Whiteboard questions are great, if the question is like two orders of magnitude simpler than the day to day. At that point you’re answering “has this person see

Whiteboard questions are great, if the question is like two orders of magnitude simpler than the day to day. At that point you’re answering “has this person seen a computer before, and are they able to do the simplest possible task?”. Which I think your experience has also shown, can be a live question for far more candidates than one would expect. The problems come when a company overestimates that threshold, either by selecting too hard a task, or believing their work requires more than it does. Then the question selects for (a) savants and (b) people who study for interviews. Unsurprisingly (b)s outnumber (a)s, and then get pissed when they realize how disconnected the material they studied is from the job, and write things like TFA.