4 ms·
"Whiteboard hazing" is the most apt description I've heard it called. Pass the wringer, you can join the club.
by gedy 11y ago
"Whiteboard hazing" is the most apt description I've heard it called. Pass the wringer, you can join the club.
- digler999 11y agoIts good to see how people handle stress. You can weed out a lot of crybabies by analyzing their performance under pressure, regardless of whether they produce the "right answer".
- yarrel 11y agoSocial performance stress is not technical performance stress. You can weed out a lot of undesirable work environments by seeing which potential employers confuse them.
- ArtDev 11y agoThis is not how to find people you actually want to work with.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rqebmm 11y agoOn the bright side, it's how you find people you want to work for.
- gedy 11y agoMaybe - but I've also seen folks who ace that sort of thing be the worst engineers for getting real work done "under pressure", and fiddle around with reinventing the wheel and academic debates about trivial details too.
- nsxwolf 11y agoIs this seriously what interviews are trying to discover? In what practical situation would this skill manifest - a meteor is about to hit the Earth, and you need to write some algorithm to stop it RIGHT NOW? Or is it "we need to know how you handle the stress of critical bugs that are existential threats to our client relationships", which shouldn't exist in the first place if the company is run well? If yes then I guess you know what I'd say next...
- metaphorm 11y agoyou sound like a terrible boss
- digler999 11y agoThankfully I'm not a boss. But when I go to an interview and they put me under pressure, I dont automatically discount them because they put me in an uncomfortable situation. I assume they're gauging my mettle.
- esses 11y agoi often just refer to it as waterboarding.
- ktRolster 11y agowhiterboarding?
- kafkaesq 11y agoI just call it "whiteboarding". Seems to convey the subjective experience quite aptly.
- garrettgrimsley 11y agoHave you ever been waterboarded? Putting waterboarding on the same level as whiteboard coding interviews is minimizing the horrific experience of those who have been waterboarded.
- nsxwolf 11y agoNot many people have been waterboarded, and most were terrorists, so it's not the same as a holocaust joke. In a world where we're not allowed to laugh at anything connected to some kind of injustice, then yes, that wasn't funny. But I laughed.
- Phlarp 11y ago>and most were terrorists Do you have a source on this?
- kafkaesq 11y agoPutting waterboarding on the same level as whiteboard coding interviews is minimizing the horrific experience of those who have been waterboarded. I guess it is, if you read it literally. But I don't think people mean it literally when they joke about it, nor are they making a serious comparison between the two experiences.
- 11y ago
- dang 11y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11247773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11247773 and marked it off-topic.