Do you do whiteboard interviews Sup Forums?

a bunch of prominent coders took to twitter to say that whiteboard interviews were stupid and unrealistic.

i think dhh is a huge faggot, but he's right here.

Other urls found in this thread:

harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto
theoutline.com/post/1166/programmers-are-confessing-their-coding-sins-to-protest-a-broken-job-interview-process
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

of course women make this a gender issue somehow

Agreed, he's a huge faggot. I can't 100% judge all whiteboard interviews the same though. The fizzbuzz tier HR-guy-interviews-engineers process is retarded though yes.

>admitting to being bad at their jobs

Maybe they should be fired and their jobs given to people who can actually do them.

whiteboard tests rarely are part of their jobs, googling shit is.

I don't know anything about him but he's absolutely right on this one. I do know how to bubblesort.

i would whiteboard in pseudocode, demonstrating that you know the syntax and everything off the top of your head is less important than showing that you know how to go about solving a problem.

it really depends on what the interviewer is trying to get out of a whiteboard test whether it's pants on head or not.

How acceptable is it to google shit when you're an engineer?
>future engineer

It's probably the single most relevant skill but no one will ever act like it's normal.

I think whiteboard interviews don't test all the skills that are important to being a good employee, but they aren't useless. They don't test research skills, organization, ability to quickly grasp an unfamiliar codebase, ability quickly learn new paradigms / frameworks /APIs, etc.

But they do test understanding of algorithms and asymptotic runtimes, ability to work through a complicated issue when the answer can't be looked up (ie, they demonstrates your thought process), ability to work under stress and time constraints, etc.

>i look up code on the internet all the time
no wonder why RoR is such a pile of shit

thank

Bubblesort is simple enough that one should be able to come up with an implementation on the spot.
If you can't, you are probably not suited for coding.
If I had to do interviews, I would accept someone to ask for a simple description of the algorithm, but expect them to be able to implement it.

There's a certain baseline, an employee would also be expected to be able to calcualte 4+4 in the head.

>if you're busy working and raising kids
GTFO this is no excuse for not learning to do your job.
>not performing rote memorization
it isn't that easy.

I mean whiteboard is retarded but keep absolute idiots and morons about of it.
Image hiring girl who can't to simple fizz buzz or other anagram.

I hate the fucking industry. You can have ten or fifteen years of solid experience with interesting projects on your resume. They'll bring you in because they like you resume. Then they won't ask a single fucking thing about your resume. Often, they have no idea what position they're interviewing you for, or what team you'll be on. And it's not just BigCo. It's smaller companies, too.

And everyone just copies whatever company they like. In the 1990s, Microsoft was famous for their stupid puzzle questions. In the 2008-ish era, the Google-style interview got popular. So popular, that they wrote a fucking book on the topic (Cracking the Coding Interview).

It's fucking retarded that you can be a competent, experienced software engineer and YOU HAVE TO READ A FUCKING BOOK TO LEARN HOW TO PASS INTERVIEWS.

The entire industry is an idiotic joke. Almost everyone is writing retarded CRUD apps, yet they convince themselves that they need "Google quality engineers" for some reason, and they blindly assume that rejecting 90% of candidates means they're getting the top 10% rather than an utterly random selection.

Whiteboard interviews are fucking retarded but these people complaining about them are even more retarded.

So fuck it, keep them around to weed these retards out.

>Hurrdurr I don't understand this problem please let me take it home and work it

kill yourself

Bubble sort is the easiest sort to implement and if you asked kid who has no idea about programming to sort list of items in algorithmic way he would probably invent bubble sort.

If you don't know what it is you are off course unable to do it on whiteboard, it's understandable. If they give you the specs on how it works then not being able to do it on whiteboard just means you are fucking retarded.

I don't understand why they are devaluating themselves by saying they are only able to copy paste code from google results because kids and pajeets can do that too...

Google quality engineers are literally kiddos that recently passed an algo class

do they really use bubble sort? isn't bubble sort like a worst possible scenario in terms of performance? why not test for something useful?

Depends on when. Google used to only consider PhDs. Now they're much more open.

Their tests still often boil down to culture tests. e.g. the famous "shrunken down to the size of a dime, stuck in a blender" question. It hinges on whether you've heard of the square-cube law. Never heard of it until the interview question became famous. But it's commonly taught in a variety of courses at certain universities.

In what world is having memorized, say, QuickSort, a useful skill?

