

Ask HN: Companies that don't use whiteboard coding interviews? - pmiller2

In light of the recent submission on how almost everyone sucks at technical interviewing, I was wondering if anyone knows of some good companies that <i>don&#x27;t</i> use the &quot;write code at the whiteboard&quot; approach of interviewing.<p>Background: I&#x27;m a junior level engineer.  I can talk about technical topics (I was a math TA in grad school, and I have no problem talking about code I&#x27;ve written), but coding in front of anyone induces extreme performance anxiety.  I&#x27;m therefore interested more in companies that do a homework type problem and then have candidates talk about their solution in the interview.<p>From the previous post, I know Matasano and npm do this.  Who else?
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csmdev
There are very few companies that do not follow the standard interviewing
practices. So if you try to filter them, you won't have enough to get a job.

Instead, you can try approaching things differently. People want to judge your
abilities when they feel that it's critical to get the best employee. So you
basically need to eliminate their fears. Networking and making friends works
pretty good. If you are recommended by an existing employee, the interviewer
will take it easy on you. Internships also work pretty good. There is less
pressure. And when you prove yourself after a couple of weeks you can demand a
salary or walk.

Homework is never a good idea. Searching for a job usually takes you through
many companies. If at least half of them give you homework, you will waste
days or even weeks just solving imaginary problems that nobody cares about.
Solving tasks at home sounds like a good idea at first. But after you do it
and the company chooses someone else, all you get is a bitter aftertaste.

As a personal note, it really helps if you treat the interviewers like stupid
children. Some readers may be offended by this, but it really works. When you
finally accept that he has no idea what he's doing, it will be much easier to
control the interview.

Interviewers are rarely good programmers. If they start with something like
FizzBuzz, you can easily tell that they don't have the ability to understand
things. They just take ideas from somewhere and run with them. No originality,
no abstract thought and no critical thinking. Once you see that and realize
that you are better, performance anxiety will no longer be a problem.

You're basically being judged by people following a generic checklist they got
from a blog or "top 10 interviewing tips" article. Understand their reasoning
and you will own them.

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lastofus
Your best bet are probably very small companies that do not have very many
engineers on staff. There are many businesses desperately looking for the
value that engineers bring, that don't have the people on hand to grill you
for 6 hours in a conference room.

Looking for remote gigs can also help you avoid whiteboards, but that might be
harder to do as a jr. engineer (but certainly not impossible).

At the end of the day though, interviewing, including whiteboard coding, is
all about "being judged". As someone mentioned, it's a skill worth practicing,
either at home with the help of friends, or by applying to a ton of jobs just
to practice the interview process. I still find it brings me anxiety after 10
years of working/interviewing, but so much less so than when I started in the
industry. I dislike and am annoyed by interviews and whiteboard coding, but I
don't _fear_ them any longer.

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karterk
For most medium sized companies, hiring is an important but very time
consuming process. So, almost every part of the process is designed to scale
as the company grows. While there are companies which have a take-home
problem, most will require you to write code on a whiteboarding discussion in
a face-to-face round later anyway.

My suggestion here will be to take a few interviews without much expectations
and to use them as opportunities to get better at this. There are going to be
many times when you will be sharing your code with your colleagues - e.g.
during code reviews, pair programming etc. and whether you like it or not,
people are always evaluating you even in those cases :)

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Spoom
We[1] have previously given a candidate a (small) work sample test to solve,
and allowed them to use either their own system or one of ours to solve it. We
don't watch them while they attempt the solution and we allow them full access
to the internet. It seems to be revealing enough as to their competence.

1\. [http://ldrinteractive.com/](http://ldrinteractive.com/)

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whichdan
As a lighthearted suggestion: have you tried purchasing a whiteboard and
practicing writing code on it?

~~~
pmiller2
:)

The whiteboard itself isn't really the problem[1]. It's the "writing code in
front of people who are judging my performance" part.

[1] Although I do prefer chalk boards. :-) What can I say? I was a math major.
;)

