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Forgall posted:Is whiteboard coding a common thing now or is it mostly at big tech companies? I've never encountered it and I don't think I could do that not matter how much I prepare. I've seen it in about 90% of my interviews for embedded and full-stack positions. I'm in the mid-West, USA. Every financial institution I've interviewed at had a couple whiteboard questions.
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Feb 2, 2019 19:48
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Forgall posted:Is whiteboard coding a common thing now or is it mostly at big tech companies? I've never encountered it and I don't think I could do that not matter how much I prepare. It's common enough that you should prepare for it every single time. If you have trouble (Is it the whiteboard? The fact that your code is being judged in real time? Computational problem solving on a short time frame?) the answer is to practice. Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Feb 2, 2019 |
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Feb 2, 2019 22:46
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Nobody cares that it's not really the best measure of whether you're a good programmer or not. Truth is that thousands upon thousands of programmers have done fine with the process and until it stops weeding out people that can't code or think about algorithms worth anything it'll continue to be used. The hard part is keeping your interviewing skills up to date when your actual job keeps you super busy or actively hurts your brain / interviewing capabilities in some way.
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Feb 3, 2019 00:14
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Once you stop approaching whiteboard coding as a standardized test and start approaching it as an opportunity to do interactive problem solving then it becomes a lot less scary. It's about giving someone the opportunity to ask questions to solidify or narrow a problem's scope, validate assumptions, identify edge cases, discuss trade offs, etc. Often you don't even need to write actual runnable code, but some combination of pseudocode and diagrams along with a good conversation. I've interviewed too many people who can bullshit with you all day long about technology and programming in the abstract, but when you ask them to do even the most simple tangible things they completely fall apart. I've begrudgingly come to accept that some of the CTCI-style questions are a necessary evil. I hate that it be that way but it do. I even only ask the really easy ones for most people, and it's still a shocking filter.
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Feb 3, 2019 02:48
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necrobobsledder posted:until it stops weeding out people that can't code or think about algorithms worth anything Nobody has any evidence that this is actually the case, because the false negative rate is impossible to discern. Guinness posted:Often you don't even need to write actual runnable code, but some combination of pseudocode and diagrams along with a good conversation. You are an anomaly.
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Feb 3, 2019 02:57
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My company has whiteboards in interviews, but it's less "make code", more "give us an idea of how you would do X, and you can use this whiteboard if you want". It's mainly just to filter out coders who can't fizzbuzz or (as has happened recently) to filter out UI/UX people who can't manage to actually come up with anything of substance when presented with "what workflow would you make for these six requirements".
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Feb 3, 2019 03:42
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raminasi posted:Nobody has any evidence that this is actually the case, because the false negative rate is impossible to discern. False negative rate, to be fair, has nothing to do with whether it weeds people out successfully, which is more about what it's false positive rate is (which can and often is mitigated by multiple interview sessions with a variety of different angles)
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Feb 3, 2019 03:55
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Yeah, the primary purpose of the interview process is weeding out incompetents and assholes. It seems to be mostly pretty effective at that (but certainly not 100%). If that means foregoing some people who would be great ICs but are bad interviewers, then that's the price to pay.
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Feb 3, 2019 04:09
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Whiteboarding sucks for left handed people. Or maybe it's just me.
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Feb 3, 2019 05:11
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I bring my own paper and pencil, cuz you can write a lot more a lot faster Someone once figured out that the SAT essay section was essentially 80% correlated to the quantity of writing and not too correlated with quality above a low threshold. I kinda expect something similar in whiteboard situations
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Feb 3, 2019 05:31
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Steve French posted:False negative rate, to be fair, has nothing to do with whether it weeds people out successfully, which is more about what it's false positive rate is (which can and often is mitigated by multiple interview sessions with a variety of different angles) I know what you mean, but now I'm picturing a battery of otherwise identical whiteboarding sessions where you ask the candidate "turn a little to the left, please" before they begin.
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Feb 3, 2019 06:36
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What other industry has candidates with even 10+ years of experience perform tricks on a board as part of the hiring process, and what does it say about this process that the only meaningful way to succeed at it is to either practice things you don't do at work or give lots of interviews? Yeah it's dumb but it's a prisoner's dilemma and we all gotta do it. The bigcos tend to be the worst with this
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Feb 3, 2019 06:51
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Infinotize posted:What other industry has candidates with even 10+ years of experience perform tricks on a board as part of the hiring process, and what does it say about this process that the only meaningful way to succeed at it is to either practice things you don't do at work or give lots of interviews?
