A degree is not going to help you with white board programming (I think degrees are extremely useful, just not for that). I try to turn the tables a bit. "What

A degree is not going to help you with white board programming (I think degrees are extremely useful, just not for that). I try to turn the tables a bit. "What are you trying to measure, and I'll help you measure it?" Sometimes that goes over, well, not so well, but so be it. A thoughtful person recognizes that all this interviewing crap is not much more than tea leaf reading. Someone smart but that hasn't thought about it will still hear you out. And you don't want to work for the remainder, trust me ("what do you mean it'll take 3 months, I want it in two weeks" type conversations will fill your days). I don't know. Some random guy started blogging (Joel) and now we have these crazy interview rituals. Talk about cargo cult engineering. In another thread recently we had somebody claim that only one person in all the years he interviewed could answer his pet interview question. You are being measured poorly. Try to keep that in mind when you are being grilled - that this is an interview of the person behind the desk as it is of you (trust me, don't take a job offer just because one is offered to you, make sure they are as good as they are representing that you have to be. They often aren't). If they put you in front of a whiteboard and have you freeze up, and then don't detect that and change something immediately, they are failing the interview, not you.