In my experience, whiteboard interviews are absolutely a form of gatekeeping. Whether the firms know it or not, they are excluding candidates who would have suc

In my experience, whiteboard interviews are absolutely a form of gatekeeping. Whether the firms know it or not, they are excluding candidates who would have succeeded in the role by including weird unrelated side content in the interview. As the OP rightly mentions, nothing you program on a whiteboard has any application once you are actually in the job. It can be incredibly frustrating to know that you can do the work of a job, but be denied because of an old superstitious test. The only silver lining is that, ultimately, companies hire the candidates they interview for. If a company makes its hiring decisions based on trivia quizzing and whiteboards, they'll ultimately produce software that reflects that. During my last big job search, I eventually started asking upfront if there was whiteboard coding in the interview. I don't want to waste my time.