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When I give a live programming problem, I cut interviewees a lot of slack for not doing well under pressure, as long as they seem suitably embarrassed about it.
by dfan 15y ago
When I give a live programming problem, I cut interviewees a lot of slack for not doing well under pressure, as long as they seem suitably embarrassed about it. There's a big difference to me between "I know this step has got to be really simple, but I'm having a brain cramp", and "This step is really hard, no wonder I can't get it" (when it isn't).
- dfan 15y agoI'm curious why my comment has been voted down. Was "suitably embarrassed" an offensive way to phrase it, or do people disagree with the distinction I made in the last sentence? I think it's pretty valuable to have a sense, even if you can't solve something, of whether the solution is likely to be simple or not.
- marknutter 15y agoI think the problem people have with this approach is that they don't want to be defined by their performance on one very specific problem. Most people, myself included, want to be seen as the sum of many accomplishments, not just one superficial one in an interview.
- dfan 15y agoOh, I totally agree there; I mentioned in a different comment that the whiteboard coding problem is just one component of many that we use.
- jsnell 15y agoThis topic as a whole seems to be very contentious, and stuff is getting downvoted seemingly randomly. Even comments that are interesting and that nobody could surely be objecting to.