Engineering interview candidate refuses to use whiteboard [duplicate]

Question

Today I experienced a first in a technical interview. The candidate refused to use the whiteboard to solve an algorithm question, as I requested. There was no sort of disability at play or anything (outside of nervousness). He simply said that he is uncomfortable using a whiteboard for difficult questions.

Oddly enough, we were able to work through it with me standing over his shoulder looking at his notepad. He even communicated his thoughts effectively enough for me to help him over the inevitable bumps. After this I asked him how he felt about collaborative work (as collaboration here is heavy) and he said he loves it. I asked him if he likes to get together with other developers to hash over problems on the whiteboard to which he said yes.

Is this some sort of red flag or am I just reading too much into this? In our environment, collaboration is a must.

ADDITIONAL DETAIL:

The candidate was being evaluated for a lead development position, in which case he spends much of his time communicating with his developers and less time coding than an individual contributor.

Answer 1

I wouldn't be too concerned about it. You aren't hiring him to work on a whiteboard; you're hiring him to work at a keyboard. The whiteboard is an in-interview technique to help demonstrate his competence. If that doesn't work well for him, but he's able to demonstrate his competence in other ways, then that's an irrelevant implementation detail.

From what you've written, he seems to be good at communicating and working through problems, and you noted that he was able to accomplish the required work on a notepad. This solves the same problem as the whiteboard does: it gives the candidate somewhere to work through the process more slowly than typing, and without a Backspace key, while the interviewer watches to get a feel for their thought process. From what's written here, I don't see any good reason not to hire him based on this.

Answer 2

There's a big difference between hashing out code on a whiteboard when brainstorming and hashing code out on a whiteboard when there's a guy who already knows the answer staring at you and waiting for you to make a mistake. Some people get really nervous in that environment. And even if you are not nervous, being in technical interviews all day takes it out of you.

Case in point, I was recently the interviewee and the interviewer asked me a whiteboard coding question that I not only knew the answer to cold, I had written a freakin' blog article on how to do it. I was so mentally worn out after two solid days of talking about programming languages and doing coding questions that I just blanked on it and it took me probably ten times longer than it should have to write the solution. Very embarrassing. I can easily see how someone nervous about an interview could blank on any question instantly.

I have been on the interviewer side and had candidates who told me ahead of time -- like, days ahead of time -- that they were uncomfortable with whiteboarding. They asked if there could be some other way to test their knowledge of basic algorithms. Given that warning, I'm fine with actually setting up a machine in the user's preferred development environment, giving my coding problems, and letting them hash it out for reals.

In short, I don't consider it a "red flag", but that said it is reasonable for the candidate to let you know in advance that they show off their skills best in some other way.

Answer 3

While I probably would have followed up with a question about what sort of problem he feels is whiteboardable, I can kind of see his point. If you're close enough to write on a whiteboard, you're too close to see the entire thing without moving your head. For certain kinds of algorithms that could be frustrating. I prefer whiteboards for writing a line or two, then stepping back to think about it. The higher the writing to thinking ratio, the more I prefer an editor or a piece of paper. In fact, I've been known to do a bunch of quick typing in my editor, then transfer the list to a whiteboard for the thinking part.

What might be seen as an eccentricity I see as a high degree of self awareness. I would rather hire someone who knows he is more efficient on paper and asserts it, than someone who has no idea. Also keep in mind that not all disabilities are visible. He could be blind in one eye, or have limited peripheral vision, and prefers not to tell people unless absolutely necessary.

Answer 4

I wouldn't be concerned at all, if his notepad work was otherwise acceptable.

Writing on a whiteboard is physically different enough from handwriting on a horizontal surface or typing that it's hard for some people to do "fluently". Scribbling diagrams and scrawling notes, as normally happens during whiteboard collaboration, is also very different from writing clear code.

Answer 5

I've been typing since I was 12 partially because I sucked at handwriting even then. If I'm handwriting a solution, 9/10 of my brain is on the writing part 1/20th is on the nervous part and what's left is some combination of what I ate that day, the funny thing my wife did, how the new guy compares to Leonard Nimoy and the problem. Give me a freaking computer not a whiteboard or a notepad. We don't all work and think in the same way.

More specific to your question, he doesn't like whiteboards? How does this hinder his ability to communicate to engineers in a world where we have 1,001 options to communicate any idea we want?

Answer 6

I'd be concerned with someone refusing a common request who doesn't feel the need to provide an explanation. Hopefully they phrased it as a preference and not a refusal. No indication that this is a temporary problem (twisted ankle?) That seems socially awkward to me. When hiring your imagination is just going run wild and come up with the worse-case scenarios.

If the position allows you to insulate this individual from working at the board, it's less of a problem, but what problem has this symptom? Leading others requires you to recognize when you're not putting people at ease and should make an effort to explain the situation. I refuse to use this framework, period = WTF?