3 ms·

I authentically hate these types of interviews. 1) I don't program on a whiteboard. It's 2012, I have tools, and they beat the whiteboard setup every time. 2)

by nxn 15y ago

I authentically hate these types of interviews. 1) I don't program on a whiteboard. It's 2012, I have tools, and they beat the whiteboard setup every time. 2) I will never implement something that I have not implemented before without at least first consulting with a search engine. You see, I am not a genius that will come up with the best algorithm for a calculation every time I am put up to the challenge. My amateur attempts will be no where near as good as what others have collectively accomplished over the years that the problem existed. For example, in this particular case (I have never had to implement a function that generates Pascal's triangle before), I can guarantee you that anything I came up with at a whiteboard right now would be completely inferior to what the result would be if I was allowed to do a search first. So unless you're trying to see if I am capable of writing any old crappy code so long as the result is correct, your test isn't adequate. 3) Interviews still make me nervous, doesn't matter how many times I have them, I never feel comfortable going through the process. This often leads me to simply draw blanks when given a whiteboard assignment of this nature. You may think this means I am just incapable of solving your problem, or that I perform poorly under pressure, but I can tell you that this type of "put you on the spot" pressure is much different from the type one generally feels in a work environment.

sanderjd 15y ago
1) If the whiteboard and lack of tools is the problem, what would you think about projecting your monitor? 2) Nobody cares how good your solution is, they care about seeing your thought process while solving it. They are likely waiting breathlessly to ask you follow up questions about your poor implementation that will further enlighten them about the way you think. It would be a downright shame to disappoint them by writing a great solution right away. 3) This is a legitimately big problem. Everyone responds to the pressure of interviews differently and it is definitely not necessarily correlated to their response to the pressures of the workplace. Ideally you would notify the interviewer(s) of your anxiety beforehand and they would be willing to work with you on either a short take-home (which a lot of people also hate for other reasons), or some type of working interview (which is often infeasible). The original article was about a specific-language whiteboard problem, which is open to arguments about tooling and internet access, but many people ask these sorts of questions in terms of pseudocode, structured written english, or even discourse out-loud, and the goal is not to determine programming language or algorithm knowledge, but problem solving skills. edit: phrasing
- eugenejen 15y ago
  Project my monitor/screen sharing actually works very well. I got an interview in 2006 for Microsoft. I typed my C solution with Notepad via share screen over DSL. The code is "to find out the depth of leaf nodes in a binary tree and find out which leaf node is the shallowest/deepest" or something like that. I did that in 20 minutes and return solution to find out depths for all leaf nodes and sorted them by depth. And the interviewer saw how I worked during the session and laughed I was the first one to solve the problem in that way and much better than what they expect. At the other hand, I got interviewed in Amazon around the same time. I completely choked on whiteboard because I did not prepare for session before like that and I still had a jet lag due to lack of sleep during flight in previous night. Then I got another interview in Bloomberg and I complete couldn't write code with pencil and paper. My mind flows when I typed but chokes when I worked on paper/whiteboard. I guess the fluidity of editor is the key. Later when I interview software engineers. I tried to let them to have a computer so they can write code during the session. I feel much better grasp for their potential and habit during the session than whiteboard and pencil paper test.
  - sanderjd 15y ago
    I completely agree about projecting - going to paper and pencil after years of vim just feels absurd - but some people find it more invasive and/or high pressure.
    - lutorm 15y ago
      For the people who say they never use a whiteboard: do you never talk about problems with colleagues? When trying to understand the best way of tackling something difficult, I find few things beat a whiteboard session of sketching out possible solutions. I find that writing actual code just obscures things when I'm looking for the method or algorithm to do what I want.
      - eugenejen 15y ago
        I think my experiences with whiteboard effectiveness are limited to 1. Writing down pseudo code for solutions. 2. Diagrams for architectures. 3. Flow charts for possible actions during problem solving. But if you ask me to write down a real program in whiteboard, I find myself starting to got interrupted by thoughts about erase lines, moving blocks around and worrying about my writing is too big and board is too small for my code. I think shared whiteboard is definitely a very good tool for discussions. But for me, even a rudimentary editor like notepad, vi helps me more in handling all rewriting/visualizing/pondering process. Probably I am not those programmers who can write down code without worrying about rewriting them. For me, write a program is like oil painting involving constant changes.

by nxn 15y ago

sanderjd 15y ago

1) If the whiteboard and lack of tools is the problem, what would you think about projecting your monitor? 2) Nobody cares how good your solution is, they care about seeing your thought process while solving it. They are likely waiting breathlessly to ask you follow up questions about your poor implementation that will further enlighten them about the way you think. It would be a downright shame to disappoint them by writing a great solution right away. 3) This is a legitimately big problem. Everyone responds to the pressure of interviews differently and it is definitely not necessarily correlated to their response to the pressures of the workplace. Ideally you would notify the interviewer(s) of your anxiety beforehand and they would be willing to work with you on either a short take-home (which a lot of people also hate for other reasons), or some type of working interview (which is often infeasible). The original article was about a specific-language whiteboard problem, which is open to arguments about tooling and internet access, but many people ask these sorts of questions in terms of pseudocode, structured written english, or even discourse out-loud, and the goal is not to determine programming language or algorithm knowledge, but problem solving skills. edit: phrasing

eugenejen 15y ago
Project my monitor/screen sharing actually works very well. I got an interview in 2006 for Microsoft. I typed my C solution with Notepad via share screen over DSL. The code is "to find out the depth of leaf nodes in a binary tree and find out which leaf node is the shallowest/deepest" or something like that. I did that in 20 minutes and return solution to find out depths for all leaf nodes and sorted them by depth. And the interviewer saw how I worked during the session and laughed I was the first one to solve the problem in that way and much better than what they expect. At the other hand, I got interviewed in Amazon around the same time. I completely choked on whiteboard because I did not prepare for session before like that and I still had a jet lag due to lack of sleep during flight in previous night. Then I got another interview in Bloomberg and I complete couldn't write code with pencil and paper. My mind flows when I typed but chokes when I worked on paper/whiteboard. I guess the fluidity of editor is the key. Later when I interview software engineers. I tried to let them to have a computer so they can write code during the session. I feel much better grasp for their potential and habit during the session than whiteboard and pencil paper test.
- sanderjd 15y ago
  I completely agree about projecting - going to paper and pencil after years of vim just feels absurd - but some people find it more invasive and/or high pressure.
  - lutorm 15y ago
    For the people who say they never use a whiteboard: do you never talk about problems with colleagues? When trying to understand the best way of tackling something difficult, I find few things beat a whiteboard session of sketching out possible solutions. I find that writing actual code just obscures things when I'm looking for the method or algorithm to do what I want.
    - eugenejen 15y ago
      I think my experiences with whiteboard effectiveness are limited to 1. Writing down pseudo code for solutions. 2. Diagrams for architectures. 3. Flow charts for possible actions during problem solving. But if you ask me to write down a real program in whiteboard, I find myself starting to got interrupted by thoughts about erase lines, moving blocks around and worrying about my writing is too big and board is too small for my code. I think shared whiteboard is definitely a very good tool for discussions. But for me, even a rudimentary editor like notepad, vi helps me more in handling all rewriting/visualizing/pondering process. Probably I am not those programmers who can write down code without worrying about rewriting them. For me, write a program is like oil painting involving constant changes.