[threatofrain]

The article says that whiteboard tests are about whiteboard tests.

Ultimately, pen and paper tests are about pen and paper tests. Take-home tests are about take-home tests. Algorithm tests are about algorithm tests, and chess tests are about chess tests. But among these, I would argue that the whiteboard is better at facilitating general communication.

If you have anything to say about anything, whiteboards are the most flexible way to say it. What ends up on the whiteboard doesn't have to be some toy problem, it can be about anything. It's probably one of the most flexible programming languages in the world, because you use a combination of words, arrows, and drawings to communicate however you want, and your ideas don't even have to make sense.

[nsxwolf]

It's great if that's how you're being scored, but you never know how you're being scored. One interviewer might be happy with a conceptual approach, another one might reject you for leaving off a curly brace.

[bootlooped]

In my experience some interviewers were not happy that I worked on a brute force solution first, with the aim to optimize it after I got it working. They wanted to see the efficient, optimized solution first. That is counter to everything I read before doing these interviews, and it was, I think, a bit unreasonable.

[Apocryphon]

As much of a cesspool of anonymous gossip as places like Glassdoor might be, reporting this sort of bad behavior might be useful, if to at least force companies that engage in unreasonable behavior to grapple with these poor policies. Or to warn other candidates of what they’re in for.

[pauljurczak]

> It's probably one of the most flexible programming languages in the world

I don't think so. There is a reason we use text editors instead of whiteboard and OCR for our daily programming. Insert/delete/copy/paste is really cumbersome on a whiteboard.