They should be asking questions that test your ability to understand a problem and come up with a solution, not your ability to remember completely arbitrary algorithms.

At least the DHH guy in the op's pic can't do it.

Whiteboard interviews aren't inherently bad, but when you get docked during them for syntax/api issues they are cancer. It should be purely about your creativity and algorithm knowledge. Not imprinting stackoverflow on your brain.

>interview at _oo__e
>do pretty good in all of the whiteboard interviews, solving the problems in the allotted time
>get rejected, reason given was that I compared structs with ==

>creator of RoR
>I can't do bubblesort without leeching actual brains on stackoverflow
seems about right

Maybe if they werent so shit, doing simple algorithms on a whiteboard wouldnt be hard and they wouldnt have to look up solutions for everything online

>compared structs with ==
should've stuck to java

Bubble sort has great performance on already sorted collections :^)

If you chose to write your answers in Java, you deserved it (though I agree it's generally a waste of time to harp on syntax).

In Java, == is quite different than many other languages, like C++, Go, and Python (Google's other languages). So it is a bit less of a trivial issue in this case.

>yet they convince themselves that they need "Google quality engineers" for some reason
thank shitblogs such as joelonsoftware

Early era of RoR in a nutshell
harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto
It took a LONG time to improve to a reasonably stable system, only really once well read engineers had to fix it because their organisations had started using it

>that fucking IRC convo
>HURRRRRR GIMME ACCESS
>btw your build fails
I'm mad

>if you asked kid who has no idea about programming to sort list of items in algorithmic way he would probably invent bubble sort.
he would probably invent insertion sort

I had one of my non-CS classes do this for a project, most people invented insertion or selection sort.

thanks compiler

>The entire industry is an idiotic joke. Almost everyone is writing retarded CRUD apps, yet they convince themselves that they need "Google quality engineers" for some reason, and they blindly assume that rejecting 90% of candidates means they're getting the top 10% rather than an utterly random selection.
Correct.

>Google used to only consider PhDs.
Bullshit. They hire tons of people with bachelor degrees, however they do hire an above average number of PhDs compared to most of the industry. They tend towards hiring people with pedantic knowledge like memorizing APIs and algorithms they don't need to use regularly and could easily look up which I guess has a large intersection with people who go for PhDs.

I agree that most whiteboard interviews are pretty fucking retarded but this shouldn't be an excuse to fail at basic CS 101 stuff especially if it's directly relevant to the position you're applying for.

90% of these whiteboard interviews are pretty much an elaborate tests to see if you're lying about your credentials, because everyone lies so badly on their CVs these days. It's a field with no real certification authority.
I hope that an employer has every right to put an applicant through the whiteboard strainer because it catches so many shitters that it's worth the effort.

What was this girls story again?

>underrepresented in the field
Fucking dropped

Generic Great Value brand weekend code bootcamp web "developer" #23428342 went to an interview and was asked to write Fizzbuzz

She then wrote a blogpost about how she shouldn't have had to do "weird algebra" to work as a web developer

She wasn't completely wrong and the position she was applying for was basically just front-end web development giving websites a paint job but still it spoke about the state of the industry and everyone proceeded to throw peanuts at her for the next month

>They think this kind of job interview are about memorizing algorithmes
They should start to think. It will help a lot

It's normal but you should be able to solve some basic problems without the need of googling

Actually she was a web designer who misunderstood that a job ad was looking for front-end engineers and not front-end designers.

this

>can't code bubble sort
is he retarded? this isn't about memorization, just basic programming skills

I'm a teacher and I don't understand whiteboard interviews.

If I was to give you a paper on a research topic I wouldn't expect you to do it blind. I would expect you to demonstrate critical thinking skills on a timeline as well as show your ability to conduct and analyze research.

Replace the whiteboard with some sort of open ended task that the people are told 24 hours before or something and have to bring to the interview as well as explain their solution.

but then you'd have to conceive tests for which the solution isn't directly given on stackoverflow in all languages that exist
that'd be difficult for HR, it'd take cis white engineers and also that'd be too difficult for candidates that are underrespresented in the industry

you don't even realize what you just said is plain bigotry, bet you voted trump

Kek.

But seriously that's what you pay HR for. Instead most companies just hire some secretary who was good at making lists.

To be fair, if they want you to bubble sort you should probably learn to bubble sort. You can probably look up the algorithm and implement it if you have any fucking clue of what's going on.

