Cost of government rises when local newspaper closes, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/10/cost-of-government-rises-when-local-newspaper-closes-study-finds <comment><USER2> OK, so they found that "the spread or yield of newly issued local municipal bonds increased" after local papers closed. But from the title, I was expecting some actual data on local government spending. But no, it's all based on borrowing costs. The stuff about local papers having acted as watchdog agents is just interpretation.

Here's the abstract of the study cited in the article:

> Local newspapers hold their governments accountable. We examine the effect > of local newspaper closures on public finance for local governments. > Following a newspaper closure, we find municipal borrowing costs increase by > 5 to 11 basis points in the long run. Identification tests illustrate that > these results are not being driven by deteriorating local economic > conditions. The loss of monitoring that results from newspaper closures is > associated with increased government inefficiencies, including higher > likelihoods of costly advance refundings and negotiated issues, and higher > government wages, employees, and tax revenues.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I'd take a _lot_ of convincing that they hadn't just failed to specify adequate identification tests, since local newspaper closures and raised municipal borrowing costs are both clearly and obviously linked to local economic conditions, and the potential linkage between municipal bond rates and local newspaper scrutiny far more questionable.

<comment><USER4> The article links to the paper, where this is the number one concern they address. They seem to have a bunch of different ways of slicing the data to prove their effect, e.g. pairing demographically similar districts, looking at newspaper shutdowns likely induced by Craigslist, looking at number of newspapers in a district, looking at distance of political center to economic center. I don't know if this is a complete list of things that economists would look at, so I don't know if they're cherry-picking good ways to slice the data, but they have 47 pages of trying to convince you it's right if you want to dig that deep :)

There could obviously be other explanations, e.g. markets thinking that less information rich environments are just riskier because they won't know what's going on, but they seem to have been fairly thorough in establishing the link between newspapers closing and bond rates increasing.

<comment><USER2> Yes, they do lots of checking. But still, I don't see anything clear beyond the association of newspaper shutdowns and increasing bond rates. Nothing about mechanism except speculative argument. This is very much like epidemiology. And the literature is loaded with retrospective studies that found correlations which turned out to reflect selection bias and/or confounding. You really need prospective studies with carefully matched controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked for a media company that had their hands in print, radio and TV. The community based news papers had way higher profit margins than the large news papers.

<comment><USER6> Maybe I'm confused, but what's the connection between the profit margin of newspapers and the linked article?

<comment><USER7> There's a phenomenal article that hits on this point: The Bad News About the News [1] It's by Robert Kaiser, a 50 year veteran editor and reporter of the Washington Post that decided to retire shortly following Bezos' purchase of the company. I hate giving cliff notes of it since it's such a well written piece that should really be consumed as a whole, so don't take this post as cliff notes - but as some related asides.

One important point is that in the past the media had an effective monopoly on information and that basically gave them a never ending faucet of money. The internet has changed all of this. Newspapers, or the media in general today, operate on thin to nonexistent margins. When times are good it's much easier to focus on things like journalistic integrity and quality. In the golden era of the media, monopolized as it was, could enjoy the luxury of having relatively little concern about how their readers would, for instance, react to their reporting. There was no need to pander to fashionable views or condemn unfashionable views. They could write as they saw with their guiding beacon being little more than the story itself.

There's a fine quote in the article from another individual, _" By undermining the economic basis of professional reporting and by fragmenting the public, [the digital revolution] has weakened the ability of the press to act as an effective agent of public accountability. If we take seriously the idea that an independent press serves an essential democratic function, its institutional distress may weaken democracy itself. And that is the danger that confronts us."_

Now the media is driven to compete against social media, and other media outlets who have 0 concern for anything other than feeding their own buzz. And social media, contrary to promises of uniting society and people, has instead fragmented people into ever more radically divided groups. And this is now reflected in the media as people have hovered to sources that primarily just confirm their own biases and tell them what they want to hear.

One thing I will say as a counter to this all is that, peculiarly enough, even establishments that are supposed to be above monetary concerns have gone downhill. For instance the BBC was at one time the pinnacle of impartial reporting, yet they now are falling into the same trappings of partisanship, bias, and sensationalism that plagues the rest of the media in spite of the fact that (to my knowledge) they have 0 financial mandates. As I check the front page of that site this very moment (with a cleared cache) two of the top 5 displayed headlines are: "A world outraged over crispy chicken" and "How a YouTube beef shook the vegan world.". ...