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Feb 3, 2019 06:58
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:Whiteboarding sucks for left handed people. Or maybe it's just me. Yeah it really does. I hate being left handed.
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Feb 3, 2019 07:08
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Personally after over three decades of writing with my left hand I've kinda figured out how to write on things without much trouble, whether it's paper and pencil, chalkboard, or whiteboard.
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Feb 3, 2019 07:26
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A whiteboard is not paper, you're not supposed to touch it while you're writing on it. IME as a left handed person whiteboards are fine, its fountain pens with slow drying ink that are impossible.
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Feb 3, 2019 10:17
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Infinotize posted:What other industry has candidates with even 10+ years of experience perform tricks on a board as part of the hiring process, and what does it say about this process that the only meaningful way to succeed at it is to either practice things you don't do at work or give lots of interviews? I was explaining this to a friend and she said “So like if I had to take a mini bar exam every time I applied somewhere? That sounds terrible.”
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Feb 3, 2019 14:34
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Yeah, the primary purpose of the interview process is weeding out incompetents and assholes. If you read Blind at all, you'll find Google, FB, etc. are full of assholes, so it's definitely not about weeding them out.
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Feb 3, 2019 15:01
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Guinness posted:Often you don't even need to write actual runnable code, but some combination of pseudocode and diagrams along with a good conversation.
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Feb 3, 2019 15:01
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The Leck posted:This has definitely not been my experience. Occasionally I'll get an interviewer where I can say "I don't recall the exact name of this built-in method , but here's what I'm trying to do", and it's fine, but it seems a lot more common to get "oh, you capitalized that letter when the library method name is lowercase" or "your indentation is a little rough".
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Feb 3, 2019 15:26
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Infinotize posted:What other industry has candidates with even 10+ years of experience... ...that can't loving code? I'm not talking complicated poo poo, I'm talking "you spent 40 minutes on the gimme-ist of gimme problems". Maybe if we had a license like proper engineers get, then this wouldn't be as much of a problem as it is. But I expect that the demand for software so vastly outstrips the supply that any attempt to restrict the population of people you're allowed to hire would be short-lived. geeves posted:If you read Blind at all, you'll find Google, FB, etc. are full of assholes, so it's definitely not about weeding them out. Like I said, it's clearly not 100%. But my observations are that the percentage of people who fail the hiring bar because they legitimately are not people the company would want to have hired is much higher than the percentage of people who fail it but would have been good employees or the percentage that pass it and turn out to be bad employees.
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Feb 3, 2019 16:26
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:...that can't loving code? I'm not talking complicated poo poo, I'm talking "you spent 40 minutes on the gimme-ist of gimme problems". Maybe if we had a license like proper engineers get, then this wouldn't be as much of a problem as it is. But I expect that the demand for software so vastly outstrips the supply that any attempt to restrict the population of people you're allowed to hire would be short-lived. There's no way to limit it. Maybe the ratios are much better at places that aggressively coding-test, like the Big 5, but everything I've seen suggests that if you look at developers who have been working for 5 years, the ratio is maybe 1:5 for those that would qualify for a professional license by most other industry's standards.