Why does it matter?
In the end whether the interview is hard or not the company only needs a set amount of people.
Complaining that they pick someone else instead of you is pure jealousy and in this case even egoistic

They are stupid. "Sorry, you haven't retained the details of this niche algorithm (and bubble sort is a good example of a niche algorithm because it's useless in almost all circumstances), you don't get the job."

Just seems like they're using any excuse not to hire someone who otherwise seems competent.

I don't even remember the difference between bubblesort and insertion sort. If you said "write a facile sorting algorithm on this whiteboard right now" that would be ok.

A kid from my town worked on youtube search for google before he graduated high school

This. Even if you cant find a solution you should show your thought process and approach. Thats the whole point.

I think whiteboard interviews are cool as long as its done tastefully. Simple problems with multiple steps and requirements. It really is the best way to see if someone is worth anything more than a googling copy paster.

That said it should be only a small part of the interview.

Do they explain what the algorithm is in those sorts of interviews or do they just expect you to know it?

He's not saying he can't code it, he's saying if he was in an interview and was asked to write it out from off the top of his head, he couldn't. In other words: He doesn't have the specific code for a bubble sort memorized.

I think it's fine as long as they tell you what the algorithm is.
You should be able to implement any algorithm from the top of your head.
Retards can still luck out by memorising all of them but it's not the only part of the interview..

Web dev has to be the most snowflake area of software development. Its filled with cucks who love to reinvent the wheel in a sea of redundancies to fuel their control freak tendencies.

>He's not saying he can't code it, he's saying if he was in an interview and was asked to write it out from off the top of his head, he couldn't.
that's exactly saying he can't

>He doesn't have the specific code for a bubble sort memorized.
it's about the algorithm, not the """"""""""""kode""""""""""""
you're supposed to at least know a few sorting algorithms, if you don't have bubblesort just apologize and come up with another sorting algorithm, if they're smart that might even be what they want

they expect you to know it

The whole point of whiteboard interviews is to see if the candidate asks questions and can actually complete a task given a set of specifications. It's not testing if you've memorized an algorithm.

>What is bubble sort?
>Ok, can we walk through an example,? What would the expected output be in this case?
>Ok l, here is how I would implement it.

>I look *code* up on the internet all the time
idk, he didn't say he'd need a refreshment on what the algorithm is, he talks about code specifically

>HAHAHAHA HE DOESN'T KNOW BUBBLESORT ESCORT THIS MAN OFF THE PREMISES AND CREMATE HIS JOB APPLICATION

That's a bit shit. I don't remember the names of sorting algorithms and what they do off the top of my head. Sorting algorithms are basically a thing you don't ever have to code since someone has made a more optimised version already.

Obviously, optimised version of bubblesort is not using bubblesort.

>write a code that prints all numbers from 1 to 100 but for numbers divisible by 3 prints fuzz, divisible by 5 prints buzz, divisible by both 3 and 5 prints fizzbuzz
>omg dumb interviews why should I memorise the code for that

I mean... depending on what you're applying to that may be a decent test but it seems retarded for most positions.

If i was applying to work on improving search algorithms or do low level/embedded work that'd be expected to be there.

If i was applying as a webdev or game dev or vray dev or something else that's not concerned with low level stuff i'd be sodium incarnite since that shit has nothing to do with what I'd be doing and even if i know it i'd ask how it's relevant to such a position.

Yeah but if you're applying for a game Dev job they're not going to expect candidates to be able to whip up an A* pathfinding algorithm on the fly so they ask a simple question just to see how you think.

>women and black people are bad at whiteboard interviews because they're bad at programming
>the whiteboard is the problem

If it's a senior position and it's related to pathfinding you could atleast ask for some sort of node traversal and go from there.

it tests if you can write simple code given simple instructions. It's relevant to _every_ developer position. And given how many people are constantly ass-blasted about even the simplest of tasks on the interviews - questions like this are very much needed to filter out the weak insecure developers ("but I wrote SO MUCH great software, how dare they imply I can't code at all! (a failed interview doesn't imply that)",

Yes but you'd have to give some instructions (or the very least provide them if candidate asks) . Stuff like sample input and sample output and in the case of bubble sort maybe a graphic on how it'd work.( cause otherwise it wouldn't be bubble sort )


If it's just asking you to implement an algorithm from memory then you should start reevaluating whether or not this company knows what they're doing.

