
Whiteboard Interviews Suck, Get Good at Them Anyway - akras14
https://www.alexkras.com/whiteboard-interviews-suck-get-good-at-them-anyway/
======
opportune
I've never understood the hate that WBI get here and elsewhere on the
internet. I see them the same way as standardized tests: without them, there's
no good way to independently evaluate people's abilities in a way that is
immune to cheating, dishonesty, or fraud (e.g. stealing someone's code and
putting it on your github repo, being a terrible employee at previous jobs but
just scraping by long enough to move onto the next company, straight up lying
on a resume, etc.).

Sure, as the author notes, WBI have a high false negative rate. But if you're
actually a good programmer, learning basic CS concepts should be extremely
easy, and these types of problems, perhaps with a bit of practice, should be
relatively trivial. I personally wouldn't want to work with someone who can't
extract a path from a DFS, not out of any sense of elitism but just because
such an employee likely would be unable to do many other problems properly.

~~~
rimliu

      > there's no good way to independently evaluate people's
      > abilities
    

And all WBI let you do is to evaluate someone's ability to do WBI.

~~~
opportune
I'd argue that there is a not-insignificant amount of overlap between
whiteboarding and coding. Most coding in practice is not as "algorithmic" (in
the sense that the problems are theoretically challenging) but having the
knowledge and know-how of how to write optimal/efficient algorithms will
definitely be echoed throughout any code you write.

In addition, in my experience most WBI are not particularly challenging
problems that you have probably never seen before. I mentioned the ability to
extract a path from a DFS; I would argue that this is such a basic CS skill
that being unable to solve that problem indicates an insufficient amount of
knowledge of CS.

There are definitely WBI that are poorly matched with real job requirements
and knowledge. I think these are often seen at smaller companies trying to
copy FB/Google without knowing what they are doing. WBI that involve using
important CS constructs such as a binary tree or a directed graph IMO are
testing important concepts

------
lr4444lr
_I used to believe that I got rejected after many whiteboard interviews, not
because I did poorly, but because I didn’t have the same (right) background as
the interviewer. I served in the military, I was a Front End Engineer, I
didn’t go to a fancy school, I used the wrong language, I’ve used the wrong
framework etc._

I think the author is hitting on some deep-seated psychological aversion
people have to white board interviews. If you can identify that you were
turned down based on your failure to do it well, you have to accept that it's
your fault - not that you happened not to be good at that tech stack, or
didn't have a "personality fit".

(I know there are different kinds of white board interviews - I'm assuming the
generic pseudo-code algos and data structures type in keeping with the
article's generality.)

Exposure to that kind of evidence of your inadequacy can be hard to accept.
But it's also remediable. Get cracking and practice.

------
NumberSix
The article makes the following statement:

Whiteboard interviews have a very high false negative rate (rejecting people
who are good), but they also have a low false positive rate (hiring people who
are not good).

On what basis is this statement made? No study or source appears to be cited.
The specific false negative and false positive rates are not given. Also, what
exactly is the definition of "good" used?

~~~
nissimk
It's not possible to compute the false negative rate because once you turn
down a candidate you get no more information. I suppose if people apply
multiple times and are accepted later and then go on to do well on the job,
you can count them as false negative in the first interview. The sample size
for that would be small though. And I'm sure the true believers would say that
these candidates improved their programming skills between the two interviews,
not their interviewing skills.

I am quite interested in the false positive rate which can be computed by
correlating performance reviews with interview performance.

~~~
zzzcpan
> I am quite interested in the false positive rate which can be computed by
> correlating performance reviews with interview performance.

You would still be excluding all the false negatives making it kind of
relative performance of interview survivors. Meaning that you won't have
anything to compare your false positive rate to proclaim it as low or as high.

~~~
nissimk
You could compare it to other interview techniques if you were willing to test
them.

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adrr
Reasoning behind why whiteboard interviews suck is based that doesn't model
real job skills. Maybe our org is an outlier but but we heavily rely on
whiteboards to plan out architecture(ERDs,flow), problem solving,
training/knowledge sharing. Our trello cards sometimes contains images of
whiteboarded diagrams. Being able to explain and whiteboard your stuff is a
very important skill at organization.

