7 ms·

No one enjoys whiteboard interviews but it's not clear that these companies have better alternatives. Many of them do take home projects which are time consumin

No one enjoys whiteboard interviews but it's not clear that these companies have better alternatives. Many of them do take home projects which are time consuming. I'd prefer the employer look at my GitHub profile as there's plenty of code there already. Furthermore, I'm not a fan of "interviews" in general, I find that more information is transmitted by eating lunch with the team and talking like normal people.

kipply 6y ago
Recurse Center has a pretty nice model where they give you a part of a program (small) to bring ahead of time (or you can pick any program you've written) and the interview is going through the code and adding a feature or two. That kind of interview mitigates the amount of trivia and preparation-gaming while also ensuring that the applicant can solve problems as a team and is a competent programmer. It is cheatable in that one can memorize implementations of some features, though it seems somewhat difficult and not more cheatable than just memorizing a bunch of CS trivia.
- deliveryboyman 6y ago
  I'm not too familiar with them, but why does Recurse Center need to interview people for technical positions?
  - pyb 6y ago
    The Recurse Center is a retreat that you attend with other like-minded programmers. I recommend it if you are interested deepening your experience as a programmer, by working on personal projects as part of a helpful community. There is a selection process as mentioned above, but it isn't onerous.
johannes1234321 6y ago
I like whiteboards, if there is an interesting problem. Going through my GitHub account however isn't good. It's full of quick one shot things, experiments and so on, very little production ready code and not representative of anything.
pklausler 6y ago
As an interviewer, how do I know that you wrote that code in your GitHub profile?
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  Code often doesn't stand alone, there's going to be a commit history, there's often going to be comments and issues on other projects. Ask questions about the code: - why did you write this in this way - explain how this works - if you needed to add X into this, how would you do it - are there other ways to achieve what you did here, what are the pros/cons of this? - what would you do differently if you were to re-write this? - are there any bugs or common issues, how do you go about diagnosing and debugging them? Could you write the code differently to be more resiliant to those issues? Anyone who wrote that code (assuming it was relatively recently) is going to be able to talk about it sensibly, and be able to dig into the code and show how certain things are done.
  - grogenaut 6y ago
    I had a former coworker re-write a library we had open sourced as their own. They had used the original version at work so knew it well, knew the internals by asking lots of questions while working for performance reasons. They renamed things and changed pointers around to their preference. They did this right before they left and had it on github as their work. They could meet all of your questions. They didn't really write the code, but it was MIT, what can you do. It was very obviously there as bait for people like you and it was removed as soon as they took a new job. It was never used in production in its "released" form. I had no problem with the person's abilities to code, but for reasons like this I probably wouldn't work with them again, or hire them as a eng lead or higher.
    - paranoidrobot 6y ago
      I don't see a solution for this. What you're describing is someone who's clearly good enough to take a project and rewrite it, and still be able to talk in detail about the code. I'd bet they could also pass a whiteboard, pair-programming or take-home test too. That they are willing to lie about it and pass off other's work as their own isn't something that you're going to identify in your typical code interview. Using interrogation tactics to try and weed out the frauds is going to be counter-productive, by driving off all the good candidates.
matthewowen 6y ago
Here's the thing though. It's a lot more effort to look through projects on GitHub and evaluate them. And even if you can, you then have to figure out how to cross compare that and set a consistent bar vs people who you interview because they don't have a GitHub presence. People want hiring processes to be somewhat consistent, and in that world it's really kind of a non-starter to replace tech screens with GitHub profile reviews.
- tessierashpool 6y ago
  yup. and GitHub's useless for value adds like management, marketing, recruiting, or product skills. for that matter, GitHub is useless if the projects you contribute to are on BitBucket or GitLab. that contributions graph has a lot of assumptions baked in.
- hinkley 6y ago
  There is not that much code I wrote three, four years ago that I’m still proud of. I figured that would get better with age but it’s only by degrees, and at any rate it may indicate that I’m getting soft rather than better. So anything on github that I might want you to look at? I’d have to be on a three year replacement cycle, permanently, which is a hell of a lot more work than you might estimate that a reasonable github presence would entail.
- asdff 6y ago
  It's so backward to see companies shift to these abstracted whiteboard or homework assignments as some sort of standard, considering standardized testing is now falling out of favor in higher education as it is rarely indicative of actual potential success. It strikes me as lazy, just following a trend unrooted in any empirical data. Maybe the solution is for companies to hire more thorough managers who are capable of vetting a github profile to see if the candidates skills are relevant to the position, not turn the interview process into a performance.
