8 ms·

Ask HN: Do other fields of engineering have an equivalent to whiteboarding?

50 points by aphextron 10y ago

mgberlin 10y ago
Chemistry has whiteboarding, but instead of writing algorithms or code, you're expected to be able to draw structures, reactions, and synthesis. It's also similar in that this is not necessarily a core part of most chemists everyday job, but something you study for to be able to interview or give presentations regarding your research.
- jballanc 10y ago
  It's been almost a decade since I worked in an organic synthesis lab, but when I did we stuck with chalk, instead of the more "modern" whiteboards. There's not much an accidental organic solvent spill will do to slate and sticks of calcium carbonate. Acrylic paint and dry erase markers, on the other hand...
- dnautics 10y ago
  I've never heard of whiteboarding a chemical reaction mechanism. Usually since most chemists at a comparable 'engineering level' to programmers are phds, a seminar is expected, and the candidate has something ready to go. It's an opportunity for the team to learn something new while assessing the critical thinking skills of the candidate during the q&a
  - jballanc 10y ago
    I've witnessed it in the post-seminar lab visits. It bears little resemblance to the "whiteboard interview" from the developer world, but if you're visiting with a faculty member after you present your work, they may ask you to help them understand some piece of your work by drawing out the mechanism. I'll disagree with the GP, though, on its applicability to "real-world" work. When I did chemistry, diagraming out a reaction mechanism and pondering it over with colleagues gathered in front of the chalkboard was a daily activity.
    - dnautics 10y ago
      sure, but it's not like the employer tells the prospective employee to figure out a mechanism that is not related to the employee's former work (for example, a reaction recently discovered in the employer's lab, or a general reaction that "all good organic chemists should know" - like "show me how dansihevsky's diene works, and apply it to the synthesis of this molecule that you've never seen before") Hah damn. I don't want to give the chemists ideas.
olliej 10y ago
I kind of wonder whether forestry engineering has it? as mgberlin says chemistry makes sense, process engineering also seems like it would make sense. But i /feel/ that larger scale (civil, etc) would not? I mean i kind of imagine civil, forestry, etc would be more portfolio driven?
- thearn4 10y ago
  I think some of the physical engineering disciplines are at least partially gate-kept and signal applicant value through membership to professional organizations and certifications (FE & PE exams, etc.)
mhluongo 10y ago
Whiteboarding in the design sense, or interview sense?
pitaj 10y ago
Yes. In my recent Electrical Engineering interview, I didn't literally whiteboard but we did go over some simple problems that a person at my point in college should know.
yessql 10y ago
I haven't experienced it, but I've only had a couple interviews/jobs as an electrical engineer before switching to software, where they happen almost every time. I think it's a sign that universities are failing to be trusted as credentialing institutions. You should be able to verify a degree and conclude from that the person learned the material. I guess this is why the professional engineering exams exist.
- joatmon-snoo 10y ago
  There's a couple of issues, I think: - you can get a degree from a lot of universities without learning what you should - schooling is no substitute for work experience - software hiring is still generally broken
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    On top of those, you've got to keep learning when you're out of school. A university degree doesn't remotely guarantee that you'll be suitable for even an entry-level developer job right at graduation, and the correlation between time and skill gets looser as time goes on.
- lazulicurio 10y ago
  Completely just my opinion, but I think this is because most people (both employers and potential employees) are focusing on the more vocational aspects of programming, whereas university is more theory-based. I know that I would not have gotten as much out of my degree if I hadn't had prior experience with programming prior to university. It's tough to appreciate why complexity analysis is important if you've never personally experienced a program running slow because you chose a poor algorithm. And most employers aren't looking for that level of theoretical knowledge. They're looking for people who can quickly get up to speed with the development environment, who can break down a problem into smaller logical chunks, and who can translate those chunks into working code. If neither employers nor students care about the theoretical knowledge, then what is the point of going for that degree? (IMO, the best course of action would be a few years of on-the-job training, then going to university once you have enough experience to appreciate the theoretical stuff. But that would be a huge culture clash with how things are currently done).
NikolaeVarius 10y ago
I had whiteboarding with aeronatuical engineering. Had to draw out pressure velocity graphs along a turbofan engine and describe exactly what happened every step of the way and why it happened,
uieefx 10y ago
As an EE, never beyond systems layouts, but it was to guide a discussion...not a test
peterwwillis 10y ago
Teaching has blackboarding. You pass only if you can write completely unintelligible complicated formulas in the tiny margins of something unrelated.
deepnotderp 10y ago
EE occasionally has simple circuit stuff on a whiteboard.
ronilan 10y ago
I work as a snowboard instructor. Training. Certifications. Interviews. The job itself. It's White and Board all the way down.
macromackie 10y ago
I've found the interview process for management consulting roles to be surprisingly similar to tech interviews. Most interviews are presented as cases[1] where students/applicants have to analyze and propose a strategy to handle example client situations in ~60m. I've found that the people who have the most success with the interviewing process are the ones who do the most mock and focus on optimizing their skill-set for the interviews, rather than for the actual positions (which is unfortunately similar to tech recruiting and algo/whiteboarding problems). There is also a ton of online case prep[2] and training materials specifically for the interview process, akin to CareerCup/CTCI/HackerRank/etc. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_interview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_interview [2]http://www.consultingcase101.com/tag/free-sample-case/ http://www.consultingcase101.com/tag/free-sample-case/
- abuteau 10y ago
