[photawe]

I interviewed at FB London about 6-7 years ago, and they also gave me whiteboard interviews. They're one of the stupidest things ever invented.

If you want to master it, I guess you need to buy a whiteboard, and have a programmer friend give you random problems on a timer.

Having said that, do you really wanna work at a company that does this? I would never ever go to FB again, and not just for the pathetic and horrendous things it does, but the interview process just feels like "ooh, i know this crappy thing that was taught in high school, which nobody actually uses/needs, and you don't".

[ZhL]

Yeah, that would require a whiteboard and a programmer friend who is kind of enough to endure the misery of watching me struggle with a marker, trying to remember how to write by hand again..

I have very little experience interviewing (my previous job lasted 10+ years, my current one - almost 6). But I thought that solving problems on a whiteboard is fairly common, if not a golden standard for an on-site. At least both of the on-sites I had recently had a whiteboard component.

I think certain problems are a good _partial_ fit for a whiteboard interview: math/geometry, graphs and trees, combinatorics, system design. However, it does not feel natural to solve the _entire_ problem on a whiteboard. Additionally, I was also expecting whiteboard sessions to be a collaboration and a discussion. That hasn't been my experience so far.. I had either very little feedback, or a feedback that was more confusing than helpful (to me at least). Hence the question if I can do anything at an interview to increase the chances of a positive outcome. Or if there is a systematic approach to this problem.

[subhobroto]

> Or if there is a systematic approach to this problem

There is.

The whiteboard firing squad questions are pretty predictable once you do enough of them.

The very bad ones will ask directly from one of the popular sites. DFS/BFS/Invert Binary Tree/Coin Change/Hop Jump Skip/you know.

You have to learn it once and can regurgitate until you forget them again.

I am happy to help a fellow HN'er and work out some trial whiteboard interviews with you if you feel that would help.

[subhobroto]

> They're one of the stupidest things ever invented

Sure.

What do you have in mind that takes less, not more commitment in time from the candidate however?

> If you want to master it, I guess you need to buy a whiteboard, and have a programmer friend give you random problems on a timer.

Yup!

> Having said that, do you really wanna work at a company that does this?

I would take a whiteboard firing squad any day over the takehome test firing squad where they ask me to implement Todoist from scratch - backend and frontend, refuse to provide me any feedback/insight, tell me "do your best, follow your best judgement, treat this like production code" and then after hours of me writing tests and code, come back to me and say I spent too much time developing the backend and the frontend was not progressive enough.

The whiteboard firing squad questions are pretty predictable.

The very bad ones will ask directly from one of the popular sites. DFS/BFS/Invert Binary Tree/Coin Change/Hop Jump Skip/you know.

I have to learn it once and can regurgitate until I forget them again.

I pay the heavy cost once upfront and amortize it over all the interviews.

No such thing for a take home coding test!

Take Home coding tests are great at gauging real life performance of a candidate, if done right, but in my limited exposure (I don't have a lot of time to work on coding tests just so I can collect data samples to back my opinion), coding tests are handled extremely poorly, with expectations being set extremely vaguely.

Any realistic assignment requires a dialogue between the consumer and producer.

Companies are trying to minimize the time/money they spend on each interview.

Clarifications cost money.

Hoping a company will engage in a "what really are your requirements? are you trying to test my basic coding competency or do you want to see the best I have got?" will elicit a very vague response, if any.

If a company treats a home coding test as a real assignment and provides the candidate with the resources they need, I see no problem.

Unfortunately from my personal experience and anecdotes from others, it's just not the case.