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by pkukkapalli 2204 days ago
I have thought about this quite a bit recently as well. I think the main thing to look for in interviews is "does this person have a clear and sound thought process?" In theory, the whiteboard questions are meant to suss this out, but the prevalence of Leetcode and other interview prep websites blurs the signal.

I wonder if just asking for a one or two page design doc on something would be a much better signal, since that's probably what you'll need to do on the job anyways.
2 comments
atomicity 2203 days ago
I've seen a lot of engineers that rely on their intuition and end up just creating shit that works and is surprisingly maintainable. I've also seen a lot of different ideas on what a "clear and sound thought process" is.

In fact, someone who is clear and sound in writing might get bogged down when writing code. Good writers are (obviously) not necessarily good coders.

I do think there is potential around the design doc. Design is a big part of a lot of roles. In addition, in a lot of these roles, having the "best" design isn't better than having a design that the rest of the team can understand. Still, I wouldn't do it for the purpose of identifying good "thinking". I would do it because I expect the people I hire to be good (or have potential) at what they will be expected to do.

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travisjungroth 2204 days ago
> ”does this person have a clear and sound thought process?”

I agree that this would be a great question to answer, but I doubt it would be possible to answer at scale. I don’t trust people to give a thumbs up or down on how someone else thinks. It’s also so open to interpretation and that leaves lots of room for implicit bias. He was quickly considering all the variables. She was scatterbrained.

One alternative, focusing entirely on the code written during the interview, is much more concrete. It’s open to preparation (here’s what good and bad solutions look like) and group discussion after the fact. And it’s actually in the professional skill set (judging code) versus doing an amateur job of judging other people’s thoughts.

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