>tfw am good at whiteboard interviews
>tfw you all hate them
>tfw I'm a better candidate than Sup Forums
>tfw Sup Forums is all nogs and bitches

> then you should start reevaluating whether or not this company knows what they're doing.
I agree, if you say "I forgot how bubblesort works exactly" and they refuse to remind you and give any specifics of the algorithm then there is not much to evaluate - the interviewer is inadequate.

Whiteboard interviews are fine so long as they actually focus on your problem solving/critical thinking skills. I just finished a whiteboard interview last Thursday that followed that system, it was really fun: it was 85% problem solving and 15% C#-like pseudocode. Shame I'm a brainlet, though, because I got called the next day and was told that I didn't know enough C# so they were gonna pass.

They failed you for not being practiced enough in a specific language that you could probably could have picked up in a few days?

>the """discriminate""" against (((those))) under represented
Wtf I love whiteboard interviews now

That's what I was told over the phone. I passed the phone interview obviously but probably not well enough in comparison to other hires they were considering. I'm also in the middle of going back to school at night for CS and my projects for my current job are only starting to come together now, so I was probably a red flag from the start and they just wanted to take a gamble. On the other hand, I'm probably never going to know the real reason because my coworker applied to them and went through the process weeks ago, fucked up the whiteboard interview, and still got the same answer.

It's an abstract kind of hell.

>I cannot FizzBuzz
>...therefore the test is flawed
I would say that your education is flawed.

Sounds like the exact kind of people these tests are supposed to weed out

Also:
>“Whiteboard” interviews are widely hated. They also discriminate against people who are already underrepresented in the field.
How, exactly, does FizzBuzz discriminate?

>How, exactly, does FizzBuzz discriminate?
Women and minorities disproportionally fail it (and all other challenges) so it's discriminatory.

This, but I like take home projects rather than whiteboarding. We give our candidates take home tests. In my case we're hiring systems engineers for Devops type of stuff, so thy basically need an IT infrastructure background with the ability to write code.

We had one guy that was a referral from another employee. His resume was solid. He didn't even come close to finishing he take home test, which should have been around a 100 line script in the language of his choice. What he submitted was a single function definition that had barely anything to do with the task at hand and it was clear he was googling random shit and just copied this random code from some stack overflow thread.

Why aren't you posting the link?
theoutline.com/post/1166/programmers-are-confessing-their-coding-sins-to-protest-a-broken-job-interview-process

>I don't know what np complete means. Should I?
This one is pretty stupid. That's not shit you can just quickly google.

take home projects feel way more like unpaid work compared to interview quizzes and many programmers hate them. Also you still need to test during the interview since they could just ask someone else to write the project for them and exaplain how it works which makes it useless imo.

Did one of those interviews once and they said it went great. Unfortunately they refused to hire me because I didn't have a facebook.

>mfw it probably happened thousands of times

I agree somewhat, I once tried to get a job at epic games and they gave me a take home thing that I spent about 15 hours on. I submitted it to them, prior to any interview, not even a phone interview, and then never heard from them again. Pretty fucking annoying.

Like i mentioned it's a 100 line script, it shouldn't take them more than 2-3 hours. I want to see that they can write code I can understand, that they have real experience writing rather basic scripts, and that they have opinions on how things should work and what tools should be used.

The people who hate whiteboard are the same people who go through uni and copy and paste eveything from google, then bitch about a course/professor being too hard when they have projects where they have to think

If you don't have a Facebook you most likely suffer from some form of mental illness. It's a perfectly valid reason to not hire someone for.

Or they do not have Facebook because they are not interested in seeing pictures of lunches and cats.

that's antisocial behavior. A sign of a mental illness.

Did one of those interviews once and they said it went great. Unfortunately they refused to hire me because I had a facebook.

>I would fail to write bubble sort on a whiteboard
Oh come on. Unless you don't know what bubble sort is, most programmers should be able to implement it. Really, if you just say "efficiency doesn't matter, and you're not allowed to use the standard library; code golf me a sorting algorithm", you can get bubble sort 90% of the time, because it's the most intuitive way to do it (even if it's garbage).

>they are not interested in seeing pictures of lunches and cats
Freaks. I wouldn't hire them either

Or you know, the HR dept cant do their risk assessment so he's automatically considered a risky hire.

>mfw no one on my team has a fb account
>neither does my boss

>you most likely suffer from some form of mental illness
[citation needed]

HR hearsay is good enough to le trashman your CV.

>marking up text is considered coding

Why am i still coding replies to these memes?