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That's nice in theory. But it doesn't fit the facts. 1) The whiteboard questions are unrelated to the job opening. The interviewers have no idea why you are t

by daly 8y ago

That's nice in theory. But it doesn't fit the facts. 1) The whiteboard questions are unrelated to the job opening. The interviewers have no idea why you are there. They don't know what your resume says. They don't know who you might be working for. They don't know what you might be working on. Would you hire someone to work for you without knowing if they were going to clean your house, install new lighting, or rebuild your kitchen? How exactly would you interview a person if you don't know why you need their skills? Or how their skills are related to the task? Asking a carpenter to "whiteboard" the steps to clean a bathtub during an interview is insulting. 2) The interview is being conducted by people who have almost no job experience. My experience is that the interviewers are recent college graduates. And that the whiteboard questions are related to their data structures class. They are focused on details like worst-case behavior of the algorithm and whether you can quote the log-log-n asymtotic performance. This entirely ignores the fact that the actual behavior depends a lot on the actual measured performance. Take, for example, my paper on garbage collection (http://daly.axiom-developer.org/TimothyDaly_files/Bozm84.pdf http://daly.axiom-developer.org/TimothyDaly_files/Bozm84.pdf) where the actual data access pattern matters. Theoretically strong algorithms usually exhibit bad behavior because of data access patterns, CPU caches, look-aside buffering, and/or branch prediction failures. 3) There is no known relation between being effective and being able to present information. I know people who are strongly autistic, to the point of not making actual eye contact or giving any verbal feedback at all, appearing to be "not paying attention"... and then create beautifully crafted excellent code. I also know people who "talk a good game" and couldn't write a "hello world" page in html. Please point me to any study that shows that whiteboarding is an effective way to judge candidates. Even Google's HR head claims it is ineffective. 4) There is a ball-pit / clown nose aspect to the interview. "Everybody does it" so wear the clown nose. I've had a fair number of interviews in my 48 year career. Most of them were with people who needed something done and I could demonstrate my ability to do that. Interviews exist for a reason. Asking me to whiteboard Knuth-Bendix because you're writing an editor is reasonable. But the same question for a customer service job would be nonsense. These "clown-nose" interviews are simply insulting and a waste of time. Walk away.

marssaxman 8y ago
Your theory does not fit my facts, and I can't relate to your "clown-nose" metaphor. I respect the fact that you've been working in the industry almost twice as long as I have; but if the environment you describe were as universal as you are making it out to be, I would expect to have encountered it by now (and I have interviewed at both Google and Facebook, as per the original question, along with plenty of others). With regard to your point #1, it's not that the questions themselves must necessarily be related to the specific job one is interviewing for; it is that the process of communicating about problems and collaborating in the investigation of potential solutions represents the core of the profession. I have no idea what you mean by "no known relation" in point #3; there certainly are niches in which someone capable of nothing more than writing code might be able to eke out a living, but for the most part software engineering consists of interpreting user needs and definitions of problems, investigating those problems sufficiently to derive specifics, designing solutions which make appropriately balanced trade-offs, and communicating plans and progress in order to ensure that the proposed solutions satisfy customer needs. Sure, there's also a little typing of code every now and then, but if that's all someone brings to the table their potential contribution is very limited. I am not aware of any studies which provide any meaningful data about software interviewing practices; we are all guessing. I would take the complaints about the use of whiteboards and toy problems in technical interviews more seriously if the people making such arguments were able to present a superior alternative, but the proposals I've heard sound even more like your "clown-nose" concept than the system we're used to.
- daly 8y ago
  The environment I describe is not universal, nor did I claim it was. In fact, I am advocating walking away from the subset of companies that do whiteboard interviews. About your reply for point #1, I agree that communication and collaboration are important. I have picked up chalk (I'm old) during an interview in order to draw diagrams related to robot paths. But you'll note that I decided that the chalk-talk was an effective way to communicate essentially visual information. A "whiteboard" interview is one where the interviewer decides that I need to use a whiteboard to communicate. Coding is not a whiteboard activity and the medium choice is inappropriate. I rarely choose to communicate algorithms with an interpretive dance for that very reason. About your reply to point #3, in any large company it is highly unlikely that a single, new-hire person would have such a broad scope of activity. Hiring a person of that scope would cause me to invest in background checks and presentations by the person showing their prior projects, designs, and outcomes. I certainly would learn nothing by asking them to reverse a tree on a whiteboard in 20 minutes. As to your final point, I did present a superior alternative. Have the hiring manager talk to the person about the job opening and the skills expected. Ask the person to provide related background information from their prior experience. Ask them about how they might appoach a current or previous problem related to the job opening. If THEY want to use the chalkboard to communicate that's fine. An interview tells you a lot about a company and how it treats employees. If you see a "sea of desks" in a supermarket-sized open-plan floor you can assume you're "just another ball in the ball-pit". If they hold meetings in a fisherman's net strung from the ceiling (I wish I made that up, but no...) then you can assume they have a playground mentality. If they are proud of their "80 hour weeks" you can assume your pay rate is only half what it claims. If "free food" is given as the best reason to work there, you can assume the work is painful and boring. And, to the original point, if the interview process resembles a frat-house hazing-style "paddle line" of unrelated interviews, you can assume a frat-house "good culture fit" mentality. Every frat house strives for a monoculture (as in, "we only hire the best and the brightest"). But if you're a professional, working every day to improve your skills and breadth of knowledge and experience, then respect yourself. Walk away.

