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The whiteboarding in the problem setting might be the issue. How many engineers actually whiteboard regularly? It's as old fashioned as waterfall design. Eve

The whiteboarding in the problem setting might be the issue. How many engineers actually whiteboard regularly? It's as old fashioned as waterfall design. Everything has a REPL shell (even Java!) now. Hell, even CloudFormation stacks let you fiddle with entire architectures through a command line. Engineers have always poked and prodded at things to learn and refine them. Whiteboards are for throwing around ideas; not for solving problems. I spent most of my grad school years researching learning and memory. The medium and environment of the fact recall/problem solving can greatly affect performance. Now compound that with the stress of your standard technical interview and you'll get some flubs. You might want to take a step back and consider how you're asking them to show competence in addition to what you're asking them to show competence of.

joezydeco 7y ago
Would it really be any better if I handed them a laptop with Notepad or some IDE and asked them to type in their ideas? What I'm asking is the bitbanging equivalent of "store 2+2 in a variable", so setting up an entire coding ritual for 3-4 lines of code isn't really what I had in mind.
- kradroy 7y ago
  To answer your question with a question - Would you be satisfied if they could solve the problem in that setting? Is making a laptop available to them for problem solving that much trouble? Or, rather than looking for _any_ competent candidate, are you looking for someone like you and your coworkers, who can give direct answers without a pause? I ask because in one case it's more like an attempt to hire capable employees and the other is perhaps a subconscious attempt to maintain a monoculture.
  - joezydeco 7y ago
    You know that's a good question and, to be honest, if they could only solve this at a keyboard then I wouldn't be satisfied. We constantly draw things out and scribble over it again when we're designing. If you can't translate and communicate to others then it's not a good fit for me.
jsymolon 7y ago
> whiteboard ... it's as old fashioned as waterfall design. Call me old-fashioned then. I like to map out the data flow and process flow a bit. A little planning now, saves quite a bit later. Call it, pre-re-factoring. You don't go scuba diving, hiking, camping, etc, without a plan.
- kradroy 7y ago
  It's why I wrote "Whiteboards are for throwing around ideas; not for solving problems."

joezydeco 7y ago

Would it really be any better if I handed them a laptop with Notepad or some IDE and asked them to type in their ideas? What I'm asking is the bitbanging equivalent of "store 2+2 in a variable", so setting up an entire coding ritual for 3-4 lines of code isn't really what I had in mind.

kradroy 7y ago
To answer your question with a question - Would you be satisfied if they could solve the problem in that setting? Is making a laptop available to them for problem solving that much trouble? Or, rather than looking for _any_ competent candidate, are you looking for someone like you and your coworkers, who can give direct answers without a pause? I ask because in one case it's more like an attempt to hire capable employees and the other is perhaps a subconscious attempt to maintain a monoculture.
- joezydeco 7y ago
  You know that's a good question and, to be honest, if they could only solve this at a keyboard then I wouldn't be satisfied. We constantly draw things out and scribble over it again when we're designing. If you can't translate and communicate to others then it's not a good fit for me.

jsymolon 7y ago

> whiteboard ... it's as old fashioned as waterfall design. Call me old-fashioned then. I like to map out the data flow and process flow a bit. A little planning now, saves quite a bit later. Call it, pre-re-factoring. You don't go scuba diving, hiking, camping, etc, without a plan.

kradroy 7y ago
It's why I wrote "Whiteboards are for throwing around ideas; not for solving problems."