- roland35 6y ago
  I think it is also hard to compare different candidates this way, even assuming they both have a similar level of commitment on GitHub. A take home exercise at least allows them to compare the same thing
ransom1538 6y ago
Our interview process is far more advanced. We place the candidate in a room with a large whiteboard for 15 minutes alone with the lights off. I then walk in with a 6 piece dresser [1] from IKEA (obviously keeping the lights out). I explain to the prospect that this particular dresser is missing one piece - BUT we need the dresser assembled then disassembled and placed back into the box [without anyone seeing]. More than HALF the candidates become violent and demand to see my github account - some even suggest I have a mental issue. I am often able to calm the candidate down - this way we can get into the REAL debate: KOPPANG vs MALMs. Any candidate caught assembling the IKEA dresser is quickly dismissed out of spite. This technique is from Boz at facebook - it is how all* senior principle engineers are screened at FB and the reason everyone codes PHP (but swears they do not). HR has complained that my techinques are "ridiculous" or borderline illegal - but so far my successful candidates perform, tend to have a solid grasp of typescript and quickly move into senior management. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/koppang-6-drawer-dresser-black-brown-30311307/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/koppang-6-drawer-dresser-black-...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- akiselev 6y ago
  Note that upper management is also interviewed in such a fashion, except with night vision cameras and the entire board crammed into a tiny security cupboard near the elevators. Any candidate caught trying to hide the existence of the IKEA dresser entirely is immediately hired once they have successfully gaslighted the interviewer.
- kyberias 6y ago
  MALM is superior in every aspect.
mjrbrennan 6y ago
I'd much rather do a take-home project at my own pace funded by the company, seeing as how my personal GitHub is a barren wasteland (well...it was before I started working for an OSS company).
- mxcrossb 6y ago
  In the future, when looking at github becomes a standard hiring practice, companies will start going full closed source so that their talent can’t jump ship.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    My former employer, a Fortune 500 company, wouldn't let me volunteer for a globally recognized charity because the boilerplate agreement the charity required volunteers sign, stated that IP created as a volunteer belonged to them, and my employer considered that everything within or outside work hours was theirs. Not that I was volunteering as a programmer anyway. My current employer doesn't have explicit rules that I'm aware of, but early on, I asked our HR person if I could work on open source outside work and they said something along the lines of "what's open source?" Which, I mean, on the one hand what do you expect from HR, but on the other hand, the entire agency is concerned with operating, maintaining, and developing a software system.
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      This is how I get over that hump. Not only do I not work on anything related to my day job, I mostly build things in my free time that aren't really useful to anyone but myself. Sure my company may be able to claim ownership of my Sean Connery themed programming language but will they? What on earth do they plan to do with it?
      - trickstra 6y ago
        They are happy that you can't leave, because you have nothing to legally show to other interviewers and no other prospective project in your drawer. That's not a good position to be in.
alexbanks 6y ago
> but it's not clear that these companies have better alternatives. It obviously depends on your definition of "better". And it's yet to be seen whether whiteboarding is "better" than pulling candidates out of a hat. You'll note that lots of companies that do strict whiteboard-style interviews are also extremely comfortable firing employees. Would you be "better" just hiring anyone whose resume seemed applicable, that could talk like a normal person, and then firing them if it didn't work out?
sli 6y ago
> I find that more information is transmitted by eating lunch with the team and talking like normal people. As an introverted and generally very socially anxious developer, this sounds like a dream compared to a standard interview, which has always felt to me more like an interrogation and generally very aggressive and hostile. I'm confident in my skills and I can communicate well in other situations, but the typical interview environment is cripplingly stressful to me. I would love to just get through a talkative lunch instead.
dilatedmind 6y ago
Well put. The one time i expressed interest but reluctance at leaving my previous job, I was invited on a coffee and chat with a couple lead engineers to help decide. We got along well, talked about technical things, swapped stories about problems solved. Afterwards, i got the impression going through the technical interview would be more of a formality. I think part of the problem is not everyone is good at giving interviews. But most software engineers can talk about their work once you get them going. FWIW, I think white boarding interviews are pretty fun.
lazopm 6y ago
Different things work for different people, personally white boarding is my favorite. I think the best would be to offer the candidate options. Let them come in for the culture fit portion of the interview, at the end present them a problem and let them choose if they prefer white boarding, pair programming, or take home and submit by the end of the day.

