How good are your white-boarding skills?
For Interviews (and at work), looks like we may need skills to write clearly on whiteboard. Curious to hear where do folks think they are and any tricks to improve WB skills? EDIT: "Emma" is a stupid reference to an old joke where someone pronounces "I am" as "Emma".
Emma?
Get a whiteboard and practice. Ask someone to critique you.
Leetcoding is actually hazardous for this exact reason. I personally mess up the whiteboard even for algorithms that I would clearly code up on a laptop. I think I am going to have to invest in a white board or risk remaining underpaid.
U can ask for a laptop in interviews. No company says no to that
That’s absolutely false. Most FANG places can accommodate. Finance places will say no 90% of the time (they don’t have laptops)
I have seen many struggle in interviews because they cannot whiteboard - it’s a crucial skill
After explaining my approach and algorithm (sometimes with diagram or example in whiteboard), i simply ask the interviewer that I will do the coding in laptop. Either his, or mine. He can see me code directly sitting beside me, or watch via coderpad or projector. Most of the time people agree and I fly through coding. If they disagree, I do that in whiteboard as best as I can. If i feel I have done good, I do nothing else. But If i feel the code was lengthy enough and required multiple times of erasing/inserting/changing logic, or the interviewer kept changing/adding complexity to the problem which leads to lack of space in board, I get pissed and do the following. At the end when they ask me if i have questions, I ask these questions. 1) How much % of the day they spend coding on whiteboard. 2) When is the last time they wrote code in whiteboard when working on a project that was released. 3) whats the size of the biggest project or piece of code they ever executed in whiteboard coding. 4) if any of the answer leads to a no, I ask them why.
People, it’s less known but u all can ask for laptops for coding for interviews. Let recruiter know about ur preference beforehand.
This is not a guarantee at smaller shops and non-FANG companies
Please do not write ur assumptions here. Please tell names of companies who said so. I have interviewed at laptops in startups
I’ve never done it, but my guess is “terrible”. I code for work, but I’m not a programmer. I don’t really commit much of the language to memory, since I can call up the internet at any time. I certainly don’t memorize anything more than the basic libraries or modules, and then only the most common usage. There are periods where I code every day for 3 months, and then don’t touch code for 6 months. I would likely freeze in panic at simple I/O questions in a whiteboard test.
This was a poll originally. No clue what happened to this.
Who's Emma?