a high power distance by Western standards, although it's still lower than most Eastern countries.

The US tends to have rather high power distance by Anglo/Germanic standards although if you look at all the cultural dimensions the US tends to be an outlier towards moderation in its cohort probably due to its amalgamated culture (the US is hardly a strictly Anglo country).

http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimen...

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#352

Post by et-al »

ryandrake wrote: post #276
et-al wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, whiteboarding and reciting tried and true stories are inevitable routines when interviewing. However, you'd also be surprised at how many people don't know how to prepare for this. My main concern would be the possibility of turning a great candidate down just because they didn't happen to interview well.

> My main concern would be the possibility of turning a great candidate down just because they didn't happen to interview well. Too bad (for candidates) that that concern doesn't appear to be shared by... well almost everyone in tech hiring these days. The general wisdom of the day seems to be "it's better to eliminate 100 false negatives than hire one false positive."

Probably because it's "easier to hire than to fire".

I worked with some really great folks that had trouble getting hired and it was because of the flawed interview process. One person writes concise and clear Rails code that's easy to read, and makes some of the wittiest comments on Slack (subtle puns that go unrealised for two minutes, then you finally get it and makes you smile). But he stutters a bit. And because of that, interviews are difficult for him. Which is a real pity, because in less judgmental situations, no one would think twice about that.

(Don't worry there's a happy ending and he's now at a good company.)

I learned after my first university job fair the necessity of being more outgoing during these situations, but there's great engineers out there who still live by the myth of "they'll know me by my work".

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#353

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #276
et-al wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, whiteboarding and reciting tried and true stories are inevitable routines when interviewing. However, you'd also be surprised at how many people don't know how to prepare for this. My main concern would be the possibility of turning a great candidate down just because they didn't happen to interview well.

> My main concern would be the possibility of turning a great candidate down just because they didn't happen to interview well. Too bad (for candidates) that that concern doesn't appear to be shared by... well almost everyone in tech hiring these days. The general wisdom of the day seems to be "it's better to eliminate 100 false negatives than hire one false positive."

[deleted]

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#354

Post by PaulRivers »

exDM69 wrote: post #61
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…

Tech interviews are not reflective of real life regardless if there's a whiteboard present or not. Whenever I've had a whiteboard programming interview, it's always been a trivial problem that's a smoke test for "can this candidate actually write code or is their CV faked". I think it took somewhere between 5 to 15 minutes, which I consider to be rather well spent time compared to spending hours or days on a take hom…

"Whenever I've had a whiteboard programming interview, it's always been a trivial problem"

I've had a few, and it's never trivial problems. Here's a trivial problem: - Write a method that takes 2 parameters - an Integer, and a list of Integers - and return a boolean indicating if the int param is in the list of Integers.

Instead of something actually simple like that, it's trick questions designed to appeal to the interviewers desire to appear smart and clever.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#356

Post by megablast »

jakobegger wrote: post #14
bogomipz wrote: post #12

I would like to see a compilation of companies that aren't requiring a "coding project" as part of their interview process. I much prefer to write on a whiteboard as part of an onsite interview than to do a "coding project" for every single company that "might" be interested in me. My experience lately has been an immediate request to complete a coding project right after speaking to a recruiter but before speaking t…

Presumably a lot fewer people send in completed coding projects, so you are competing against fewer other candidates. If you are good at selling yourself, whiteboard interviews are awesome. If you are nervous in interview situations, starting with a project could be an advantage. Edited to add: coming in for a whiteboard interview will also take few hours of your time (or longer if you need to travel). A sample proje…

> sample project can be done whenever you want.

And also take a few hours of time, and possibly more.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#357

Post by bogomipz »

meowlicious wrote: post #237
hocuspocus wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all my open source code is written in java 8 for him to look That completely defeats the purpose of a small, self-contained assignment like the one you were given. And your code isn't even in Java 7 (no diamonds), I think it was a legitimate remark.

You think it would be helpful to let the candidates know what they would be evaluated for in the coding assignment. I would have dazzled them with java 8 if I knew I was going to be rejected a based on that :D I was under the impression that this was the usual algorithm/data structure/complexity rigamarole, not show us latest language features.

Yes this patently absurd. I am guessing you weren't allowed to discuss your code or choices with anyone either correct?

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#358

Post by udev »

richdougherty wrote: post #343
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…

What's the best way to do hiring in your culture? There's a lot of variation within Anglo-Saxon cultures too. In New Zealand, we're usually a bit more reserved, but I can see that we're more forward than in many Asian and Pacific cultures. Also people everywhere have variation in introversion/extraversion and in their self-confidence. It would be great if there was a way to do hiring that could identify good candidat…

In my opinion, the best hiring interviews for tech positions should include the type of interactions that will actually take place in said job, but also resemble the usual way in which people in the given culture do intellectual work (e.g. for someone out of university, that would be the way he would usually sit an exam).

The best I can think of is to have a 45-60min written test with technical questions/problems going from very easy (where failure to solve is a red flag) all the way to more moderate, some difficult, and maybe even one very hard problem (solving which is a green (?) flag).

No need to be in the room with the person. Can put a webcam to record test if cheating is a concern.

After the test, the candidate gets a 5-10 min break, a drink, while the hiring team of 2-3 people take a quick look over the result of the test.

In the second part of the interview they all go into a room to have a chat based on the problems in the test. The candidate gets a chance to defend his choices, show additional skills, while the hiring team gets to ask tangent questions (how would you speed this up? why this data structure? if space was at a premium how would you improve this?).

I think the secret is to adapt the tone of the discussion to keep the candidate on the edge but avoid intimidation. If the candidate is a confidence artist, test him with more and more direct questions that he cannot weasel out of. If the candidate is more shy, engage him/her with a brainstorming like discussion, and go of on tangents from there.

The written test plus the opinions/notes of the 2-3 people present at the discussion should paint a decently detailed picture of the candidate, and also provide a written record of his/her performance for reference and comparison with other candidates.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#359

Post by dang »

746F7475 wrote: post #271
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even remotely. What I said is that I share a trait with about 25% of the population, more in software, where I can't do my best composing if I'm narrating at the same time. By "time", I mean 30-120 seconds without having to speak. In actual development that doesn't matter: pauses to compose an answer are fine in conversations and most work time is individual anyway (even in open offices). I do note, however, you…

>in what way is whiteboarding like real work deadlines? hurdur, what is stress, I dunno. Why is everyone on this site suffering from autism?

We ban accounts that post like this. If you can't comment civilly and substantively, please don't post until you can.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#360

Post by Kiro »

fernandotakai wrote: post #296
learc83 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, if you're regularly coding under extreme pressure, something is wrong. Whiteboard coding is also a different kind of pressure. I can't imagine a situation where someone who already knows the answer is watching over your shoulder critiquing you while you work on a problem.

> In my experience, if you're regularly coding under extreme pressure, something is wrong. right? unless you are in downtime mode, there's really something wrong with your schedule/deliverables/tasks. writing code is not a race, it's more of a marathon where you have to be at a healthy pace to get to the end, otherwise you will not be able to finish.

In an ideal world, yes, but for a company on a tight budget it's not that easy. When the alternative is bankruptcy you don't have much choice.
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