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I have a question about whiteboard interviews. I have used and continued to use whiteboard coding in interviews. However I emphasize to the person that I am in

I have a question about whiteboard interviews. I have used and continued to use whiteboard coding in interviews. However I emphasize to the person that I am interviewing that there is no expectation that what they write on the whiteboard compile, or even be a real language. I'll usually do a quick demo and joke that my own white boarding looks like the bastard child of Python and FORTRAN. The point of the exercise is to have a design conversation and see if the person can think about algorithms or solving problems, not write valid code with a marker. Do people still have the same level of disdain for this technique or am I misunderstanding the objections people have to whiteboard coding.

Raidion 6y ago
I don't think anyone is expecting syntactically valid code (or at least that would be huge red flag for me if I interviewed). You do get bonus points the more "real" and consistent your whiteboard code is though. I think people dislike whiteboard interviews because there is a significant subset of people who do not perform well under pressure, combined with the fact that a lot of software development is not terrifically algorithm heavy. This means that it's a (by nature) uncomfortable task and does not adequately represent the value the developer can bring to the business. In my current role, I would much rather have someone who can show strong knowledge of dependency injection and unit testing on my team over the person who understands how to balance a binary tree from memory. I really only use algo/code/sql whiteboarding for junior devs now, and most mid/senior devs get asked about some hard code bug they've solved, what their preferred software patterns are, and we whiteboard some architecture.
douglaswlance 6y ago
The problem is that algorithms were discovered by mathematicians/computer scientists doing proofs for 40 hrs / week. It isn't something that can be reasoned about. It must be learned and memorized. This forces people to study that which is already embedded in the tools they use to perform their job. If you ask people to whiteboard out a system at a high level that accomplishes some task, then that can be reasoned about and better tests their understanding.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  See that's what I do mostly. Most often it's "here's a table of data I have, how would you compute this report." Not things like inverting binary trees or implementing hash maps.

Raidion 6y ago

I don't think anyone is expecting syntactically valid code (or at least that would be huge red flag for me if I interviewed). You do get bonus points the more "real" and consistent your whiteboard code is though. I think people dislike whiteboard interviews because there is a significant subset of people who do not perform well under pressure, combined with the fact that a lot of software development is not terrifically algorithm heavy. This means that it's a (by nature) uncomfortable task and does not adequately represent the value the developer can bring to the business. In my current role, I would much rather have someone who can show strong knowledge of dependency injection and unit testing on my team over the person who understands how to balance a binary tree from memory. I really only use algo/code/sql whiteboarding for junior devs now, and most mid/senior devs get asked about some hard code bug they've solved, what their preferred software patterns are, and we whiteboard some architecture.

douglaswlance 6y ago

The problem is that algorithms were discovered by mathematicians/computer scientists doing proofs for 40 hrs / week. It isn't something that can be reasoned about. It must be learned and memorized. This forces people to study that which is already embedded in the tools they use to perform their job. If you ask people to whiteboard out a system at a high level that accomplishes some task, then that can be reasoned about and better tests their understanding.

blacktriangle 6y ago
See that's what I do mostly. Most often it's "here's a table of data I have, how would you compute this report." Not things like inverting binary trees or implementing hash maps.