> I'm not a fan of whiteboard coding challenges, even though they got me my first "real" Bay Area tech job. This is the fundamental part that is broken in my e

> I'm not a fan of whiteboard coding challenges, even though they got me my first "real" Bay Area tech job. This is the fundamental part that is broken in my experience. They are often challenges/coding puzzles, when rather white board exercises should focus on collaboration, and solving problems with code. Having a "gotcha" that shows rudimentary CS understanding is fine (such as understanding why the obvious O(N^2) is a bad solution). But having a gotcha that requires some crazy leap of faith guess (or having seen the problem before) is not. I admit, my fondness for a candidate increases with the level of complexity of coding problem they can solve; however needing hints on the harder problems doesn't mean they are not qualified.