Based on my reading of Cracking the Coding Interview whiteboard interviews are standard practice at the "top tier" tech companies. From what I understand they bleed down into most smaller companies as well (about 90% of my software interviews had a whiteboard component).
I do tend to ask a few whiteboard questions when I interview people but I try to focus on the conceptual understanding and communication skills rather than syntax specifics. Most of the time the candidate produces psuedocode similar to the language they said they would use and I am fine with that.
I don't think requiring runnable code or using the whiteboard portion as a pass/fail component are all that useful when evaluating candidates.
All that being said, if you are looking for a new job I would prepare for a whiteboard interview question because you will probably get one.
Based on my reading of Cracking the Coding Interview whiteboard interviews are standard practice at the "top tier" tech companies. From what I understand they bleed down into most smaller companies as well (about 90% of my software interviews had a whiteboard component).
I do tend to ask a few whiteboard questions when I interview people but I try to focus on the conceptual understanding and communication skills rather than syntax specifics. Most of the time the candidate produces psuedocode similar to the language they said they would use and I am fine with that.
I don't think requiring runnable code or using the whiteboard portion as a pass/fail component are all that useful when evaluating candidates.
All that being said, if you are looking for a new job I would prepare for a whiteboard interview question because you will probably get one.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me Evan! 🙂
I also share the same opinion that the concept of using whiteboard questions as pass/fail components of a dev interview isn’t ideal.
I’ll prepare for a whiteboard interview if time will come to that though. 🤓