But how whiteboard interviews help (1)? I see them as unconnected and would prefer for that (for example) giving a sample assignment for 2 hours on/off-site
I hope this insight helps you and others because it's key:
What does an off-site sample assignment tell the company? That you can write code when given a spec. That's great, but that's insufficient for what they are hiring for.
What it doesn't tell them:
- Can you elicit clarity on a vaguely stated problem? These are conversations that top engineers have with their business counterparts and other technologists constantly.
- Can you iterate with another person on a solution. The whiteboarding exercise is a dialogue, and while contrived, problems are often solved in joint manner like that.
- How do you do under pressure? Something is going wrong and it's affecting millions of users. Can you carry your weight when the team is fire fighting?
Obviously the whiteboard isn't perfectly correlated with the above, but it's as good an indicator as I can think of. Saying "just let me write something off-line" means people are oblivious to these other key attributes. FAANG devs aren't earning 300K a year for just being able to write code on a spec.
xyzelement|5 years ago
What does an off-site sample assignment tell the company? That you can write code when given a spec. That's great, but that's insufficient for what they are hiring for.
What it doesn't tell them:
- Can you elicit clarity on a vaguely stated problem? These are conversations that top engineers have with their business counterparts and other technologists constantly.
- Can you iterate with another person on a solution. The whiteboarding exercise is a dialogue, and while contrived, problems are often solved in joint manner like that.
- How do you do under pressure? Something is going wrong and it's affecting millions of users. Can you carry your weight when the team is fire fighting?
Obviously the whiteboard isn't perfectly correlated with the above, but it's as good an indicator as I can think of. Saying "just let me write something off-line" means people are oblivious to these other key attributes. FAANG devs aren't earning 300K a year for just being able to write code on a spec.