Engineering whiteboard interviews: yay or nay?
<p><pre><code>  VP of Engineering at Eaze, previously CTO at Getable and engineer at Yammer.

  No, not at all. Whiteboard interviews test one thing
  well: How well does a candidate code on a whiteboard.
  Engineers on my team never have to code on a whiteboard
  (whiteboards are really bad at running code), why would I
  make candidates do something that I don&#x27;t ask the
  engineers already on my team to do?
</code></pre>
This comes close, but I think the real issue that most of these reasons aren&#x27;t hitting on is that software development is typically done asynchronously. Whether it&#x27;s a whiteboard or a computer connected to a projector or TV or a live peer coding session it doesn&#x27;t matter: if done in the interview, it puts the candidate on the spot in a way that they rarely (if ever) will be on the job. Developers typically are able to take time by themselves or with trusted&#x2F;known colleagues to solve a problem. There are very few opportunities to get over performance anxiety related to coding in front of others that we don&#x27;t know.