by daly 8y ago

marssaxman 8y ago

Your theory does not fit my facts, and I can't relate to your "clown-nose" metaphor. I respect the fact that you've been working in the industry almost twice as long as I have; but if the environment you describe were as universal as you are making it out to be, I would expect to have encountered it by now (and I have interviewed at both Google and Facebook, as per the original question, along with plenty of others). With regard to your point #1, it's not that the questions themselves must necessarily be related to the specific job one is interviewing for; it is that the process of communicating about problems and collaborating in the investigation of potential solutions represents the core of the profession. I have no idea what you mean by "no known relation" in point #3; there certainly are niches in which someone capable of nothing more than writing code might be able to eke out a living, but for the most part software engineering consists of interpreting user needs and definitions of problems, investigating those problems sufficiently to derive specifics, designing solutions which make appropriately balanced trade-offs, and communicating plans and progress in order to ensure that the proposed solutions satisfy customer needs. Sure, there's also a little typing of code every now and then, but if that's all someone brings to the table their potential contribution is very limited. I am not aware of any studies which provide any meaningful data about software interviewing practices; we are all guessing. I would take the complaints about the use of whiteboards and toy problems in technical interviews more seriously if the people making such arguments were able to present a superior alternative, but the proposals I've heard sound even more like your "clown-nose" concept than the system we're used to.

daly 8y ago
The environment I describe is not universal, nor did I claim it was. In fact, I am advocating walking away from the subset of companies that do whiteboard interviews. About your reply for point #1, I agree that communication and collaboration are important. I have picked up chalk (I'm old) during an interview in order to draw diagrams related to robot paths. But you'll note that I decided that the chalk-talk was an effective way to communicate essentially visual information. A "whiteboard" interview is one where the interviewer decides that I need to use a whiteboard to communicate. Coding is not a whiteboard activity and the medium choice is inappropriate. I rarely choose to communicate algorithms with an interpretive dance for that very reason. About your reply to point #3, in any large company it is highly unlikely that a single, new-hire person would have such a broad scope of activity. Hiring a person of that scope would cause me to invest in background checks and presentations by the person showing their prior projects, designs, and outcomes. I certainly would learn nothing by asking them to reverse a tree on a whiteboard in 20 minutes. As to your final point, I did present a superior alternative. Have the hiring manager talk to the person about the job opening and the skills expected. Ask the person to provide related background information from their prior experience. Ask them about how they might appoach a current or previous problem related to the job opening. If THEY want to use the chalkboard to communicate that's fine. An interview tells you a lot about a company and how it treats employees. If you see a "sea of desks" in a supermarket-sized open-plan floor you can assume you're "just another ball in the ball-pit". If they hold meetings in a fisherman's net strung from the ceiling (I wish I made that up, but no...) then you can assume they have a playground mentality. If they are proud of their "80 hour weeks" you can assume your pay rate is only half what it claims. If "free food" is given as the best reason to work there, you can assume the work is painful and boring. And, to the original point, if the interview process resembles a frat-house hazing-style "paddle line" of unrelated interviews, you can assume a frat-house "good culture fit" mentality. Every frat house strives for a monoculture (as in, "we only hire the best and the brightest"). But if you're a professional, working every day to improve your skills and breadth of knowledge and experience, then respect yourself. Walk away.