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Having just been through this process (landed a new job after a 2-month search), the worst part about whiteboard coding is how humiliated you feel if you don't
by ordinaryperson 8y ago
Having just been through this process (landed a new job after a 2-month search), the worst part about whiteboard coding is how humiliated you feel if you don't get it right or don't know where to start. Is it really necessary to do that to candidates?
I've been doing this for 15+ years professionally, have a master's in CS and I struggled to answer many questions. Just stood there blinking like a goldfish.
If companies really wanted to simulate programming work, you'd give me 10-30 minutes to Google the problem because THAT'S HOW IT WORKS IN REAL LIFE. Which is how it should be; rarely are you solving a new problem, usually other people have faced it before, it's probably far more efficient to start with a known working solution and iterate from there.
Look, of course there things you should know. Data structures, algorithm basics, some complexity theory, etc. But asking me to output numbers in a matrix in a spiral fashion does not translate into real-world ability.
I find the more important developer skills are people skills and project management skills. How well do you work with others? How do you resolve conflicts? What's your methodology for grouping work-- Jira tickets, sprints, etc?
But almost none of the interviewers seemed to care. They wanted to know what exotic technology skills I had, not that I could work with project managers and marketers effectively.
Take-home projects are more time-consuming but the least unfair, whereas whiteboard coding is the shortest but most unfair.
I blame Google for this curse. I hope the next time I go looking for a job this process has changed.
- madrox 8y agoAsking someone with your amount of experience a coding exercise is silly. You wouldn't have lasted 15+ years if you didn't know how to code. Spend more time evaluating the "softer skills," since more experienced engineers have a bigger impact on culture and process.
- ordinaryperson 8y agoRight? Ask me about past projects. Want GitHub examples? Fine. But whiteboard coding some non-real-world problem? I get that companies need some sort of filter, but whiteboard coding is not the answer, IMHO.
- bcassedy 8y agoLength of tenure is definitely not a good enough gauge. I've worked with folks with 15+ years that could technically code but they took eons to deliver and their solutions were unmaintainable. Some of them with advanced degrees too. Small sample size, but the few folks I'm thinking of were such bad hires that could have been avoided if we had them write some code or put the proper emphasis on the coding exercise we had them do.
- ordinaryperson 8y agoBut being a slow worker is going to be revealed during a whiteboard coding test? All small programs are maintainable, no interview process will tell you if a developer can deliver large, complex programs that are clean, modularized and easy to maintain because there's no time to do something of the requisite size. It's true there are experienced devs who suck, but that doesn't mean whiteboard coding is the process that filters them out.
- redisman 8y agoSame. Being so far out of school (10 years in the industry) I really struggle a ton with these interviews. It's really only 10% relevant to my day to day work. I think to get through a Google-level onsite I would probably have to practice for a year, couple of hours a day. I just got a new job at a company that doesn't do any algorithm testing and that's how it's always been. I guess I'm maybe in the "false negative" threshold that all the hot companies are fine with.