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I've recently had an interview where the interviewer scraped my most recent project off of GitHub, then asked me to add a feature, using a whiteboard. In my opi
by craftinator 8y ago
I've recently had an interview where the interviewer scraped my most recent project off of GitHub, then asked me to add a feature, using a whiteboard. In my opinion this is the RIGHT WAY to do it.
The codebase is obviously familiar to the candidate, along with the problem domain. This rules out memorization, puzzle gaming, etc... It informs on programming style, ability to somewhat think on ones feet, but doesn't exclude candidates who didn't happen to guess what the interviewer wanted before the interview began.
- gumby 8y agoThat’s a good idea
- kstenerud 8y agoNo, that's the completely wrong way to do it. Download the code onto a computer. Ask the candidate to add a feature. Or, do a screen share. The moment I'm asked to write code on a whiteboard, I politely ask to use a computer. If they can't accommodate (I bring my own laptop just in case), the interview ends.
- james_s_tayler 8y agohow many times have you ended an interview that way?
- craftinator 8y agoYeah I agree that in a perfect world, people whose jobs will entirely consist of working on a computer, mostly in an IDE, should not be interviewed on a whiteboard. But the whiteboard is a filter for people who are so unfamiliar with programming that they can't reason without the crutch of an IDE. For example, I've seen some people who can do amazing things with Scratch IDE, but can't sit down in front of nano or vim and hammer out code to save their lives. IDE's can be a crutch for thorough learning of a language, and I learned that by leaning too hard on JetBrains, then trying to dev over ssh on a raspi.