kipply 6y ago

Recurse Center has a pretty nice model where they give you a part of a program (small) to bring ahead of time (or you can pick any program you've written) and the interview is going through the code and adding a feature or two. That kind of interview mitigates the amount of trivia and preparation-gaming while also ensuring that the applicant can solve problems as a team and is a competent programmer. It is cheatable in that one can memorize implementations of some features, though it seems somewhat difficult and not more cheatable than just memorizing a bunch of CS trivia.

deliveryboyman 6y ago
I'm not too familiar with them, but why does Recurse Center need to interview people for technical positions?
- pyb 6y ago
  The Recurse Center is a retreat that you attend with other like-minded programmers. I recommend it if you are interested deepening your experience as a programmer, by working on personal projects as part of a helpful community. There is a selection process as mentioned above, but it isn't onerous.

johannes1234321 6y ago

I like whiteboards, if there is an interesting problem. Going through my GitHub account however isn't good. It's full of quick one shot things, experiments and so on, very little production ready code and not representative of anything.

pklausler 6y ago

As an interviewer, how do I know that you wrote that code in your GitHub profile?

paranoidrobot 6y ago
Code often doesn't stand alone, there's going to be a commit history, there's often going to be comments and issues on other projects. Ask questions about the code: - why did you write this in this way - explain how this works - if you needed to add X into this, how would you do it - are there other ways to achieve what you did here, what are the pros/cons of this? - what would you do differently if you were to re-write this? - are there any bugs or common issues, how do you go about diagnosing and debugging them? Could you write the code differently to be more resiliant to those issues? Anyone who wrote that code (assuming it was relatively recently) is going to be able to talk about it sensibly, and be able to dig into the code and show how certain things are done.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  I had a former coworker re-write a library we had open sourced as their own. They had used the original version at work so knew it well, knew the internals by asking lots of questions while working for performance reasons. They renamed things and changed pointers around to their preference. They did this right before they left and had it on github as their work. They could meet all of your questions. They didn't really write the code, but it was MIT, what can you do. It was very obviously there as bait for people like you and it was removed as soon as they took a new job. It was never used in production in its "released" form. I had no problem with the person's abilities to code, but for reasons like this I probably wouldn't work with them again, or hire them as a eng lead or higher.
  - paranoidrobot 6y ago
    I don't see a solution for this. What you're describing is someone who's clearly good enough to take a project and rewrite it, and still be able to talk in detail about the code. I'd bet they could also pass a whiteboard, pair-programming or take-home test too. That they are willing to lie about it and pass off other's work as their own isn't something that you're going to identify in your typical code interview. Using interrogation tactics to try and weed out the frauds is going to be counter-productive, by driving off all the good candidates.

matthewowen 6y ago

Here's the thing though. It's a lot more effort to look through projects on GitHub and evaluate them. And even if you can, you then have to figure out how to cross compare that and set a consistent bar vs people who you interview because they don't have a GitHub presence. People want hiring processes to be somewhat consistent, and in that world it's really kind of a non-starter to replace tech screens with GitHub profile reviews.

tessierashpool 6y ago
yup. and GitHub's useless for value adds like management, marketing, recruiting, or product skills. for that matter, GitHub is useless if the projects you contribute to are on BitBucket or GitLab. that contributions graph has a lot of assumptions baked in.
hinkley 6y ago
There is not that much code I wrote three, four years ago that I’m still proud of. I figured that would get better with age but it’s only by degrees, and at any rate it may indicate that I’m getting soft rather than better. So anything on github that I might want you to look at? I’d have to be on a three year replacement cycle, permanently, which is a hell of a lot more work than you might estimate that a reasonable github presence would entail.
asdff 6y ago
It's so backward to see companies shift to these abstracted whiteboard or homework assignments as some sort of standard, considering standardized testing is now falling out of favor in higher education as it is rarely indicative of actual potential success. It strikes me as lazy, just following a trend unrooted in any empirical data. Maybe the solution is for companies to hire more thorough managers who are capable of vetting a github profile to see if the candidates skills are relevant to the position, not turn the interview process into a performance.
roland35 6y ago
I think it is also hard to compare different candidates this way, even assuming they both have a similar level of commitment on GitHub. A take home exercise at least allows them to compare the same thing

