4 ms·

Is whiteboard interviewing so bad that people would go out of their way to avoid it? I mean, I've encountered / can imagine horror stories for all the usual al

Is whiteboard interviewing so bad that people would go out of their way to avoid it? I mean, I've encountered / can imagine horror stories for all the usual alternatives: a) take this 3-day long mini-project, do it using all of our preferred technologies (some of which you'll be using for the first time) and get it back to us - it should only take you 4 hours! Or b) do this on site, using our machines and environments which will be unfamiliar to you. Or c) speak to some random invigilator over Skype. Or d) do a written test, or e) take us through your GitHub collection, which may or may not exist, etc. My preferred way of testing people was usually to try to get them to show me that they have thought about why they develop software in the fashion that they do. I would prefer to do this in person, at a very high level, but it often ended up being a written test (where necessary, the language was your choice, or pseudocode). Is this wrong?

twblalock 8y ago
> Is whiteboard interviewing so bad that people would go out of their way to avoid it? I mean, I've encountered / can imagine horror stories for all the usual alternatives: a) take this 3-day long mini-project, do it using all of our preferred technologies (some of which you'll be using for the first time) and get it back to us - it should only take you 4 hours! Or b) do this on site, using our machines and environments which will be unfamiliar to you. Or c) speak to some random invigilator over Skype. Or d) do a written test, or e) take us through your GitHub collection, which may or may not exist, etc. This is the problem. There was recently a large HN thread about the take-home projects and how so many people didn't like them. None of the options are popular: if you use whiteboarding, people will complain it's a bunch of brain teasers unrelated to real programming work. If you use take-home projects, people will complain about doing unpaid work. Would professional certifications help? I doubt it -- they would need to be based on standardized tests, which would have the same drawbacks as the whiteboarding questions nobody likes.
- danielbarla 8y ago
  To give an alternative approach - I found that in general, I could get a pretty good idea about a candidate using either the verbal interaction or written test. The idea was to give questions which are almost a polar opposite of the strange trivia style questions you see in certification exams. Instead of the candidate having to remember which overload of an API returns a byte[], we'd instead talk about things like how they prefer to structure a project, and how this feeds into maintainability, etc. If the person was into object orientation, we'd talk about that, if they were into a more functional style, same angle, but I want them to have thought about it from a software engineering side. It sounds wishy-washy, but with just a few pointed questions, you can detect both BS answers, as well as someone who hasn't really thought about it. I tend to find that this quality in an individual is a very important predictor of performance, as it indicates deep care and interest about their craft. With good candidates, you can get really deep into a discussion and know within 5 minutes that they are quality. Along the way, you'd also get a pretty good picture of the persons strengths and stylistic preferences, which you can use to determine how and where they would fit in with the team(s) you had in mind. The only downsides are that I wasn't always available for these interviews, and the written equivalent intimidating and could take long. Also, various people swore that they either can't perform well in written or verbal conditions, so perhaps letting the candidate choose between the two might be beneficial.
taurath 8y ago
> Is whiteboard interviewing so bad that people would go out of their way to avoid it? Yes. If you have problems with anxiety or imposter syndrome its a special kind of hell - especially when you go in absolutely able to do the work and being qualified, and then getting a hard no on the basis of "you're not a good enough programmer". Even for someone without an ego to be harmed, it feels like a cruel and arbitrary way to determine your future financial and societal well being.

twblalock 8y ago

> Is whiteboard interviewing so bad that people would go out of their way to avoid it? I mean, I've encountered / can imagine horror stories for all the usual alternatives: a) take this 3-day long mini-project, do it using all of our preferred technologies (some of which you'll be using for the first time) and get it back to us - it should only take you 4 hours! Or b) do this on site, using our machines and environments which will be unfamiliar to you. Or c) speak to some random invigilator over Skype. Or d) do a written test, or e) take us through your GitHub collection, which may or may not exist, etc. This is the problem. There was recently a large HN thread about the take-home projects and how so many people didn't like them. None of the options are popular: if you use whiteboarding, people will complain it's a bunch of brain teasers unrelated to real programming work. If you use take-home projects, people will complain about doing unpaid work. Would professional certifications help? I doubt it -- they would need to be based on standardized tests, which would have the same drawbacks as the whiteboarding questions nobody likes.

danielbarla 8y ago
To give an alternative approach - I found that in general, I could get a pretty good idea about a candidate using either the verbal interaction or written test. The idea was to give questions which are almost a polar opposite of the strange trivia style questions you see in certification exams. Instead of the candidate having to remember which overload of an API returns a byte[], we'd instead talk about things like how they prefer to structure a project, and how this feeds into maintainability, etc. If the person was into object orientation, we'd talk about that, if they were into a more functional style, same angle, but I want them to have thought about it from a software engineering side. It sounds wishy-washy, but with just a few pointed questions, you can detect both BS answers, as well as someone who hasn't really thought about it. I tend to find that this quality in an individual is a very important predictor of performance, as it indicates deep care and interest about their craft. With good candidates, you can get really deep into a discussion and know within 5 minutes that they are quality. Along the way, you'd also get a pretty good picture of the persons strengths and stylistic preferences, which you can use to determine how and where they would fit in with the team(s) you had in mind. The only downsides are that I wasn't always available for these interviews, and the written equivalent intimidating and could take long. Also, various people swore that they either can't perform well in written or verbal conditions, so perhaps letting the candidate choose between the two might be beneficial.

taurath 8y ago

> Is whiteboard interviewing so bad that people would go out of their way to avoid it? Yes. If you have problems with anxiety or imposter syndrome its a special kind of hell - especially when you go in absolutely able to do the work and being qualified, and then getting a hard no on the basis of "you're not a good enough programmer". Even for someone without an ego to be harmed, it feels like a cruel and arbitrary way to determine your future financial and societal well being.