Coding Interviews

The list of companies is non exhaustive and only lists the companies with jobs in Arbeitnow. For a longer list, please check the awesome hiring without whiteboard interviews guide for Software Developers

A list of companies (or teams) that don't do technical "whiteboard" interviews. "Whiteboards" is used as a metaphor, and is a symbol for the kinds of CS trivia questions that are associated with bad interview practices. Whiteboards are not bad – CS trivia questions are. Using sites like HackerRank or LeetCode probably fall into a similar category. The companies and teams listed here use interview techniques and questions that resemble day-to-day work. For example, pairing on a real world problem or a paid/unpaid take home exercise.

Coding Interviews: Do's and Don'ts

Do's:

• Evaluate using Pair Programming on a small issue. This can display how the person communicates, comes up with solutions and is able to resolve conflicts.
• Provide an actual work problem that the person might solve on the job. Most coding interviews have no relation to the job and are pointless.
• Take home exercises make sense if the software engineer candidate has the bandwidth and time to do it. In this case,
  • Keep it small (couple of hours maximum)
  • Don't expect a fully functional application
  • Allow use of framework / programming language that the candidates is comfortable with, as long as it's related to the job
  • Compensate them for the time (yes, that means money)
• Come up with a technical problem and have a conversation on how the candidate would solve it
• Do a code review instead

Don'ts:

• Live coding is anxious and only evaluates interviewing skills.
• Solving trivia / algorithmic questions encourages memorization of solutions
• • Everyone knows about Cracking the Coding Interview
  • Tests only knowledge of data structures and algorithms that they might not use on their job
• Whiteboard interviews are stressful and anxiety-inducing
• Whiteboard technical interviews appear to favor men over women
• Leetcode interview questions encourage smart programming solutions, not readable code