[1] - [http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad-...](http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad- news.html)

<comment><USER8> BBC has massive financial issues. In 2005 the license fee was £183.46 (in today's money). It's now £147. That's a 20% cut in revenue in the last 13 years. In addition to that, funding for World Service and Monitoring has been moved to the license fee too.

If you're accessing from abroad you're the product -- the website is selling space to advertise to you.

This is the front page I see in the UK: [https://i.imgur.com/EAADNgI.png](https://i.imgur.com/EAADNgI.png)

Top headline is Korea/US Then next is Migrants, G7, Grenfell, and a trooping the colour change The the sidebar is Entertainment, Crime, Sport, Entertainment, Entertainment, Crime, Technology

Internationally things like outbrain infect the BBC site, but we don't get that in the UK where we pay for it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am ready to join any venture in creating local news. I am a capable writer with above average capability and means for generating local content. I have applied to every local paper in my area and have never once received a call/email back. I won't stop trying, but if anyone here is attempting a project even remotely pointed in the direction of local,online-or-paper news, i'd appreciate your consideration. I'm happy to start at minimum wage. I just want to write news in my spare time.

<comment><USER4> You will probably get further by writing a story and then sending that story to local papers, rather than sending applications.

If you're more interested in distribution than payment, Google is trying to build a tool for the general public to write news stories, get them published and indexed and surfaced to people: [https://posts.google.com/bulletin/share](https://posts.google.com/bulletin/share)

<comment><USER9> Cool concept. If it comes to my city, i am totally doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Probably true, but just an opportunity for someone to produce something local and not paper based. Most products are designed for mass markets, it'd be great to see something work for a large group of smaller community in the way newspapers did in the past. Also i wonder if this is in part due to the fact that online news is more easily manipulated and therefore corruption is easier to get away with.

<comment><USER11> The article specifically addressed your suggestion. It said people had been suggesting that ever since community papers declined, but there's been no replacement.

It's still good to look for a replacement, but I think you may be being a bit blasé about it.

<comment><USER10> I never said it would be easy, and i certainly don't have a solution. Having worked very closely with old school media companies, being acquired by one, and trying to contribute to the issues...yeah, maybe I'm just exhausted by the problem, but i stand by staying it's a big opportunity when someone finally gets it right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I kind of read the headline as, 'pay the guardian a subscription fee or we'll aggravate, and amplify, stories that make society feel more scared and under attack from forces that can only be resolved with less freedoms and more tax payer spending'.

Perhaps the guardian should lobby to make non payment of 'subscription' a criminal offence and benefit from the same protections over competition that are awarded the bbc news.

<comment><USER13> That makes no sense. The Guardian is not a local newspaper, it wouldn't benefit from higher taxes, and you don't need a subscription to read the BBC news.

<comment><USER12> I try to put as much information into a small amount text so it's quick for you to read. I don't need to write a 20 page essay to convince you. But I'll give you a few points. The guardian is just another lobby with its own hopes and fears, but trying to convert all its readers to a subscription model, and it will use any click bait title and print any fud it can to convince you of the virtues of the subscription model. The bbc license fee, is illegal in England not to pay. The terms and conditions on license fee renewal cover all forms of media distribution and ways you might consume bbc content. And it's illegal to reprint those terms and conditions in any other media format available so I can't copy and paste it here for you. 50 percent of the criminals that pass through a British councils court houses, are there for non payment of bbc license fee. I get this info from my local paper public notices section. The bbc license fee creates a unlevel playing field for all other media organisations which who have media business models similar to the many media types the bbc produces. Bbc gets its money for free, many people, especially poor, receive criminal convictions for not paying it, it creates an anti competitive environment for competing media organisations, it's lawyers are the best. At least local news outlets can print all the court cases it wins, if it's still legal to. I heard that recently many more criminal convictions, let alone suspect investigations, are now subject to gag orders. This is England

<comment><USER14> Ok so...

There's no "BBC fee". Theres a TV Licence fee.

You don't need to pay it if you don't own a tv. Or you own a tv hooked up to a playstation. There's also many other (legal) reasons to not pay for it.

There's no such thing as a "british council court house". There's magistrates court, where non-payment of the license fee might end up at.

"50 percent of the criminals that pass through a British councils court houses, are there for non payment of bbc license fee" is a ridiculous statement. It's closer to 1 in 10, a fact you could have discovered by a simple google search. You can find a related article here: [https://fullfact.org/news/do-tv-licence-offences-account- one...](https://fullfact.org/news/do-tv-licence-offences-account-one-ten- court-cases/)

A criminal conviction for non payment of the tv license fee will not show up in most checks, and you don't have to disclose it.

