The term "whiteboard interview" seems to mostly refer to "solving algorithmic/coding/puzzle problems on a whiteboard", which I agree is almost always a waste of

The term "whiteboard interview" seems to mostly refer to "solving algorithmic/coding/puzzle problems on a whiteboard", which I agree is almost always a waste of time for a software engineering position. As the article mentions though, the term is a bit vague and is overly broad; for example if you're doing a system design question, I'd argue that the whiteboard is the best choice for an interview, since that's how you're most likely to collaboratively sketch the design of a system in the real world. I think the problem can be restated at a more general level; does the interview test the sort of skills that the job requires? Most people here are correctly pointing out that the skill/knowledge required to write out pseudocode for quicksort is almost entirely uncorrelated to the skills involved in most software jobs.