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Comment by crsv | Hacker News Reader

Here we go again perpetuating the stereotype of the whiney privileged engineer put in a position of mild discomfort by the villainous abusive white board interview boogeyman. I don’t mind whiteboard interview exercises. They’re not great, but they often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance. I think there’s bigger fish to fry in refining fair and objective interview processes, I’ll never understand the perpetual moaning around this aspect of technical interviews.

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> they often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance

Do you have any statistically significant data to back this claim?

There is statistical data saying the opposite: http://chrisparnin.me/pdf/stress_FSE_20.pdf

That whiteboard interviews are actually testing how you perform under stress rather than how good you are at your job.

Additionally, in my opinion, it measures how good the interviewer is. If you get a bad interviewer or even just one in a bad mood, just pack your bags because you aren't getting it.

Whiteboards are incredibly arbitrary in my opinion, if taken alone. If it is part of a complete assessment, ehhhh.

>There is statistical data saying the opposite

Interesting study and really good discussion on HN at the time, but the opposite of "[Whiteboard interviews] often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance" would be something like "People who do well at whiteboard interviews tend to be worse performers at work." I don't think that's what the study said at all; rather that people do worse at whiteboard problems when they're being watched vs. not being watched.

Also people act as though software is a job without anxiety. There is plenty of anxiety in this job. Sometimes under pressure you really do have to perform or push back and its good to know if people can do it.

It doesn't have to be stressful. Whether or not you have a gun to your head is due to management. Deadlines are an abstract concept created by humans and can always be moved. The best companies keep them very elastic.

> Also people act as though software is a job without anxiety.

Not. All. Anxiety. Is. The. Same.

Ask a firefighter to give a speech in front of 1000 people. This is an entirely different kind of anxiety than running into a burning building. Ironically, it may be the former rather than the latter that makes the firefighter sweat.

Writing code is generally not a performance art. We're not stage performers. Interviews are an unusual situation that aren't anything like our daily jobs. Stress on the job is not the same as interview stress. Work emergencies are not the same as interviews.

We need to take into account human psychology. These factors are all well known, but the tech industry seems to act in deliberate ignorance of humanity.

Also stress on the job isn't the same as stress getting a job.

One you are getting paid no matter what, the other you aren't and are 'performing' in the hopes of getting paid.

The interview anxiety is a very specific type of anxiety - if it occurs during the day job - stay away from such company.

Most noteworthy for me: All of the women failed the whiteboard tests, however they passed tests conducted in a private setting.

Assuming the study’s results are valid, that’s really all the justification we need to get rid of these tests.

100%.

if properly trained, interviewers ask questions that build without throwing the kitchen sink at you.

whiteboard interviews (when done holistically) assess for signal, not binary correctness

- do you have a solid framework to build a solution?

- are you considering multiple approaches / data structures / complexities

- referencing similar problems, vocabulary, situations to illustrate breadth of knowledge

sure, the stress component isn't ideal, but there are multiple relevant capabilities being assessed in a very short amount of time...

in other words it's a much better test of tacit knowledge than alternatives

You can confirm the same using a take-home assignment and a code review together with the candidate. Or even with an on-site pair programming. Neither of those require whiteboards.

pair programming, for sure

if done right, whiteboarding should be almost the same as pair programming -- an iterative dialogue

I think its writing exact code down instead of good enough pseudo code - that people hate.

WB interviews should be about problem solving not regurgitation of rote learned algorithms

I strongly believe there is some signal to shoving enough familiarity with at least one language to come up with mostly correct syntax.

I won't ever fault a candidate for failing to close a paren or being unsure of whether the size of a container is .length() or .size(), but if virtually every line a candidate writes is of questionable value, I'd say that means something.

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