News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but.... Parent comment

Re:Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (... by decisiveness on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @08:29PM (#9696621)
It seems this criticism is of the interviewer making a poor decision based on missed/incorrect observations, not with the whiteboard interview itself.

Whiteboard interviews might miss eccentrics who can't express their clever thoughts verbally or visually, but it can depend on how tuned in the interviewer is to these eccentricities or how much value their team puts on expressive skills.

Algorithm/data structure interviews, whiteboard or not, also have the added benefit of being exceptionally good at eliminating candidates that:

1) Drastically misrepresent their skills

2) Give up easily at difficult tasks

3) Don't seek help from others

4) Frequently have a bad attitude

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (... by iopq on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @09:53PM (#9696985)
I've never answered it wrong and gotten hired for my "thought process" even if I was close. I had to fart around on my own for another ~15 minutes to fix my bugs to make it work. But it seems they just want a guy who memorized it and pretends to discover the perfect solution on the first try.
[ Parent | on HN ]