I think we should distinguish &quot;whiteboard problems&quot; and &quot;whiteboard coding&quot;, while the latter is terrible, the former seems legitimate to me.<p>I do it with candidates and I have no problem going through it as a candidate.  It is fine when you whiteboard system architecture to solve a &quot;real world&quot; problem.  Usually I just use the most recent project&#x2F;feature I worked on and lay it out as a little scenario: &quot;The product owner would like us to add this feature to the product, how can we do that?&quot;  Of course, if it&#x27;s something really complex that took me 3 days to solve I wouldn&#x27;t expect the candidate to solve it in 30 minutes.<p>Back to &quot;whiteboard coding&quot; I personally go with option 2.  When scheduling the interview I try to find out what&#x27;s gonna happen and if they mention whiteboard I explain that I&#x27;m not interested.  If once on-site an interviewer asks me to do it I just decline and interrompt the session right there.  Most of the time they try to back off and say &quot;ok it&#x27;s fine, we don&#x27;t have to do it&quot; but I just remain firm and explain &quot;if this is how you&#x27;ve interviewed and hired the rest of the team, I&#x27;m not interested&quot;.<p>Something I&#x27;ve done once too: after being asked some stupid algorithm to do at the whiteboard, the interviewer asked &quot;do you have any question for me?&quot; &quot;why, sure, let&#x27;s say I give you a file with 1 billion integers and you have to... can you write the algo for that?&quot; the guy was literally staring at me for 10 seconds.  My reasoning &quot;I&#x27;m trying to assess if I can work with your team, I need to know if you guys are good.  And since balancing binary trees seems to be the core of the work I want to make sure you know what you are doing.&quot;  It was hilarious.  He didn&#x27;t do it though.<p>My other favorite: stupid brain teasers.  Again, my policy is to refuse to answer and just put an end to the interview.  Sometimes though I play stupid: &quot;How many soccer balls can you fit in the Empire State Building?&quot; &quot;well, what&#x27;s the brand of the balls? can I open the windows? Can I empty all the offices? Am I allowed to tear down walls? etc&quot;  Sometimes it can go on for 15 minutes like that with me asking stupid questions, and they just run with it.<p>Anyway, my point is: with such a hot market, the only way to end this stupidity is to refuse to put up with it.