What's a good whiteboard programming question to ask during an interview? I'll be interviewing a new software developer and I want a problem that will weed out more than just poos and purplehairs
>>62146554
>mfw HR is asking me what questions he must ask me
I dunno, what project are you recruiting for? What is your sphere?
>>62146554
Tail-recursive Fibonacci.
>>62146554
I've never held a programming job, but I'd go with some kind of list-sorting thing; perhaps a list shuffler.
lattice paths
given a grid of size NxM, starting from the top left corner and being able to move only right or down, find an algorhythm that tells you how many unique ways there are to reach the bottom right
>>62146651
This one is for an iOS developer, but I want to make sure they aren't a brainlet. Our company's pretty dynamic, they'll probably end up changing roles pretty often.
>>62146554
Ask him to do >>62146720 by describing it as a mathematical problem and solving the number of distinct paths in closed form, and then program it in pseudocode.
I certainly wouldn't hire anyone that wrote a search algorithm for shit this easy.
>be software engineer
>never had to do one of these whiteboard meme interviews
Is this some CA meme? Here in the Land of Southern Pride, we don't have that.
>inb4 some insult about the south being dumb because we don't do retarded meme interviews
>>62146720
>find an algorithm
This is just a simple math problem though.
Take the number of max moves you can make to the right (N_r), the number of max moves you can make down (N_d). The number of paths becomes
(N_r+N_d)!/((N_r!)*(N_d!))
>>62146748
Midwest, actually
>>62146720
>>62146746
>>62146802
This is an O(1) problem. I'd like to give them an O(n) problem at least, and maybe ask them to describe the complexity
>>62147763
Just do some of the basics
Bubble sort, merge sort, making linked list, etc
Things that wouldn't be too difficult to do on a whiteboard
General approach outline of numerical approximation of Black-Scholes equation.
>>62146554
None, whiteboard interviews are cancer and revolve around questions that have nothing to do with the actual job. Only people fresh out of college actually remember the theory required for these problems. You'll end up scaring off the people who can actually write your shitty CRUD apps and solve your stupid business problems and end up hiring "clever" guys who spent dozens of hours on grinding leetcode or hackerank, can recite Cracking the Coding interview in reverse but have no clue how to actually perform their work.
Instead of giving them a problem ask about their side projects, have them describe their greatest challenge they faced on the project, ask why did they use framework X instead of Y, if possible have them show you a demo or the code itself. I guarantee that pajeets and gurlcoders will flop on this one and you'll get a far better assessment of the candidate's skill than asking them to find a cycle in a linked list.
>>62146740
>dynamic company
>changing roles pretty often
Sounds like shit company, no wonder you ask about whiteboard interviews
How does the internet work?