ransom1538 6y ago

Our interview process is far more advanced. We place the candidate in a room with a large whiteboard for 15 minutes alone with the lights off. I then walk in with a 6 piece dresser [1] from IKEA (obviously keeping the lights out). I explain to the prospect that this particular dresser is missing one piece - BUT we need the dresser assembled then disassembled and placed back into the box [without anyone seeing]. More than HALF the candidates become violent and demand to see my github account - some even suggest I have a mental issue. I am often able to calm the candidate down - this way we can get into the REAL debate: KOPPANG vs MALMs. Any candidate caught assembling the IKEA dresser is quickly dismissed out of spite. This technique is from Boz at facebook - it is how all* senior principle engineers are screened at FB and the reason everyone codes PHP (but swears they do not). HR has complained that my techinques are "ridiculous" or borderline illegal - but so far my successful candidates perform, tend to have a solid grasp of typescript and quickly move into senior management. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/koppang-6-drawer-dresser-black-brown-30311307/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/koppang-6-drawer-dresser-black-...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
akiselev 6y ago
Note that upper management is also interviewed in such a fashion, except with night vision cameras and the entire board crammed into a tiny security cupboard near the elevators. Any candidate caught trying to hide the existence of the IKEA dresser entirely is immediately hired once they have successfully gaslighted the interviewer.
kyberias 6y ago
MALM is superior in every aspect.

mjrbrennan 6y ago

I'd much rather do a take-home project at my own pace funded by the company, seeing as how my personal GitHub is a barren wasteland (well...it was before I started working for an OSS company).

mxcrossb 6y ago
In the future, when looking at github becomes a standard hiring practice, companies will start going full closed source so that their talent can’t jump ship.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  My former employer, a Fortune 500 company, wouldn't let me volunteer for a globally recognized charity because the boilerplate agreement the charity required volunteers sign, stated that IP created as a volunteer belonged to them, and my employer considered that everything within or outside work hours was theirs. Not that I was volunteering as a programmer anyway. My current employer doesn't have explicit rules that I'm aware of, but early on, I asked our HR person if I could work on open source outside work and they said something along the lines of "what's open source?" Which, I mean, on the one hand what do you expect from HR, but on the other hand, the entire agency is concerned with operating, maintaining, and developing a software system.
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    This is how I get over that hump. Not only do I not work on anything related to my day job, I mostly build things in my free time that aren't really useful to anyone but myself. Sure my company may be able to claim ownership of my Sean Connery themed programming language but will they? What on earth do they plan to do with it?
    - trickstra 6y ago
      They are happy that you can't leave, because you have nothing to legally show to other interviewers and no other prospective project in your drawer. That's not a good position to be in.

alexbanks 6y ago

> but it's not clear that these companies have better alternatives. It obviously depends on your definition of "better". And it's yet to be seen whether whiteboarding is "better" than pulling candidates out of a hat. You'll note that lots of companies that do strict whiteboard-style interviews are also extremely comfortable firing employees. Would you be "better" just hiring anyone whose resume seemed applicable, that could talk like a normal person, and then firing them if it didn't work out?

sli 6y ago

> I find that more information is transmitted by eating lunch with the team and talking like normal people. As an introverted and generally very socially anxious developer, this sounds like a dream compared to a standard interview, which has always felt to me more like an interrogation and generally very aggressive and hostile. I'm confident in my skills and I can communicate well in other situations, but the typical interview environment is cripplingly stressful to me. I would love to just get through a talkative lunch instead.

dilatedmind 6y ago

Well put. The one time i expressed interest but reluctance at leaving my previous job, I was invited on a coffee and chat with a couple lead engineers to help decide. We got along well, talked about technical things, swapped stories about problems solved. Afterwards, i got the impression going through the technical interview would be more of a formality. I think part of the problem is not everyone is good at giving interviews. But most software engineers can talk about their work once you get them going. FWIW, I think white boarding interviews are pretty fun.

lazopm 6y ago

Different things work for different people, personally white boarding is my favorite. I think the best would be to offer the candidate options. Let them come in for the culture fit portion of the interview, at the end present them a problem and let them choose if they prefer white boarding, pair programming, or take home and submit by the end of the day.