Popular posts

I have a different view on this than probably a lot of people.

In my book, the simple act of asking you to draw something out on a whiteboard is not bad. What I feel is kinda funny is when a company goes down the textbook list of basic programming questions and judges a candidate off of that. The reason being, this is not an effective measure of skills and/or passion for any field. IMO, a more effective approach is one highlighted by Casey Muratori of Molly Rocket games in this video.

The video is quite long but it's definitely worth a watch if you are curious and/or are preparing for any type of programming interview. For those who don't know, Casey created Granny 3D when he worked at RAD game tools, a developer's tool used in over 3,700 big game titles, including Age of Empires, The Sims 3, Halo, and many others.

That all said, a couple more things:

1. I am happy to at least be having a technical interview at all, because at least this shows the company is interested in my actual technical skills rather than how I look on paper. This is especially true for those of us without CS degrees. We need some way to prove ourselves, and the opportunity to display some skill is good.
2. I believe most programmers don't enjoy "whiteboarding" and it is true that we could (and probably should) be doing it on a computer... But you gotta keep in mind too that the company may be looking for other skills when they white-board... Such as your ability to be honest and ask questions, tell them that you don't know, and overall be able to communicate well with others, especially during a somewhat stressful experience. I feel that companies keep the whiteboard around for that reason.