Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
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Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
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Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#2 VP of Engineering at Eaze, previously CTO at Getable and engineer at Yammer.
No, not at all. Whiteboard interviews test one thing
well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard.
Engineers on my team never have to code on a whiteboard
(whiteboards are really bad at running code), why would I
make candidates do something that I don't ask the
engineers already on my team to do?
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#3VP of Engineering at Eaze, previously CTO at Getable and engineer at Yammer. No, not at all. Whiteboard interviews test one thing well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard. Engineers on my team never have to code on a whiteboard (whiteboards are really bad at running code), why would I make candidates do something that I don't ask the engineers already on my team to do? This comes close, but I think the re…
Minor kvetch: quoting the way you did it makes long lines very difficult to read. I usually quote like this:
> I am a quote
This makes the quotation doubly-distinct, and still readable on mobile devices.
===
To the actual point I wanted to make: plenty of engineers at companies code on a whiteboard. They schedule a meeting, grab a room, and talk things out, while making notes, diagrams and sometimes even actually writing out some code on a whiteboard.
I hope nobody asks people to write compilable code on a whiteboard, but asking a person to talk through a problem and jot down some pseudocode doesn't seem like an awful thing to me. Communication is a pretty critical part of our job.
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#4I actually really like whiteboarding problems and it is a common and effective real-world problem solving skill.
I still only do OK at whiteboarding in interviews.
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#5VP of Engineering at Eaze, previously CTO at Getable and engineer at Yammer. No, not at all. Whiteboard interviews test one thing well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard. Engineers on my team never have to code on a whiteboard (whiteboards are really bad at running code), why would I make candidates do something that I don't ask the engineers already on my team to do? This comes close, but I think the re…
There's some logic to that. It's the one of the same reasons we have high stakes exams in school: to show what the individual can do under pressure. In an interview setting you can't simulate what it's like to be at the end of a high-intensity sprint, but you can ask the candidate to answer a tough question on a whiteboard and (ideally) get a notion of how they work when the going gets tough.
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#6VP of Engineering at Eaze, previously CTO at Getable and engineer at Yammer. No, not at all. Whiteboard interviews test one thing well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard. Engineers on my team never have to code on a whiteboard (whiteboards are really bad at running code), why would I make candidates do something that I don't ask the engineers already on my team to do? This comes close, but I think the re…
Minor kvetch: quoting the way you did it makes long lines very difficult to read. I usually quote like this: > I am a quote This makes the quotation doubly-distinct, and still readable on mobile devices. === To the actual point I wanted to make: plenty of engineers at companies code on a whiteboard. They schedule a meeting, grab a room, and talk things out, while making notes, diagrams and sometimes even actually wri…
“Jotting down some code on a whiteboard” with a colleague is a much lower stress scenario than deriving and writing down, under a time limit, some DP algorithm you might not have used since college, and proving its correctness and run time to some stranger who may be barely out of college themselves.
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Minor kvetch: quoting the way you did it makes long lines very difficult to read. I usually quote like this: > I am a quote This makes the quotation doubly-distinct, and still readable on mobile devices. === To the actual point I wanted to make: plenty of engineers at companies code on a whiteboard. They schedule a meeting, grab a room, and talk things out, while making notes, diagrams and sometimes even actually wri…
“Jotting down some code on a whiteboard” with a colleague is a much lower stress scenario than deriving and writing down, under a time limit, some DP algorithm you might not have used since college, and proving its correctness and run time to some stranger who may be barely out of college themselves.
Interviews are necessarily more stressful than typical work. That's not just a property of whiteboard coding.
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#8Nay. I do not understand the obsession with whiteboards. I've had coworkers that went gaga when they discovered that whiteboard paint was a thing, and they could cover their office in whiteboard surface. Doodles and doodles and doodles all over the place, but not very much working code ever makes its way into production from those offices. Lots and lots of movement and noise and grandiose planning, signifying nothing, too often.
Lock me in a dark closet under the stairs with just the glow from a couple LCDs and throw pizza and requirements documents through the slot, like you're feeding the Rancor. /s
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#9Serious question, if whiteboard interview aren't the best or helpful at all, what are the successful/useful alternatives for engineering interviews?
Re: Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
#10Honestly I’m not afraid of whiteboards as earlier in the career. The interviever is whether some fresh graduate smartass trained in a narrow domain and it’s easy to route the discussion out of their comfort zone, or someone with particular problem - well, I’m not able to pull out immediately answers to the world problems and if this is the case I’ll just admit it. In the worse case I’ll not get hired - I hadn’t got hired too many times in my life to care.