  Agreed on your comment (ex software dev, now management consultant).. In MC, the delivery of the case is extremely important (how you structure the solution, how you speak, how you present yourself, etc.). Your point on people optimizing is spot on. Some students spend 10-20 hours a week practising before a McKinsey, Bain, BCG interview.. When I'm building cases and interviewing people, I try to structure it around a real life problem we have (e.g. a wood/fiber B2B company wanting to go B2C) which makes it less awkward than solving random algorithms. However, I'm still not satisfied with the process, so wondering if people have ideas ? I thought about giving a case to solve at home, but we're missing the part of how an applicant will react with a lot of pressure and in front of clients :/
  - mpfundstein 10y ago
    Hey, cool story! May I ask how you got into MC? How old where you? How long have you been a Software Dev? Did you do an MBA?
zerr 10y ago
Another relevant question - does "Sports/competitive <field>" (similar to Competitive Programming, i.e. Olympiad and code/hacker/lity/rank sites) thing exist at all? Such that the tasks are completely different to what one might expect to do on the job. So e.g. if there is a "Competitive Bridge-Engineering" and the problems are completely different compared to bridge-engineers day job. To continue this theme - in case you have an opening for bridge engineer - isn't it enough to discuss the previous 5 bridges the candidate has built and maybe also discuss the relevant details the current bridge project entails? Do such bridge-engineers also get irrelevant questions?
- jeff_petersen 10y ago
  > if there is a "Competitive Bridge-Engineering Not really related to job interviews, but West Point used to do a bridge engineering competition (maybe they still do) where you downloaded a software package and had to design a bridge that could withstand the highest load for the smallest cost. It was pretty accessible and kind of fun to mess around with. I never submitted any solutions, but I think the prize was a scholarship.
crdb 10y ago
Not quite engineering, but related: Professional orchestras have auditions, where you will perform a piece from the solo repertoire in front of the head of the section you are auditioning for, and a few other key staff (e.g. [1]). Some auditions will include orchestral parts, and you can buy books of famous solos for most instruments. This repertoire has little in common with the kind of playing you will be paid for, other than as a pure display of technical ability (just like whiteboarding). For example, it is relatively poor as a gauge of the ability to play with others (accompanists follow you, not the other way around), or of your fitting in with the rest of your section. Even on a technical level, performing a showy piece well in the few minutes of the audition does not mean you have the stamina to sustain this playing through four hours of Wagner. [1] "The jury consists of 25 members of the orchestra: two of four concertmasters, the principals, the VPO chairman and managing director, five musicians of the relevant orchestra section, two staff council members from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, and a representative of the Vienna State Opera’s management." - http://web.archive.org/web/20141203022823/http://slippedisc.com/2014/11/pictures-at-an-audition-for-the-vienna-philharmonic http://web.archive.org/web/20141203022823/http://slippedisc....
- BigCatStuff 10y ago
  When auditioning, would the applicant know which pieces of music they will be required to perform beforehand? I am assuming that they do, which would make it very different from 'whiteboarding' from a software engineering interview. In software engineering interviews, most of the time the interviewer will try to have prepared questions that the interviewee has NOT seen before. To make it more like an audition, the questions would need to be provided beforehand so that the interviewee could practice them.
  - gnud 10y ago
    It's not unusual for auditions to music schools to include either 'prima vista' - where you play from the sheet - or 'secunda vista' - where you get a few minutes of prep time.
    - deleted 10y ago
otterley 10y ago
Not "whiteboarding" as such, but during my wife's last job search as a UX/UI designer, she was required to participate in a series of design exercises as a part of the evaluation process. Usually these were in the middle of a series of interviews; and typically those involved a few hours' work mocking up a series of high-level designs -- wireframes, interaction flows, etc. Unlike a whiteboarding exercise, they weren't made in a room with the interviewer.
lithos 10y ago
When interviewing for a field tech (electrical TS&R work) position I've been put in front of unfamiliar equipment to troubleshoot. Some companies will end up sending you for testing. Which normally have less than a 5%-10% pass rate. Although the entire process is far more pragmatic than programmer interviews from what I've seen here. I was also able to expect far more replies back with results than programmers do here.
cagenut 10y ago
It kills me that "whiteboarding" has become shorthand for "bad developer interview technique". Meanwhile I'm over here whiteboarding my ass off as a communication tool for complex systems where its much more effective to walk someone through it as you draw it than to present pre-made slides. I love whiteboarding.
- yulaow 10y ago
  Whiteboarding or any way of writing notes/diagrams on paper or on any sharable medium is an extremly good communication tool, no one would say otherwise. Said that, it is ALSO a very bad developer interview technique. Think if anytime you use it to communicate with a team coworker you had to feel like "I must make this good in these next 20minutes or I am getting fired" (with the bonus of not knowing what the whiteboarding will be about) and this is how feels a potential candidate when doing these types of interviews
  - EduardoBautista 10y ago
    Being able to work under pressure is also a skill.
- animex 10y ago
  I think the OP is talking about coding on a whiteboard. Not solving problems at a higher level or conceptually which is perfectly fine. I love using a whiteboard too for collaborative spit-balling.
tastyham 10y ago
Other engineering fields have exams, certifications, and licenses strictly controlled by professional boards and/or the government.
jasonkolb 10y ago
It's really sad to me that whiteboard is thought of as an interviewing tool. Opened this thread thinking "cool, maybe there are some brainstorming techniques I haven't heard of from other industries" and there's only stuff about interviewing techniques. Maybe I can help. If I need to explore some ideas and there's no whiteboard handy I write on the windows instead. Gotta be prepared when inspiration hits!
- kk_cz 10y ago
  extra-points for using permanent markers if whiteboard markers are not handy

