[objectified]

That's a rather quick conclusion. In the blog post she writes that at least once she helped debugging code, so perhaps she just prefers to have some association around a problem, instead of just a bare bones problem to solve. There are many people who are like that, especially the ones who tend to "deep process" problems in their thoughts in order to gain a clear picture of it. They are probably likely to be able to solve complex problems in a domain they're familiar with, but not quite so good at solving problems without any context.

Also there's the self confidence issue, common for many people, even while not a lot of people speak out about it. Ask someone with low self confidence to stand next to a white board and "implement" solutions to random problems, and he/she will freak out. At the same time, these people might very well excel in a more nurturing, friendly environment. Yet at the same time, people who are actually self confident and able to solve problems without much context on a whiteboard, might start running in circles once faced with unfamiliar problems that do not directly map to the algorithms they already know.

I found that just talking about code or problems with someone, can tell you lots of things about the ability of a person. Also, most likely, the candidate will already have some code put online, and god forbid companies are too lazy to look at it, rather than stroking their own ego by asking out of context questions that they already know the answer to.

[zeppelin101]

"Ask someone with low self confidence to stand next to a white board and "implement" solutions to random problems, and he/she will freak out. At the same time, these people might very well excel in a more nurturing, friendly environment."

I don't think a company interviewing a candidate needs to be holding their hand during the interview process. I understand that someone might perform a lot worse when whiteboarding, but an interviewer should be taking that into account.