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Feb 3, 2019 16:51
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:...that can't loving code? I'm not talking complicated poo poo, I'm talking "you spent 40 minutes on the gimme-ist of gimme problems". Maybe if we had a license like proper engineers get, then this wouldn't be as much of a problem as it is. But I expect that the demand for software so vastly outstrips the supply that any attempt to restrict the population of people you're allowed to hire would be short-lived. Man I should be so lucky. The majority of mid-senior level candidates I've interviewed over the last year have been unable, or flat out refused, to complete basic coding questions. I'm not even talking about "the right" answer, I'm talking about struggling to begin. Those who don't try mostly just start bullshitting - had one guy tell me about how he'd solve a problem like this in theory, by quoting fundamental programming terminology at me. "I'd use a loop" level of statements. Okay dude, how about you write like, any of that, in literally any programming language you want? Then there was the guy who just groused about how questions like this are stupid (used that word) and they don't represent actual job duties. Which, fair, is basically true - nobody's going to ask you to build a pascal's triangle solver for your job - but basic job duties in this case would be to spend 6 months getting vaguely comfortable with our arcane systems before contributing in a meaningful way, and then trying to complete a major project in half the time it needs. So for practicality's sake, let's put a pin in that and start with, "Give me any reason at all to believe that your career until now hasn't been a complete lie, that your last job wasn't just you convincing people you were working, and that the reason you're looking for a new one isn't that someone finally smelled your bullshit." Also that you aren't a smug punk who would be miserable to work with, which you fail if you behave like that in an interview. I should also note that these people never seem to have anything to show as an alternative to whiteboard coding, and they can never talk in specifics about what they did at their old jobs and why they made some of the decisions they did. It's all bullshitting on every level. I hate coding questions, for all the reasons mentioned, but it certainly feels like there are a lot of frauds who don't want to lose their seat on the gravy train in this industry. How the hell do we weed them out if we don't ask at least one question about one of the core job duties they're going to have? Please note I'm not trying to jump all over anyone in this thread for thinking coding questions are garbage. This is a problem that legit frustrates me.
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Feb 3, 2019 16:58
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Che Delilas posted:basic job duties in this case would be to spend 6 months getting vaguely comfortable with our arcane systems before contributing in a meaningful way, and then trying to complete a major project in half the time it needs i think this is probably your actual problem
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Feb 3, 2019 17:07
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uncurable mlady posted:i think this is probably your actual problem It's a serious problem that we're addressing in the company, but doesn't have anything to do with assessing an interviewee's basic competency.
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Feb 3, 2019 17:11
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Forgall posted:God, are there really so many candidates for each position that employers can be this picky? Not always, but that never stops them from doing it anyway.
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Feb 3, 2019 17:21
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if you have too poo poo a reputation, the only peeps who apply are basically lemons if you have too good a reputation, everyone applies. like 20-40% of peeps are lemons but 95% of the peeps in the applicant pool because they have to spend loads of time applying to everything to land a job
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Feb 3, 2019 17:24
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Che Delilas posted:It's a serious problem that we're addressing in the company, but doesn't have anything to do with assessing an interviewee's basic competency. have you considered you're getting bad candidates because it sounds like it'd be awful to work at your company?
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Feb 3, 2019 17:39
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fwiw i didn't have any whiteboard coding questions at my interview and its a company run by ex-googlers. imo the only people doing ctci-style interview these days are places that cargo cult (old, as far as i understand) google hiring practices.
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Feb 3, 2019 17:42
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uncurable mlady posted:have you considered you're getting bad candidates because it sounds like it'd be awful to work at your company? All code is legacy code. Pretty much every tech company that's mature enough to be profitable has some stinky, smelly pile of crap code somewhere that's running some core functionality. Ideally there's people in the company doing a lot of hand-wringing about how it needs to be brought up to spec, and ideally those people a) are qualified, and b) are being listened to, but as soon as they finish making that code not suck someone else will have just finished making a new pile of stinky, smelly crap code to land the latest big deal so the company can grow. That said, a six-month ramp-up period is not great. Ideally you'd be making substantial contributions (proportional to your experience level) in three months.
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Feb 3, 2019 17:59
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:All code is legacy code. Pretty much every tech company that's mature enough to be profitable has some stinky, smelly pile of crap code somewhere that's running some core functionality. Ideally there's people in the company doing a lot of hand-wringing about how it needs to be brought up to spec, and ideally those people a) are qualified, and b) are being listened to, but as soon as they finish making that code not suck someone else will have just finished making a new pile of stinky, smelly crap code to land the latest big deal so the company can grow. oh sure - hell, i work for a fairly new company and we've got our fair share of legacy code that everyone hates to touch. but we also have a ramp measured in weeks rather than months, and having worked for a place that had a six month ramp for new developers (and also had problems with attracting talent) i'd suggest that these two things are correlated very strongly. a teams attract a players, etc.
