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0 pointsachikin7y ago0 comments

I communicate my ideas using a whiteboard too. But I never produce those ideas using a whiteboard in front of my coworkers under pressure of being fired.

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5 comments · 1 top-level

jaredklewis7y ago· 4 in thread

Well this is hardly the fault of white board interviews. That’s just interviews. Any interview (regardless of the style) is going to be in front of “coworkers” and “under pressure of being fired.”

hfdgiutdryg7y ago

That’s just interviews.

Nope. There was a great submission a few years ago about a guy who applied to two categories of jobs: management and software development.

In the SD roles, everything was oriented toward rejecting him. Any possible "red flag".

In the management roles, the interview was focused on finding areas where he could contribute to the company.

Whiteboard interviews are a problem in and of themselves, and the propagate terrible attitudes into the rest of the interviewing process.

newton104717y ago

hfdgiutdryg any chance you can find the link to that submission? It sounds fascinating, and I couldn't find it via HN search.

thaumasiotes7y ago

The "produce the ideas during the interview" part is the fault of whiteboard interviews. There's nothing that says an interview should cover brand-new material as opposed to material the candidate is supposed to be familiar with.

If communicating ideas is part of your job, I'd bet any amount that you decide what ideas you want to communicate well before you do the actual presentation (or other physical delivery of the ideas).

florabuzzword7y ago

My experience agrees with this. I am a different, significantly less comfortable person to be around when strangers are asking me so many questions about myself. I think it’s just about the worst way to get to know me.

When I get hired this way, I always feel a little bit of guilt because I know they actually hired somebody else.

What can be done? I’m not sure, but I can say one thing: my level of discomfort is multiplied by the number of strangers in the room. Does this ever get considered with interviews?

I am far more comfortable coding in front of 1 or 2 people who each give me a little bit of background about their coding experience; just so I know. If they are experienced engineers, it’s probably not going to change what I say aloud, but it just makes me more comfortable. I guess more overlap of technologies in our background does help. It’s nice to not feel pressure of worrying if my solutions reflect general programming conventions enough to be language agnostic. I have never really used Java, for example.

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