Who really wants to work for a company that asks you to whiteboard basic CS nonsense that you can google in less than a minute? That's a sure sign that the people who hire you are in no way connected to the people you will work with, because those people would have questions actually relevant to the job. I got my degree, but if a company asks me to balance a tree on a whiteboard for the interview, I leave. There might be some positions where such knowledge is actually what you do every day (if you like that kind of stuff), but for most jobs it's not worth your time: Nice to have seen it once, but if you don't remember it, who cares?
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I agree and disagree - I agree that whiteboard interviews are usually useless, but I don't agree that it's a sign the people giving the interview aren't the people you'll work with.
A lot of the places I've worked, the technical people brought in to give interviews alongside HR or management have no idea what they should be asking, and so instead of asking the sort of questions they'd have liked to have themselves, they fall back on generic whiteboard or tech test questions because they think that's what everyone else is doing.
It's not necessarily a deal-breaker for me, but it would make me super-probey when they get to the "do you have any questions for us" part of the day.
Ok, agreed. Been there, done that, when someone asked us to create a meaningful coding test. Personally, we didn't go for whiteboard tests, but our idea wasn't that much better ;-)
Sometimes it's more about seeing someone's problem solving skills or how they approach a problem than the problem or solution.
I do agree that problems like these do not reflect what majority of the job will be after getting hired. This is especially true for SDM's who are getting asked to do this type of interviews.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Who really wants to work for a company that asks you to whiteboard basic CS nonsense that you can google in less than a minute? That's a sure sign that the people who hire you are in no way connected to the people you will work with, because those people would have questions actually relevant to the job. I got my degree, but if a company asks me to balance a tree on a whiteboard for the interview, I leave. There might be some positions where such knowledge is actually what you do every day (if you like that kind of stuff), but for most jobs it's not worth your time: Nice to have seen it once, but if you don't remember it, who cares?
I agree and disagree - I agree that whiteboard interviews are usually useless, but I don't agree that it's a sign the people giving the interview aren't the people you'll work with.
A lot of the places I've worked, the technical people brought in to give interviews alongside HR or management have no idea what they should be asking, and so instead of asking the sort of questions they'd have liked to have themselves, they fall back on generic whiteboard or tech test questions because they think that's what everyone else is doing.
It's not necessarily a deal-breaker for me, but it would make me super-probey when they get to the "do you have any questions for us" part of the day.
Ok, agreed. Been there, done that, when someone asked us to create a meaningful coding test. Personally, we didn't go for whiteboard tests, but our idea wasn't that much better ;-)
Sometimes it's more about seeing someone's problem solving skills or how they approach a problem than the problem or solution.
I do agree that problems like these do not reflect what majority of the job will be after getting hired. This is especially true for SDM's who are getting asked to do this type of interviews.