~~~
rimliu
How many images in your trello contain C code for reversing string?

~~~
neeleshs
Yep, whiteboard programming - not good . Whiteboard interviews is too generic
a name to use for that.

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nunez
i 1000% agree with this. there is no good way to really _know_ whether a
candidate is good or not, but their ability to express their thoughts, in
code, on a whiteboard is a really strong indicator that they can _think
through a problem and (more importantly) communicate a solution as a software
engineer_.

the next best approach --- a take home assignment --- is also good at this (or
better, IMO, since you're free to implement that solution however you damn
well please and it more closely translates into the work they'll actually be
doing), but people complain that this is too invasive of their time and that
they are doing free work. which is it?

I have to imagine that what most people want is to be asked about their
experience, talk through it, and expect that to be enough. which is a very
solid first pass filter. it's just not strong enough of a filter to extend an
offer with confidence in many situations; it's too easy to bullshit and most
of us engineers are damn expensive. (it's not just salary; we want dedicated
offices and sit stand desks and super comfy chairs and free food and drinks
and games and cadillac health insurance and 401ks and so on and so on)

i also never understood why whiteboarding was hard. if you know how to code
and know your language passably well, then why can't you write code on
something that isn't a computer?

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mbrodersen
I have hired a _lot_ of developers, working for different companies in
different countries. And I have never _ever_ seen a case where a developer did
well in the WBI interview, was hired, and then turned out later to not be a
good developer. However I have seen _plenty_ of examples of developers
(interviewed by somebody else) who didn't do a WBI interview and later was
fired because they were not good developers. My point is that if you can't do
a WBI, well then perhaps you are simply not as good a developer as you think
you are. Developing is about _thinking_. And WBI style interviews force you to
_think_ for yourself without copy-pasting a solution from Google.

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jaredcwhite
WBIs will go away if the developer community rallies around not doing them.
Companies can offer crazy incentives to work there like free massage, organic
lunches, and game rooms, but they can't figure out a better way to hire than
conducting WBIs? I call BS. They'll figure it out when they're pressured to do
so...aka they can't find good talent anymore. Let's put on the pressure.

~~~
_dark_matter_
There is no benefit for people who are good at WBI's to join you in protest,
and the bad people weren't going to pass them anyways, so the companies won't
care either. On top of that, anyone _giving_ a WBI got _hired_ with a WBI, so
the cycle continues.

I am not saying WBIs are good or bad - just stating that this kind of rally
won't have the desired effect.

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metaphorm
I think one of the real problems that doesn't get discussed very much is
Google-envy. A lot of companies that don't really have problems like Google,
and don't really have organizations like Google, and don't really have
applicant pools like Google, will yet interview the same way Google does.

It really might be the correct way to interview for Google. Certainly they've
put a lot of thought into how to manage their hiring process and they still
lean heavily on the whiteboard. I'm almost positive, however, that most
companies are really nothing like Google and really should not be using the
same interviewing techniques.

Smaller companies with more quotidian problems would be better served with a
more conversational and less time-pressured interview style.

~~~
scrpn
Google explains here their interview observations :
[https://www.google.ro/amp/s/www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-
like-...](https://www.google.ro/amp/s/www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-
google/amp/)

------
cholantesh
>Whiteboard interviews have a very high false negative rate (rejecting people
who are good), but they also have a low false positive rate (hiring people who
are not good).

That's a pretty bold assertion. Is there data to show this?

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samblr
Im a 'competent' programmer who has done few whiteboard interviews in my time
and I have failed in most of them. Here is why ?

I consider myself a competent programmer since I have developed decent
work@work and my peers recognise it too. But how would any interviewer can
know about this ? My resume is like any other resume in tech world. They
cannot. So I've to be put through WBI. For many years I couldn't have known
what was wrong with me. Every time I failed I felt miserable to be honest.
Eventually, I have narrowed down the reason. It is not just at interview I
fail to problem solve - even when I try doing at home with a white board and
'explanation' I fail. English is not my region language but one would not
doubt on my conversation abilities as I manage it ok. It is that I simply fail
to explain solving programming puzzles in english since while programming I
'do' think in my regional language and most of the time in 'silent' mode in my
head. Now 'silent' mode is again dreaded in interviews - as interviewers they
want to know 'how you approach solving a problem'.

I think a better solution to WBI would be to make interviewee do programming
questions on a laptop (alone) where interview is held - say make it an hour
worth of exercise. Have that program run through some time bound tests (like
google code jam etc) and may be do a code walk through later with interviewer.
This way interviewer is sure interviewee can code.

Also, one of things that will definitely help would be to have some sort of
evidence that you can code (git, code competitions etc). This gives some sort
of confidence to interviewer.

------
Pica_soO
Whats funny about WBIs is that if you decide for yourself during the interview
that this is not the company for you- you can derail the conversation into
unfamiliar territory's and watch the interviewers struggle.

~~~
blueplanet200
Why is that funny? Most interviewers are just doing what their company asked
them, to give a whiteboarding problem to a potential candidate and figure out
if they're worth hiring based on that.

I agree the process sucks and it's a hoop to jump through, but why take it out
on the interviewer?

~~~
dkarapetyan
Because they are complicit. Saying they're just doing their job is not an
excuse for propagating exclusionary and low signal interview practices.

~~~
izacus
"Exclusionary?" Seriously? I didn't know you're entitled to a job.

~~~
Will_Parker
Notice how it's a whiteboard and not a board of colour.

