Early in my programming career, I got a whiteboard question where, after being asked my hobbies, I was asked to diagram an electric guitar on the whiteboard. I don't know that it was a particularly good question. But all this sabre-rattling against the whiteboard in general just seems like a silly distillation of a legitimate critique down to its stupidest form.
Even when it comes to CS algorithms questions. Yeah, asking someone to whiteboard quicksort might be bad, might optimize for the wrong things for the actual job.
But should it be a red flag that someone expected me to be able to do a more basic operation, that I've more or less purported to do professionally and efficiently, on a whiteboard on the spot?
[Edit: At my company we don't really do whiteboarding. We pre-screen with a time-limited open-book, open-internet test in advance. This helps account for candidates knowing how to quickly read/research/apply openly available information.]
That reminds me of an interview I had for a sales position. The guy man asked me how to tie a shoe. I actually really thought it was an interesting interview question, despite not being strictly sales-related, because teaching is a really big part of sales.
I like that guitar question for a similar reason. Someone once told me that you can't program something you don't understand. Being able to break down a complex topic in to atomic parts is the difference between someone who can program, and someone who can develop applications that solve problems.
I'm an analyst rather than a developer, but most of my value comes from being able to communicate information to other people. I know there are people who are better than me at programming, or statistics, or modelling, etc. However, I know that I can be incredibly successful in any given role if I take the effort to learn as much as possible about whatever I'm analyzing, and if I focus on communicating the information as clearly as possible.
To that point, I'm really proud of the fact that the man who interviewed called me afterwards to say that I had given the best instructions for tying a shoe he had heard in 30 years of asking that question in interviews. That being said, I can see how someone who is a nervous interviewee would resent questions that seem designed to trip them up.
Even when it comes to CS algorithms questions. Yeah, asking someone to whiteboard quicksort might be bad, might optimize for the wrong things for the actual job.
But should it be a red flag that someone expected me to be able to do a more basic operation, that I've more or less purported to do professionally and efficiently, on a whiteboard on the spot?
[Edit: At my company we don't really do whiteboarding. We pre-screen with a time-limited open-book, open-internet test in advance. This helps account for candidates knowing how to quickly read/research/apply openly available information.]