[nawgz]

> Sounds like stress doesn't impact you, even in interview settings

No, it sounds like you didn't read the top of the thread, where we're specifically discussing Whiteboard Prompts. I agree interviews are stressful; I disagree with the argument that "Whiteboard Prompts" are so much higher stress than the rest of the interview that we can't conclude anything from them about the candidate.

I further argue that if one can't perform in a Whiteboard Prompt, wherein the entire goal is to have the type of conversation about a problem that engineers are paid to have about problems rather than coming to a code solution, than one will probably be difficult to work with in any situation which involves some pressure. Some classic examples of equally high pressure situations as talking to an interviewer you don't know but who is probably on your level include things I do each week:

* speak with stakeholders about progress

* opine to stakeholders about complexity of features, timelines and methodologies of their implementation, and possible blockers

* work with my team & extended team members to give Code Reviews, where often they are my direct report or someone else's direct report

So, I conclude that if one is able to excel technically, but completely unable to handle this socialization aspect of interviews, than in a large corporation where you frequently have rotating casts of external stakeholders, this implies you will not be fit for any of the work interfacing or collaborating with colleagues outside the team. This implies this person will be a low performer if hired into this team.

Call it a "ridiculous strawmen" if you want, but I don't see why we should completely discard testing of someone's ability to interact in new situations, otherwise surely I could argue in the ridiculously reductionist way you are interpreting my multiple, specific comments elucidating my stance that TripleByte has solved the interviewing problem.

[concreteblock]

I did read the thread. Someone was saying how whiteboard prompts are scary and has a high false negative rate. You took that and turned it into "if you find interviews scary, that's a signal that you have unreasonable social skills and you are unable to think on your feet". In other words, you believe that the false negative rate is not so high, because you believe that the the stress induced by an interview is similar enough to the stress induced in other stressful situations that are common in the work place.

The only point I am trying to make is that yes, interviews are very different than the other scenarios that you mentioned.

Here's one reason: in an whiteboard problem solving session, the other person has explictly prepared something that they know more about than you. On top of that, you are both aware of this fact. This almost never happens in a normal work-collaboration. A collabaration happens because both parties have something to offer. If not, they'd be explaining to you, and not the other way around.

[nawgz]

> In other words, you believe that the false negative rate is not so high, because you believe that the the stress induced by an interview is similar enough to the stress induced in other stressful situations that are common in the work place.

No, not really.

I think people who have a weakness are most likely to attack, without evidence, things that expose that weakness as unfair. People in this thread are going so as to call the interview technique of whiteboarding a problem “practically inhumane”.

You are right that I think inability to talk thru ones train of thought on a new problem to them to be a signal of inability. I think whiteboarding exposes this kind of weakness. I also think it has many causes: extreme stress reaction, bad social skills, lack of domain knowledge, bad communication skills, and plain old stupidity.

So to read that “whiteboarding” should be disallowed from interviewing, because it is so much more high stress than every other part of the process, despite those parts also having equal importance in the overall stakes, really needs some elucidation. I accept anecdotes from workers who claim they are only low performers in the interview because of stress or anxiety, but I strongly doubt unmitigated social anxiety presents as a detriment to ones apparent job performance in interviews but not jobs at a high enough rate to give any credence to these claims without some sort of data driven backing.