Every single thing you typed above is either completely incorrect, or specifically misleading.

<comment><USER12> So 10 percent of criminal convictions are bbc license fee related, and many don't show up in searches or make it far enough to be statutorily documented. I'm really sorry I wrote the British court house thing, you see, I don't need to speak the queens english, or write within the constraints of proper journalist standards to convey an idea in a small text field on a public forum. Unless of course the law has changed, and the system needs justify its existence with more examples victimless petty crime. Did you understand my concept of what the bbc license fee protects.

The naming of the license as 'TV license' is extremely, deliberately and specifically misleading.

<comment><USER13> You don't need to speak good English to convince people on this forum, but you do need to be able to back up your ideas with evidence. I do have sympathy with arguments against the BBC license fee and subscription models, but the fact that you pull exaggerated figures from the top of your head to support your arguments does very little for you.

<comment><USER12> You just broke the law of my second disagreer. It's 'TV license', not 'BBC license', seems you're no better than me or perhaps been a little misinformed by its naming, just like just about everybody, except those who read and understood it's terms and conditions.

I call the tv licence, the communications license, but in order to maintain a little obfuscation if it's real purpose to the general public, you could name it the 'BCC License' - British Compulsory Communications License. Where You would have no right to communicate unless you ticked the box, right before payment, that shows you understood the t&cs.

<comment><USER13> You can use almost all media and communications services _without_ paying the license fee, including browsing the internet (even the BBC news website!), watching catch-up TV (except BBC iPlayer) and using a TV to play computer games, watch DVDs or listen to digital radio.

You _only_ need to pay the license fee if you watch live television or, more recently, BBC iPlayer. I know this because I went for many years without paying the fee, legally and guilt-free.

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry but there is no get out clause in today's modern society when it comes to paying the tv license fee, unless your over 65 or registered unemployed. The magistrate is going to need full access to your private communications to find any evidence of you flouting the tv licensing laws so they can decide if you are guilty or not. Sending someone around to your house at night to look through your window and see what that strange flashing glow is, is just too old fashioned.

<comment><USER13> You can get out of paying the license fee by not watching live television or BBC iPlayer. I know a lot of people that do this without any problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: echoplexus, anonymous chat, collaborative REPL, and whiteboard - <AUTHOR> http://echoplex.us/

<comment><AUTHOR> [edit: here's a direct link to the demo [http://chat.echoplex.us/](http://chat.echoplex.us/)]

Hi guys, just thought I'd showcase the project I'm currently working on. If you like it, I'd love it if you contributed @: [https://github.com/qq99/echoplexus](https://github.com/qq99/echoplexus)

There are around 2-3 dedicated contributors at the moment.

We've got a lot of basic functionality down, but there's still much to do! A little teaser of hopeful future functionality:

\- web/video chat with WebRTC

\- more languages in the REPL

\- more polish all around

\- better embedding of media with more options

\- see github issues page for more of the future vision

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice design and slick UI. Now here's come criticism =).

\- I don't think _/_ is a good name for the default channel.

\- Why can't I see the user list in the _Code_ and _Draw_ views?

\- _Sync Missed_ is a confusing label for a button. It appears to add N lines from the server chat log to the client chat log, so consider calling it something more descriptive (like _Get Old Logs_ ).

\- I'd like to be privately invite a user to a channel.

\- A public channel list would be nice.

\- It would be neat to be able to draw an overlay on the _Code_ view and do annotations.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add most of these as issues that we'll get to work on next :) Very awesome idea with the overlay on _Code_ view, I love it

>\- I don't think / is a good name for the default channel.

Not sure if I can do much about this one -- that's simply the default route. I wanted to make it super easy to create a channel, so anything in the URL slug becomes the name of the channel. Visiting [http://chat.echoplex.us/hackernews](http://chat.echoplex.us/hackernews) would make you join the channel named "/hackernews".

> \- Why can't I see the user list in the Code and Draw views?

A pretty big UI deficiency atm, still working out the better way to present all the data

> \- Sync Missed is a confusing label for a button. It appears to add N lines > from the server chat log to the client chat log, so consider calling it > something more descriptive (like Get Old Logs).

Indeed, it's set to sync 10 at a time to prevent flooding the client. However, maybe a smarter idea would be to sync in an infinite scroll fashion as well</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Coinbase alternatives? - <AUTHOR> I have an account that I opened in 2013, with several BTC transactions per year. I am carrying a decent BTC balance there. My linked bank account has been the same. I tried to buy 2 ETC. The transaction got declined by Coinbase and my account got limited with no explanation: buys are restricted. Support chat is a chatbot, an attempt to email support is unanswered.<p>I think that with their initial success, they decided to play by Google AdSense playbook: treat honest customers statistically, but not individually. The problem with this approach that unlike AdSense it will be harder to build an monopoly here: it's a good time to start a competitor, focused on decent customer service, like Amazon. <comment><USER2> Had you updated your contact information with a copy of a scanned ID? Was it legitimate?

