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I think that potential employers always wanna stress you a little to see, what you really can and what is bravado. Good companies might still press to hard (bu

by svennek 10y ago

I think that potential employers always wanna stress you a little to see, what you really can and what is bravado. Good companies might still press to hard (but not give you penalties for failing way-too-hard questions). Also it can be a tactic to see, how you handle stressful and unknown situations (which might occur often depending of your specific line of work and industry). I have made interviews (as the employers' helper) with live coding exercises on a computer, and even if they technically failed I recommended hiring them anyways as I was obvious that their skills where okay but their performance "issue" was stress-related.. That said, I know nothing of your skill level, so YMMV... Btw. small companies have similar problems, often just on a much smaller scale (not that it necessarily makes them easier to handle, especially because they have much tighter ressource constraints (less money))

itamarst 10y ago
Whiteboard coding is nothing at all like real work. In your real job you never code on a whiteboard with an arbitrarily short timeline, without access to the Internet while stressing about getting a job. It's just a hazing ritual.
- davelnewton 10y ago
  Whiteboard coding is one way to understand how a person thinks about a problem. Regarding arbitrarily-short deadlines--the only difference is that IRL it wouldn't be on a whiteboard. Deadlines are still arbitrarily short, and people will be watching you work. I've never asked someone to code on a whiteboard (I tend towards paper anyway) as anything remotely approaching hazing, which is specifically designed to humiliate, demean, or over-stress.
bsvalley 10y ago
I'm just curious, how do you evaluate stress during an interview? It's usually a 1-1 situation between 2 developers. How do you describe stress during a 1-1 chat? If the candidate has a shaky voice? Or shaky hands? How do you put this on paper as a valid rejection point? Most of the people would actually mix a few things all together. If I have troubles answering your questions you might think i'm stressed? If I miss something obvious while writing code on a whiteboard, is this due to stress? I think it's total BS... Being stressed in a professional environment is triggered by a thousand things, the people, colleagues, personal life events, traffic on the way to work, etc. People are really coming with all sort of fancy evaluation techniques... I think we really need a standard evaluation like GMAT for software engineers. It's getting a little crazy.

by svennek 10y ago

itamarst 10y ago

Whiteboard coding is nothing at all like real work. In your real job you never code on a whiteboard with an arbitrarily short timeline, without access to the Internet while stressing about getting a job. It's just a hazing ritual.

davelnewton 10y ago
Whiteboard coding is one way to understand how a person thinks about a problem. Regarding arbitrarily-short deadlines--the only difference is that IRL it wouldn't be on a whiteboard. Deadlines are still arbitrarily short, and people will be watching you work. I've never asked someone to code on a whiteboard (I tend towards paper anyway) as anything remotely approaching hazing, which is specifically designed to humiliate, demean, or over-stress.

bsvalley 10y ago

I'm just curious, how do you evaluate stress during an interview? It's usually a 1-1 situation between 2 developers. How do you describe stress during a 1-1 chat? If the candidate has a shaky voice? Or shaky hands? How do you put this on paper as a valid rejection point? Most of the people would actually mix a few things all together. If I have troubles answering your questions you might think i'm stressed? If I miss something obvious while writing code on a whiteboard, is this due to stress? I think it's total BS... Being stressed in a professional environment is triggered by a thousand things, the people, colleagues, personal life events, traffic on the way to work, etc. People are really coming with all sort of fancy evaluation techniques... I think we really need a standard evaluation like GMAT for software engineers. It's getting a little crazy.