I used to believe that I got rejected after many whiteboard interviews, not because I did poorly, but because I didn’t have the same (right) background as the i

I used to believe that I got rejected after many whiteboard interviews, not because I did poorly, but because I didn’t have the same (right) background as the interviewer. I served in the military, I was a Front End Engineer, I didn’t go to a fancy school, I used the wrong language, I’ve used the wrong framework etc. I think the author is hitting on some deep-seated psychological aversion people have to white board interviews. If you can identify that you were turned down based on your failure to do it well, you have to accept that it's your fault - not that you happened not to be good at that tech stack, or didn't have a "personality fit". (I know there are different kinds of white board interviews - I'm assuming the generic pseudo-code algos and data structures type in keeping with the article's generality.) Exposure to that kind of evidence of your inadequacy can be hard to accept. But it's also remediable. Get cracking and practice.