~~~
dkarapetyan
There are blackboards as well. Color or ethnicity of the board is not the
problem.

~~~
GhostVII
But whiteboards are far overrepresented. Definitely an issue.

------
cubano
What I remember about much of that code I looked at in DS classes way back in
the 80's was that, due to very limited memory space, all the variables were
like I,J,K and X,Y,Z.

You have no idea how much more difficult that made it to follow sorts and tree
algorithms. Thankfully, I seemed to have some sort of coding gift that allowed
me to write the damn things at the terminal and make them work.

I got A's in all my CS classes, but now I guess I am so used to the magics of
PHP object handling I've literally stopped caring about that shit.

It's hard to see why I would want to again.

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GhostVII
I think whiteboard questions are great if you make them either pretty easy
questions, or more complex questions that you just diagram and discuss. In the
first case, you filter out poor coders very easily, and see how the better
coders apporach the problem. In the second case, you learn about their thought
process when approaching a problem where you can't just modify an algorithm
you have already practiced and answer it.

------
dkarapetyan
Much better to go through triplebyte or interviewing.io. Pretty sure the
signal from them is much higher than whiteboard interviews.

------
1_800_UNICORN
Any company with an interview process where the key to passing the interview
is "Pay more attention in your Algorithms and Data Structures classes", is a
company that I'm never taking a job at.

~~~
guelo
Why would I want to hire a candidate that paid thousands of dollars for
Algorithms and Data Structures classes but didn't feel the need to pay
attention? Don't you think that says something about the candidate?

~~~
1_800_UNICORN
I've been out of college for 10 years, writing software professionally... it's
so rare to have to calculate the big-O of an algorithm, or use a data
structure much fancier than an array or a hash table, or implement my own
search algorithm. And if I had to do any of those things, I would look it up
and leverage this collaborative thing we've created called the internet.

So why should I be expected to regurgitate trivia at a whiteboard to get your
job?

~~~
guelo
It's weird to me seeing statements like this because I don't work on any
esoteric or fancy code, just frontend UIs, but I'm frequently making data
structure and algorithm decisions.

~~~
pb8226
Then ask questions about the UI framework the developer has experience in and
ask about real problems faced with that framework for a complex UI.

------
tutufan
If you select stringently for WBI ability, you'll get strong WBIers. However,
you're also paying the opportunity cost of not selecting for other traits and
skills that might matter a lot more.

+1 though for "Senior Whiteboard Engineer"\--that term is genius!

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neeleshs
I see a lot of naysayers for whiteboard, but pretty much no opinion on what
they think is better than whiteboards.

~~~
falcolas
Talk to them.

Have a conversation about "how would you solve this (real) problem" \- the
same kind of conversation you have with a peer when they're stuck on a
problem. If both you and they are professional developers, you will be able to
get into a nice in-depth discussion of the pros and cons, and go into nice
tangental discussions along the way.

If they aren't a professional developer, it will show in no time at all; the
longest I've let such a conversation go was 10 minutes just to see how long
the interviewee would keep trying and snowball me.

I've found this is simply much faster and more informative about their
experience with subjects that matter in the daily work of a software dev.

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krosaen
In a similar vein, I view whiteboard interviews (and required prep) similar to
professional exams, like the Bar exam for lawyers. While I think it's
unreasonable to expect good professionals to be able to pass such exams
without a lot of practice, it's perhaps not as unreasonable to expect good
professionals to be able to pass such exams if they study. Nobody likes tests,
but I suspect that a high percentage of the good programmers who belly ache
about whiteboard interviewers could in fact get good at them if they put in
the time.

So yes, whiteboard interviews or not optimal and they are unfair, but if you
are rejecting them out of hand and refusing to study for them, you are only
taking away some opportunities.

I say this as someone who hasn't had to do a whiteboard interview for 10+
years. The jury is out as to whether I'll take the pain to study for them
again should I do a full job search among tech companies again.

Also: note to author, I believe, "They have little co-relation" in your
opening paragraph should be "They have little correlation".

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rabble
If an org does WBI's then it's a good indication that they are not choosing
the best applicants. Instead of either getting good at them or trying to get
the industry to change, we should embrace this.

If they do WBI's then they probably do lots of other things which run counter
to best practices. Isn't it so much better to expose to the outside world a
culture of cargo culting inability to evaluate techniques for the efficacy.

There are so many orgs who do run themselves well. The real tricky party is
how to determine that quickly. With WBI's we can get a short cut.

Long Live The White Board Interview!

~~~
akras14
How would you hire?

~~~
tutufan
Conversation, half technical and half to figure out what the person would be
like to work with. For example, tell me about the most
interesting/difficult/satisfying problem was that you've worked on. Or, tell
me what happens when you point your browser at a web site, in as much detail
as you can muster. What are your go-to tools to solve problems

