Why Am I Whiteboarding?

Questions we often get about whiteboarding include:

• Why do companies have interviewees whiteboard?
• Why can't interviewees just live code their problems or create an application at home to submit?
• Why must I suffer through the hard work of learning how to whiteboard a solution when I usually just look things up in Google?

These are all valid questions. There is a lot of debate over the concept of whiteboarding interviews. Most of the criticism is centered on the arguments that whiteboarding is unable to reliably identify skills, and that it leads to a lot of time spent preparing for whiteboarding questions.

There are likely many more reasons why whiteboarding is not ideal for interviews. But the reality is that unless you have previous software development experience, you are likely going to be stuck with the status quo. In other words, you will probably be faced with a whiteboarding interview, and there isn't much you can do about it. Here is a good video that goes into the matter a bit more.

Luckily, we've created this guide to help you through the stress of whiteboarding! Go on to the next section for more.

1. The Terrible Technical Interview

2. Why Is Hiring Broken? It Starts at the Whiteboard.

3. Programmers Are Confessing Their Coding Sins to Protest a Broken Job Interview Process