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I think phone and whiteboard interviews are great for selecting the very smartest of the developer population, which is why companies like Google use it. Althou

I think phone and whiteboard interviews are great for selecting the very smartest of the developer population, which is why companies like Google use it. Although they hardly reflect production environments, if someone is able to ace brain teasers in 45 min interviews, they must surely be smart enough to figure out pretty much anything technical, a priori. However I absolutely agree that phone/whiteboard interviews are not sufficient for determining a candidate's fit, because it doesn't say much about the person's work ethic, time management, and ability to manage large projects - which is a thing that many "born gifted" smart people struggle with, in my experience.

ryandvm 12y ago
Right. Google et al have never been concerned about false negatives when hiring. They have more than enough applicants to worry about whether a few good people get turned away.
coldnebo 12y ago
In my experience, I've seen some incredibly smart people (the kind who ace those brain teasers) make some incredibly bad technical gaffs. Like an architect who chose synchronous HTTP as a protocol for a service that later required the ability to cancel long running operations in progress (he unfortunately didn't realize why hitting the browser stop button wasn't the same as cancelling the process on the server). Or a senior dev who thought that a JSP scriptlet getting the current time would show the client's time, instead of the server's time. There is no guarantee that people who ace brain teasers will necessarily be able to figure out technical issues, although they are often excellent at sounding like they have figured out technical issues when they leave the details for the people who get the real work done.
- igammarays 12y ago
  Those two examples sound like simple knowledge mistakes, not critical thinking failures. There is a difference between someone who is not too familiar with the HTTP protocol and someone who just doesn't have the mathematical mind for translating real world tasks into precise steps that a computer can understand.

ryandvm 12y ago

Right. Google et al have never been concerned about false negatives when hiring. They have more than enough applicants to worry about whether a few good people get turned away.

coldnebo 12y ago

In my experience, I've seen some incredibly smart people (the kind who ace those brain teasers) make some incredibly bad technical gaffs. Like an architect who chose synchronous HTTP as a protocol for a service that later required the ability to cancel long running operations in progress (he unfortunately didn't realize why hitting the browser stop button wasn't the same as cancelling the process on the server). Or a senior dev who thought that a JSP scriptlet getting the current time would show the client's time, instead of the server's time. There is no guarantee that people who ace brain teasers will necessarily be able to figure out technical issues, although they are often excellent at sounding like they have figured out technical issues when they leave the details for the people who get the real work done.

igammarays 12y ago
Those two examples sound like simple knowledge mistakes, not critical thinking failures. There is a difference between someone who is not too familiar with the HTTP protocol and someone who just doesn't have the mathematical mind for translating real world tasks into precise steps that a computer can understand.