[ssambros]

> For the phone interview, it will be on a Google document, and for the onsite interview, it will be writing code on a whiteboard.

That part is not completely correct. At onsite can choose to write code in a Chromebook which will have a lightweight editor with syntax highlighting.

[oksurewhynot]

It wasn't really a choice when I interviewed there. All but one interviewer had me write code in the chromebook, which was my least favorite part of the interview process. The trackpad didn't respond to my slightly dry erase covered fingers, the keyboard was weird, and the quasi hangout software it was running crashed a few times, one of which required a full restart. That might not sound like a big deal but in a high pressure/time constrained environment it was a bit of a nightmare. I was told going in that the chromebooks would be available as an option, but writing a few lines of code only to be told to stop and switch over to the chromebook (which had either gone to sleep or frozen), have the interviewer log in and select the correct session, then select syntax highlighting, then finally being able to start writing code doesn't seem very conducive to maintaining a train of thought.

[dmoy]

Tell your recruiter, interviewers are not supposed to force candidates to use chromebooks.

[HALtheWise]

I interviewed at Google in January, and they offered to let me use a computer if I had accessibility concerns with a whiteboard or really really wanted to, but discouraged it because they found it often made candidates too focused on the syntax of their code and less likely to have a meaningful high-level discussion with the interviewer.

[Frost1x]

That's hilariously ironic. If they wanted meaningful high level discussions without syntax focus, their interview structure would be different.

The most obvious change was to accept psuedo-code (like in the olden times) to reduce cognitive load dealing with: syntax, dynamic problem solving, and dealing with someone asking you random questions shifting your train of thought or changing the problem description on the spot.

This now common poorly structured interview process does a lot to discourage high level conversation and low focus on syntax. It tends to get hung up on language specific syntax, data structure recall, and less on designing and analyzing solutions.

BS atop BS... its BS all the way down

[avbor]

Did they finish rolling them out? I know that is (was?) the plan, but when I interviewed last year at the Santa Monica location, they only had whiteboard.

[ssambros]

Indeed not all locations have it, but I believe the major ones, like Santa Monica, should have it available by now.