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Feb 3, 2019 18:05
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Like I said, it's clearly not 100%. But my observations are that the percentage of people who fail the hiring bar because they legitimately are not people the company would want to have hired is much higher than the percentage of people who fail it but would have been good employees or the percentage that pass it and turn out to be bad employees. Where are you getting these observations from? How often do you follow rejected candidates and learn enough about their post-interview careers to determine whether they'd have been a good fit at the company that rejected them?
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Feb 3, 2019 18:43
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DONT THREAD ON ME posted:Yeah it really does. I hate being left handed. We should refuse to do them because they're discriminatory and watch the hiring panels squirm.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:06
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I don't like CTCI type interviews, but the last interview I had, had me sit in front of an unfamiliar laptop, with an unfamiliar IDE, and build out a small API plus worker process in approximately 45 minutes (they were running late and, like, this was my lunch break and it was a 15 minute subway ride to get there -- can't just sit around all day). I didn't get the job, but I would have taken just whiteboarding the application rather than sitting there writing out an actual app in that rushed time. When you're pressed for time in an interview context where you're trying to impress, you don't always remember the intricacies of some API, or think of what would ordinarily be the obvious solution. I don't like CTCI type questions, but to be 100% frank if you've gotten me to the point where I'm in your office, asking me to actually write an application under serious time constraints is definitely worse. I didn't get the job but my sense based on their office + company was that they'd have offered less than what I currently make, so no loss. But they were next to a roast duck place... Basically I don't think there's any perfect hiring solution so you should try and make the process less frustrating for people employed full time, because what we do is not that hard.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:11
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Che Delilas posted:I should also note that these people never seem to have anything to show as an alternative to whiteboard coding, and they can never talk in specifics about what they did at their old jobs and why they made some of the decisions they did. It's all bullshitting on every level. I hate coding questions, for all the reasons mentioned, but it certainly feels like there are a lot of frauds who don't want to lose their seat on the gravy train in this industry. How the hell do we weed them out if we don't ask at least one question about one of the core job duties they're going to have? I mean, I feel like I can often tell if someone is bullshitting me. People who have spent a lot of time actually programming will have actual opinions about it and will be able to engage me in an informal and interesting discussion. If I can succeed in having a real discussion with them, I often don't feel the need for them to 'prove it' by writing a for loop. The problem, of course, is that this is difficult to quantify and very susceptible to bias on the part of the interviewer. So when I'm unable to engage with a candidate, I'm never quite sure whether it's because there's nothing there, or if it's because I'm not asking the right questions, or if it's because they're just not comfortable with me. DONT THREAD ON ME fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 3, 2019 |
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Feb 3, 2019 20:41
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uncurable mlady posted:fwiw i didn't have any whiteboard coding questions at my interview and its a company run by ex-googlers. imo the only people doing ctci-style interview these days are places that cargo cult (old, as far as i understand) google hiring practices. Did you get your job off of a referral? The number of people I've interviewed who straight up can't code at all four companies I've worked for is ridiculously high. I don't think I'd work for a company that didn't ask some sort of coding question as I'd be very worried my coworkers lacking basic capabilities to perform their job.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:49
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asur posted:Did you get your job off of a referral? The number of people I've interviewed who straight up can't code at all four companies I've worked for is ridiculously high. I don't think I'd work for a company that didn't ask some sort of coding question as I'd be very worried my coworkers lacking basic capabilities to perform their job. I mean, not directly but they reached out to me first and had opportunities to review my github, blog, etc.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:50
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Forgall posted:God, are there really so many candidates for each position that employers can be this picky? Based on my hiring progress in the last 6 months, no. But people just love an opportunity to look down on someone.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:51
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And for what it's worth, they did ask a lot of technical questions, just not "reverse a linked list" algo poo poo. We whiteboarded system diagrams, architectures, other stuff. It was incredibly refreshing.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:53
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DONT THREAD ON ME posted:I mean, I feel like I can often tell if someone is bullshitting me. People who have spent a lot of time actually programming will have actual opinions about it and will be able to engage me in an informal and interesting discussion. If I can succeed in having a real discussion with them, I often don't feel the need for them to 'prove it' by writing a for loop. I have had great conversations about programming in interviews and then seen the candidate go on to be unable to solve FizzBuzz. Being able to bullshit convincingly is a soft skill that some people have honed, especially if they've done consulting before.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:55
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