50 points by aphextron 10y ago

Chemistry has whiteboarding, but instead of writing algorithms or code, you're expected to be able to draw structures, reactions, and synthesis. It's also similar in that this is not necessarily a core part of most chemists everyday job, but something you study for to be able to interview or give presentations regarding your research.

jballanc 10y ago
It's been almost a decade since I worked in an organic synthesis lab, but when I did we stuck with chalk, instead of the more "modern" whiteboards. There's not much an accidental organic solvent spill will do to slate and sticks of calcium carbonate. Acrylic paint and dry erase markers, on the other hand...
dnautics 10y ago
I've never heard of whiteboarding a chemical reaction mechanism. Usually since most chemists at a comparable 'engineering level' to programmers are phds, a seminar is expected, and the candidate has something ready to go. It's an opportunity for the team to learn something new while assessing the critical thinking skills of the candidate during the q&a
- jballanc 10y ago
  I've witnessed it in the post-seminar lab visits. It bears little resemblance to the "whiteboard interview" from the developer world, but if you're visiting with a faculty member after you present your work, they may ask you to help them understand some piece of your work by drawing out the mechanism. I'll disagree with the GP, though, on its applicability to "real-world" work. When I did chemistry, diagraming out a reaction mechanism and pondering it over with colleagues gathered in front of the chalkboard was a daily activity.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    sure, but it's not like the employer tells the prospective employee to figure out a mechanism that is not related to the employee's former work (for example, a reaction recently discovered in the employer's lab, or a general reaction that "all good organic chemists should know" - like "show me how dansihevsky's diene works, and apply it to the synthesis of this molecule that you've never seen before") Hah damn. I don't want to give the chemists ideas.

olliej 10y ago

I kind of wonder whether forestry engineering has it? as mgberlin says chemistry makes sense, process engineering also seems like it would make sense. But i /feel/ that larger scale (civil, etc) would not? I mean i kind of imagine civil, forestry, etc would be more portfolio driven?

thearn4 10y ago
I think some of the physical engineering disciplines are at least partially gate-kept and signal applicant value through membership to professional organizations and certifications (FE & PE exams, etc.)

