>>I've (thankfully), never had to whiteboard. Think it's a US/SF thing.
And that has spread all over the world now, because a lot of companies outside of SV, tend to view these BigWebCo's as something to emulate and imitate from, and are doing these whiteboard interview all the time.
In fact the whole point of these Hacker rank kind of sites is to basically provide the web equivalent of a white board. You are asked to submit code(Typically some question based on a exaggerated edge case of some algorithm) and see if it passes all test cases. You are in if it does, out otherwise.
I've (thankfully), never had to whiteboard. Think it's a US/SF thing.
That these interview techniques are determined so much by culture, fashion, and following what the successful companies do (I.e. Google), in itself shows how useless they are.
That said, I acknowledge I can't think of a perfect way to assess software engineers. We have a take home exercise, but ultimately gut feel drives the decision.