3 ms·

Whiteboard interviews can be good, but there's "One weird trick" to getting them right. Let the person code WITHOUT YOU BEING THERE. Interviews are stressful.

by malux85 12y ago

Whiteboard interviews can be good, but there's "One weird trick" to getting them right. Let the person code WITHOUT YOU BEING THERE. Interviews are stressful. The author says "My heart rate jumped" ... his heart rate jumped because his body released a bunch of adrenaline in reaction to a stressful event. Adrenaline prepares the body for fight or flight, and part of this preparation is re-routing blood to critial systems ... muscles, heart and lungs ... and things like digestion and higher level cortical function are not required for fight or flight. Programming requires higher level cortical thought - which is disabled during a stressful situation. Give the person a programming challenge, tell them to code it on a machine (or the whiteboard for the inferior option) and then leave the room and tell them you'll be back in 10 minutes. Let them relax, then their brain can think.

abrugsch 12y ago
This is pretty much analogous to urinal "stagefright" where your ability to pee (for those afflicted) goes right out the window as soon as another person steps up to an adjacent urinal. Likewise, my ability to do anything coherent on a keyboard drops to a "uhm what was I doing?" as soon as anyone starts hovering behind my shoulder. Doubly so for interviews. I wonder if there's a correlation between those susceptible to urinal (or stall perhaps...) stagefright and inability to code on show.
- ryandvm 12y ago
  Amusing. I absolutely suffer from the urinal stagefright. I'm also terrible at whiteboard coding. Or playing piano in public. I recall from childhood the time my father invited me to play a song I knew by heart in front of one of his friends. I got a couple bars into it, flubbed a few keys and then the song just fell completely out of my memory. I had nothing. Pretty much any time I feel like I'm being evaluated by someone, my brain goes into an overly defensive, self-critical mode where I spend more cycles trying not to screw up than I do actually performing. It's generally a disaster. Strangely, I discovered my cure many years ago when I was able to crank out Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca in front of an entire wedding party. Under just the right level of inebriation, alcohol seems to dampen the self-critical part of my brain just before it starts affecting much else. Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of alcohol for this effect to kick in. And sadly for me, this hack is a bit harder to pull off in a job interview situation without coming off like a high-functioning alcoholic. It certainly helps with the phone interviews though...
  - abrugsch 12y ago
    Ballmer peak then ;)
throwawaykf05 12y ago
I'm no fan of whiteboard coding, but besides checking for basic coding ability, the most important aspect of the interview is to see how candidates think. Which is why most interviewers will ask you to "think aloud". Also, it is very important to "manage" the process, because the candidate may get stuck and feel frustrated, thus performing worse, or may settle on a sub-optimal solution when they could actually do better. Both these issues can be solved with some interactivity, using hints and probing questions, which cannot be done if you're not in the same room.

by malux85 12y ago

abrugsch 12y ago

This is pretty much analogous to urinal "stagefright" where your ability to pee (for those afflicted) goes right out the window as soon as another person steps up to an adjacent urinal. Likewise, my ability to do anything coherent on a keyboard drops to a "uhm what was I doing?" as soon as anyone starts hovering behind my shoulder. Doubly so for interviews. I wonder if there's a correlation between those susceptible to urinal (or stall perhaps...) stagefright and inability to code on show.

ryandvm 12y ago
Amusing. I absolutely suffer from the urinal stagefright. I'm also terrible at whiteboard coding. Or playing piano in public. I recall from childhood the time my father invited me to play a song I knew by heart in front of one of his friends. I got a couple bars into it, flubbed a few keys and then the song just fell completely out of my memory. I had nothing. Pretty much any time I feel like I'm being evaluated by someone, my brain goes into an overly defensive, self-critical mode where I spend more cycles trying not to screw up than I do actually performing. It's generally a disaster. Strangely, I discovered my cure many years ago when I was able to crank out Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca in front of an entire wedding party. Under just the right level of inebriation, alcohol seems to dampen the self-critical part of my brain just before it starts affecting much else. Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of alcohol for this effect to kick in. And sadly for me, this hack is a bit harder to pull off in a job interview situation without coming off like a high-functioning alcoholic. It certainly helps with the phone interviews though...
- abrugsch 12y ago
  Ballmer peak then ;)

throwawaykf05 12y ago

I'm no fan of whiteboard coding, but besides checking for basic coding ability, the most important aspect of the interview is to see how candidates think. Which is why most interviewers will ask you to "think aloud". Also, it is very important to "manage" the process, because the candidate may get stuck and feel frustrated, thus performing worse, or may settle on a sub-optimal solution when they could actually do better. Both these issues can be solved with some interactivity, using hints and probing questions, which cannot be done if you're not in the same room.