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I don't see how it's a "myth" that "whiteboard interviews suck". You never write code on a whiteboard in the course of your day job. The obsession with whiteboa
by m0zg 6y ago
I don't see how it's a "myth" that "whiteboard interviews suck". You never write code on a whiteboard in the course of your day job. The obsession with whiteboard interviews is absolutely idiotic IMO, as is the obsession with asking deep algorithmic questions which the candidate will definitely not be able to answer convincingly if they didn't encounter them before.
It's idiotic that someone has to prepare for a month to do a 5-7 hour whiteboard interview loop that has no relation whatsoever to the job duties. You don't quiz a barbecue chef on Michelin star molecular cuisine, yet this is considered totally normal in our profession.
At a minimum, ask questions that one could figure out without knowing the answer beforehand, and at a minimum let them use their text editor. Better yet, don't do this shit at all, and ask people to solve a _practical_ problem similar to ones they're likely to encounter if they take the job. It still provides a good filter, arguably better even.
As things are now, interviews test for academic credentials, memory, and lack of flight response from candidate's amygdala, not practical technical skill per se.
- blamestross 6y ago> As things are now, interviews test for academic credentials, memory, and lack of flight response from candidate's amygdala, not practical technical skill per se. Those sound like they might correlate well with the traits desired.
- m0zg 6y agoI wish I could quote some paper or otherwise confirm this for you, but when I was at Google, Google itself has disproven this by hiring a cohort irrespective of their interview outcome (you can imagine what this did to googlers' impostor syndrome when they shared the results), and then tracking their performance for a few years. They did about as well as people who were subject to traditional scoring in interviews. Now granted, this is not a viable option for all of their interviewing, but at a minimum it suggests that interview scores aren't as strong an indicator of future job performance as people assume.
- username90 6y agoThere is a myth that such a study exists but I never saw any evidence for it when I worked there, seems like it is just a meme. I mean, just because you saw people talk a lot about such studies on memegen doesn't mean that they were ever done, I never saw anyone seriously believe in them just posting about it for fun like "what if I'm the one they let in with failing scores?????". However Google definitely did studies showing a decent correlation between interview scores and future job performance, I read them myself.
- m0zg 6y agoIt's not a "myth". Google did such a study circa 2010-2011 and shared the results.