"I feel like the whiteboard coding interview happens not because we want to put them in a hot seat and create a reality show, but rather that there is no other

"I feel like the whiteboard coding interview happens not because we want to put them in a hot seat and create a reality show, but rather that there is no other "obvious" way to test their coding skill in a short time." I totally disagree with this. In my experience I can tell if someone is familiar with a topic by asking a few relatively simple questions. You can't just make up shit about a framework/language if you never used it. There are practical things developers learn that someone will never know unless they did it. For example, if someone claimed they used Entity Framework with code-first and db first approach. I could simply ask them how they protect data annotations from being overwritten when updating the model in the db first approach. They can do so by using partial classes, anyone with a year of experience would know that if they used db first. Edit: Actually, I see your point too. Testing actually coding skills won't be solved by my example. It will only test particular knowledge and not any ability to actually solve the problem. However, in my area of work it's mostly creating CRUD applications that solve some business problems. I can't remember last time I wrote anything resembling an algorithm.