I applaud the effort in your post, but maannn.... I’ve been hiring developers for about 15 years and I’ve grown to despise white board interviews. I’m convinced that any organization that requires whiteboarding in their technical interviews is simply doing it wrong.
I’m also pretty convinced that the “big 5” have very inefficient hiring practices (and I’ve worked for two of them, so I speak from experience).
I understand why junior devs want to work for them, it’s a sort of initiation ritual into the tech world, but I wish more companies could move on from interviewing practices that were invented back when we used punch cards to write programs...
We do one design interview, and one programming interview (out of 5 total). Candidates are encouraged to use the whiteboard if it helps them explain their thinking, but the whiteboard is just a tool.
So "design" will concentrate on architectural decisions, whereas "programming" will concentrate on things like algorithms and data structures.
The other 3 interviews are all about behavioral questions, not programming ones.
I agree totally with this. I don't do whiteboard interviews and I've been hiring other devs since early 2000s. It shows absolutely zero and starts everything off in a hostile environment. Prove to me you can cook a dish by writing out a recipe with your non-dominant hand. And stand on one foot.
Whiteboard interviews are more hazing ritual than anything.
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I applaud the effort in your post, but maannn.... I’ve been hiring developers for about 15 years and I’ve grown to despise white board interviews. I’m convinced that any organization that requires whiteboarding in their technical interviews is simply doing it wrong.
I’m also pretty convinced that the “big 5” have very inefficient hiring practices (and I’ve worked for two of them, so I speak from experience).
I understand why junior devs want to work for them, it’s a sort of initiation ritual into the tech world, but I wish more companies could move on from interviewing practices that were invented back when we used punch cards to write programs...
Hi Patrick.
What do you use instead of the white board interview to make sure the candidate is right for the position?
Thanks,
Anders
We do one design interview, and one programming interview (out of 5 total). Candidates are encouraged to use the whiteboard if it helps them explain their thinking, but the whiteboard is just a tool.
So "design" will concentrate on architectural decisions, whereas "programming" will concentrate on things like algorithms and data structures.
The other 3 interviews are all about behavioral questions, not programming ones.
Ahahah I enjoyed a lot your reply, thanks :)
I agree totally with this. I don't do whiteboard interviews and I've been hiring other devs since early 2000s. It shows absolutely zero and starts everything off in a hostile environment. Prove to me you can cook a dish by writing out a recipe with your non-dominant hand. And stand on one foot.
Whiteboard interviews are more hazing ritual than anything.