[ksk]

I disagree. It doesn't have to be confrontational if you don't want it to be. As a manager whose used it plenty in the past, I've found it to be an excellent tool to filter out people who were smooth talkers and seemed "clued in" but didn't have the technical chops to do anything. I didn't care at all about syntax, language of choice, or anything superficial like that. All I wanted to see was how they approached a problem, not that they simply memorized a piece of trivia. Also you can ask design or high level architecture questions during a whiteboard-interview too. I have found that simply trusting someone's word is not enough, you need to verify that they can actually back it up. In the end, resume, grades, side-projects, whiteboard code, style of problem solving, feedback from previous co-workers, etc, etc, are all signals that you have to absorb and make a decision. You can't just rely on one signal.