mhluongo 10y ago

Whiteboarding in the design sense, or interview sense?

pitaj 10y ago

Yes. In my recent Electrical Engineering interview, I didn't literally whiteboard but we did go over some simple problems that a person at my point in college should know.

yessql 10y ago

I haven't experienced it, but I've only had a couple interviews/jobs as an electrical engineer before switching to software, where they happen almost every time. I think it's a sign that universities are failing to be trusted as credentialing institutions. You should be able to verify a degree and conclude from that the person learned the material. I guess this is why the professional engineering exams exist.

joatmon-snoo 10y ago
There's a couple of issues, I think: - you can get a degree from a lot of universities without learning what you should - schooling is no substitute for work experience - software hiring is still generally broken
- khedoros1 10y ago
  On top of those, you've got to keep learning when you're out of school. A university degree doesn't remotely guarantee that you'll be suitable for even an entry-level developer job right at graduation, and the correlation between time and skill gets looser as time goes on.
lazulicurio 10y ago
Completely just my opinion, but I think this is because most people (both employers and potential employees) are focusing on the more vocational aspects of programming, whereas university is more theory-based. I know that I would not have gotten as much out of my degree if I hadn't had prior experience with programming prior to university. It's tough to appreciate why complexity analysis is important if you've never personally experienced a program running slow because you chose a poor algorithm. And most employers aren't looking for that level of theoretical knowledge. They're looking for people who can quickly get up to speed with the development environment, who can break down a problem into smaller logical chunks, and who can translate those chunks into working code. If neither employers nor students care about the theoretical knowledge, then what is the point of going for that degree? (IMO, the best course of action would be a few years of on-the-job training, then going to university once you have enough experience to appreciate the theoretical stuff. But that would be a huge culture clash with how things are currently done).

NikolaeVarius 10y ago

I had whiteboarding with aeronatuical engineering. Had to draw out pressure velocity graphs along a turbofan engine and describe exactly what happened every step of the way and why it happened,

uieefx 10y ago

As an EE, never beyond systems layouts, but it was to guide a discussion...not a test

peterwwillis 10y ago

Teaching has blackboarding. You pass only if you can write completely unintelligible complicated formulas in the tiny margins of something unrelated.

deepnotderp 10y ago

EE occasionally has simple circuit stuff on a whiteboard.

ronilan 10y ago

I work as a snowboard instructor. Training. Certifications. Interviews. The job itself. It's White and Board all the way down.

macromackie 10y ago

I've found the interview process for management consulting roles to be surprisingly similar to tech interviews. Most interviews are presented as cases[1] where students/applicants have to analyze and propose a strategy to handle example client situations in ~60m. I've found that the people who have the most success with the interviewing process are the ones who do the most mock and focus on optimizing their skill-set for the interviews, rather than for the actual positions (which is unfortunately similar to tech recruiting and algo/whiteboarding problems). There is also a ton of online case prep[2] and training materials specifically for the interview process, akin to CareerCup/CTCI/HackerRank/etc. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_interview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_interview [2]http://www.consultingcase101.com/tag/free-sample-case/ http://www.consultingcase101.com/tag/free-sample-case/

abuteau 10y ago
Agreed on your comment (ex software dev, now management consultant).. In MC, the delivery of the case is extremely important (how you structure the solution, how you speak, how you present yourself, etc.). Your point on people optimizing is spot on. Some students spend 10-20 hours a week practising before a McKinsey, Bain, BCG interview.. When I'm building cases and interviewing people, I try to structure it around a real life problem we have (e.g. a wood/fiber B2B company wanting to go B2C) which makes it less awkward than solving random algorithms. However, I'm still not satisfied with the process, so wondering if people have ideas ? I thought about giving a case to solve at home, but we're missing the part of how an applicant will react with a lot of pressure and in front of clients :/
- mpfundstein 10y ago
  Hey, cool story! May I ask how you got into MC? How old where you? How long have you been a Software Dev? Did you do an MBA?

zerr 10y ago

Another relevant question - does "Sports/competitive <field>" (similar to Competitive Programming, i.e. Olympiad and code/hacker/lity/rank sites) thing exist at all? Such that the tasks are completely different to what one might expect to do on the job. So e.g. if there is a "Competitive Bridge-Engineering" and the problems are completely different compared to bridge-engineers day job. To continue this theme - in case you have an opening for bridge engineer - isn't it enough to discuss the previous 5 bridges the candidate has built and maybe also discuss the relevant details the current bridge project entails? Do such bridge-engineers also get irrelevant questions?

