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Hiring without whiteboards

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Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#41

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

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…

You know what I call it when a coworker is reading off a document and harassing me for not knowing the thing they're clearly looking up as they go along?

A toxic work environment.

Of course, I believe a significant number of those "interviews" are hazing meant to find excuses not to hire or perpetuate H1B scams.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#42

Post by nostrademons »

It's funny, whiteboard interviews really would be a better discriminator for founders than employees. They test confidence rather than competence (or technically, competence + confidence). The former is incredibly important for founders, but the latter is probably what you care about more for employees. And yet founders almost never do a whiteboard interview, yet it's standard for technical employees...

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#43

Post by lj3 »

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…

> found it best to have a guided interview about the candidate's work experience and interesting problems that she/he solved.

This. I advocate this method of interviewing here in the states every chance I get. The most common form of push back I get is from hiring managers terrified of being hoodwinked into making a bad hire. It's like they don't trust their own judgement enough to be able to tell apart those who know what they're talking about from those who just talk a good game.

> 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

Junior engineers, I assume? I had problems with those questions when I first started out. It's hard to say with a straight face that the thing I was most proud of at that point in my career was creating a very simple templating system in PHP. Of course, the interviewers rolling their eyes and saying 'is that all?' didn't help.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#44

Post by listentojohan »

It was not really a whiteboard exercise, but I once had an interview at which we went through some of my previous work (code-ish) on a whiteboard. I was mostly for structure, and I think that's a good example. Also there was a good relaxed atmosphere, so it was more a point of discussion. Got an offer.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#46

Post by lj3 »

ori_b wrote: post #24
vinhboy wrote: post #2

I think coderpad.io is the modern day equivalent of a whiteboard. It's nice that you get REPL and a keyboard, but the unnecessary pressure of being watched, critiqued, and timed are all there. My mind just goes completely blank whenever I am put in this scenario. Are we programming or defusing a bomb?

> unnecessary I can't think of any way to do an interview without pressure. Pressure is unavoidable when someone's future job is on the line.

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

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#47

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

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…

I use whiteboards all the time.

The thing is, the timelines are completely different -- in real life, we usually write the problem down, work out obvious details and a plan of attack, then come back to it hours or days later when people have had time to research and think. Never have I had a coworker interrupt me after 15 seconds to "say what I'm thinking about" any time I pause narrating.

In real life, going "hmmm" and taking a couple minutes is acceptable. And you have people being constructive during those times, instead of interrupting you.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#48

Post by pmiller2 »

whatwasmypwd wrote: post #29
pmiller2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More specifically, I would say "interview pair programming" isn't really "pair programming." When pair programming, it's not one person evaluating the other, under an artificial time constraint.

Can you really have any other kind of pair programming in interview context?

Precisely.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#49

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

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 real life pressure do you think a whiteboard test simulates?

I think it's unlike any real situation, and you're fooling yourself that one kind of stressor is like another.

Re: Hiring without whiteboards

#50

Post by lordnacho »

Main main gripe with whiteboards is that it's hard to add extra lines.

If you're writing a loop for instance, you might code up the per-item logic first, and then you remember you need a loop variable. Which there's now no space for, because in a normal coding environment you can just insert the line where it's needed.

It makes me feel like I need to have solved the whole problem before writing, and that's just not how coding happens.

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