>> To me the white board session is to understand if you can take new problems and understand them enough to sketch out a solution.
Honestly? This should be ferreted out in a screening interview.
As someone who's hired developers both as a manger and a senior dev, you know what's really important to me? Knowing where your head is at as a developer.
What I really want to know is:
1 - When shit hits the fan and you're buried under a mountain of stress, how are you going to handle that? Are you going to fight through it, or just give up?
2 - I want to know if you're open to other approaches to coding? What about other frameworks or tools? Do you believe there is one way to achieve a result, or multiple ways?
3 - Does your code have be perfect on the first try, or do you get something working first and then worry about how sweet the code looks later?
4 - How do you feel about fixing bugs? What if I made you fix bugs for 6 months before you started working on any project, how would you feel about that?
5 - Do you have the courage to stand up and say something if you feel like it will negatively impact a project you're working on?
Knowing how to solve basic coding problems at a whiteboard can't substitute for an impending deadline and tons of work that needs to get done in two days. I'd rather have an average developer who can handle a shit ton of stress and get his job done, then some rock star developer who folds like a lawn chair when things get tough. I want the developer who sees a tough deadline as a challenge, rather than the dev who whines constantly about it. You can't figure that out by standing at a whiteboard. You need to sit down and actually talk to the person to get to that stuff.
Honestly? This should be ferreted out in a screening interview.
As someone who's hired developers both as a manger and a senior dev, you know what's really important to me? Knowing where your head is at as a developer.
What I really want to know is:
1 - When shit hits the fan and you're buried under a mountain of stress, how are you going to handle that? Are you going to fight through it, or just give up?
2 - I want to know if you're open to other approaches to coding? What about other frameworks or tools? Do you believe there is one way to achieve a result, or multiple ways?
3 - Does your code have be perfect on the first try, or do you get something working first and then worry about how sweet the code looks later?
4 - How do you feel about fixing bugs? What if I made you fix bugs for 6 months before you started working on any project, how would you feel about that?
5 - Do you have the courage to stand up and say something if you feel like it will negatively impact a project you're working on?
Knowing how to solve basic coding problems at a whiteboard can't substitute for an impending deadline and tons of work that needs to get done in two days. I'd rather have an average developer who can handle a shit ton of stress and get his job done, then some rock star developer who folds like a lawn chair when things get tough. I want the developer who sees a tough deadline as a challenge, rather than the dev who whines constantly about it. You can't figure that out by standing at a whiteboard. You need to sit down and actually talk to the person to get to that stuff.