jeff_petersen 10y ago
> if there is a "Competitive Bridge-Engineering Not really related to job interviews, but West Point used to do a bridge engineering competition (maybe they still do) where you downloaded a software package and had to design a bridge that could withstand the highest load for the smallest cost. It was pretty accessible and kind of fun to mess around with. I never submitted any solutions, but I think the prize was a scholarship.

crdb 10y ago

Not quite engineering, but related: Professional orchestras have auditions, where you will perform a piece from the solo repertoire in front of the head of the section you are auditioning for, and a few other key staff (e.g. [1]). Some auditions will include orchestral parts, and you can buy books of famous solos for most instruments. This repertoire has little in common with the kind of playing you will be paid for, other than as a pure display of technical ability (just like whiteboarding). For example, it is relatively poor as a gauge of the ability to play with others (accompanists follow you, not the other way around), or of your fitting in with the rest of your section. Even on a technical level, performing a showy piece well in the few minutes of the audition does not mean you have the stamina to sustain this playing through four hours of Wagner. [1] "The jury consists of 25 members of the orchestra: two of four concertmasters, the principals, the VPO chairman and managing director, five musicians of the relevant orchestra section, two staff council members from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, and a representative of the Vienna State Opera’s management." - http://web.archive.org/web/20141203022823/http://slippedisc.com/2014/11/pictures-at-an-audition-for-the-vienna-philharmonic http://web.archive.org/web/20141203022823/http://slippedisc....

BigCatStuff 10y ago
When auditioning, would the applicant know which pieces of music they will be required to perform beforehand? I am assuming that they do, which would make it very different from 'whiteboarding' from a software engineering interview. In software engineering interviews, most of the time the interviewer will try to have prepared questions that the interviewee has NOT seen before. To make it more like an audition, the questions would need to be provided beforehand so that the interviewee could practice them.
- gnud 10y ago
  It's not unusual for auditions to music schools to include either 'prima vista' - where you play from the sheet - or 'secunda vista' - where you get a few minutes of prep time.
  - deleted 10y ago

otterley 10y ago

Not "whiteboarding" as such, but during my wife's last job search as a UX/UI designer, she was required to participate in a series of design exercises as a part of the evaluation process. Usually these were in the middle of a series of interviews; and typically those involved a few hours' work mocking up a series of high-level designs -- wireframes, interaction flows, etc. Unlike a whiteboarding exercise, they weren't made in a room with the interviewer.

lithos 10y ago

When interviewing for a field tech (electrical TS&R work) position I've been put in front of unfamiliar equipment to troubleshoot. Some companies will end up sending you for testing. Which normally have less than a 5%-10% pass rate. Although the entire process is far more pragmatic than programmer interviews from what I've seen here. I was also able to expect far more replies back with results than programmers do here.

cagenut 10y ago

It kills me that "whiteboarding" has become shorthand for "bad developer interview technique". Meanwhile I'm over here whiteboarding my ass off as a communication tool for complex systems where its much more effective to walk someone through it as you draw it than to present pre-made slides. I love whiteboarding.

yulaow 10y ago
Whiteboarding or any way of writing notes/diagrams on paper or on any sharable medium is an extremly good communication tool, no one would say otherwise. Said that, it is ALSO a very bad developer interview technique. Think if anytime you use it to communicate with a team coworker you had to feel like "I must make this good in these next 20minutes or I am getting fired" (with the bonus of not knowing what the whiteboarding will be about) and this is how feels a potential candidate when doing these types of interviews
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  Being able to work under pressure is also a skill.
animex 10y ago
I think the OP is talking about coding on a whiteboard. Not solving problems at a higher level or conceptually which is perfectly fine. I love using a whiteboard too for collaborative spit-balling.

tastyham 10y ago

Other engineering fields have exams, certifications, and licenses strictly controlled by professional boards and/or the government.

jasonkolb 10y ago

It's really sad to me that whiteboard is thought of as an interviewing tool. Opened this thread thinking "cool, maybe there are some brainstorming techniques I haven't heard of from other industries" and there's only stuff about interviewing techniques. Maybe I can help. If I need to explore some ideas and there's no whiteboard handy I write on the windows instead. Gotta be prepared when inspiration hits!

kk_cz 10y ago
extra-points for using permanent markers if whiteboard markers are not handy