This is probably more due to regulatory pressures and any possible Coinbase alternative in the USA is going to have the same problem.</comment>


Swipe Left: Privacy Practices of Online Dating Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.royapakzad.co/swipe-left-privacy-practices-of-online-dating-apps/ <comment><USER2> Privacy practices of "Swipe Left: Privacy Practices of Online Dating Apps":

After clicking on this article, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn will know that you are interested in the privacy practices of online dating apps.

Privacy Policy and Terms of Use:

      Facebook collects user data to create profiles that...

      Google...

      LinkedIn...

Data Retention:

      Facebook...
      .
      .

\--Sending HTTP requests to Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn results in the collection of this metadata and possibly data by your national and possibly foreign government surveillance organizations...

\---Data retention by your national surveillance organization...:

<comment><USER3> I'm sure this is true, but what if you leverage something like PiHole and browser extensions like Privacy badger or uBlock? Surely, these offer some tangible protection against this kind of sharing?

<comment><USER4> "Did you see what their browser was wearing? No wonder."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wonder if Zoosk in light of this article will check their audit logs and see who accessed Roya's profile internally then cross reference with employee onboarding dates then fire the employee.

<comment><USER6> Who's roya

<comment><USER5> > Who's roya

Roya Pakzad, the article's author. Her name is right at the top of the article we are discussing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very relevant paper: "Hardened dildo.io, A Cryptographically Secure, Usable Matchmaking Service"

[https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2016/files/13.pdf](https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2016/files/13.pdf)

I've actually implemented this paper in a hackathon, but we never launched it. It's basically like tinder, but no central server has access to anyone's likes. Yet, by using homomorphic encryption and a calculation performed on the server (through which no information is revealed), you can know if someone you liked likes you back. It's pretty cool!

</comment><comment><USER8> How in the world is logging in using facebook more secure than email. People can create a facebook account people can create an email.

Author is fooled into false sense of security around facebook profiles. A facebook account can be just as fake as an email address.

<comment><USER9> The App company is piggybacking on Facebook's spam prevention algorithms instead of implementing or purchasing their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sigh, being paranoid bout this stuff makes it really hard to get laid :/

"Screw [dating app] lets meet with this cryptographically anonymous app instead" seems like a tough sell for most women tho.

<comment><USER11> > _" Screw [dating app] lets meet with this cryptographically anonymous app > instead" seems like a tough sell for most women tho._

"Sure, but please prepare a cryptographically signed recent lab report showing you've tested negative for all STDs. It would be best if the report was on blockchain."

<comment><USER10> think i heard a few yc applications just get filed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Possibly concerning as well is it looks like Tinder outsources their databases to a third party provider:

[https://blog.rackspace.com/tinder-swipes-right-for- rackspace...](https://blog.rackspace.com/tinder-swipes-right-for-rackspace- managed-cloud)

</comment><comment><USER13> Tinder actually let's you verify with a phonenumber instead of a facebook profile now.

Or at least they claim to

</comment><comment><USER14> Our app has a somewhat Tinder-like feel, though it's paid (escorts). I don't want to go overboard plugging, so see my profile for details. For fun, here's how we score on the article's items:

1\. No scammers. We require providers to be vetted in some way (references). Clients are going to need to provide screening to see providers.

2-A. We use our custom login system. Verifying your social media account is just a read-once thing we do; we don't ever have access to post. In fact, it is unlikely we'd even get approved for an API key on most platforms.

2-B. For launch we're pretty exclusionary :(. Focusing on cishet couplings, female provider. We're going to address that as soon as possible. Queer sex workers face additional challenges for sure.

3\. Data safety. Due to our company's legal status (extrajurisdictional), we have to deeply hide all data. Our servers don't have persistent storage, RAM only. (At boot, it's a manual restore from something like Tarsnap.) Only a few people have root or raw DB access. This does not include most devops people - they go through a change approval process. Real access is limited to core members heavily vested in the company with a need-to-know. More at [1], please ignore the clickbait title.

Another key point: connectivity is heavily restricted. App servers only have inbound socket from their hidden service, plus outbound to the DB layer hidden service. DB layer only has that inbound socket. DB requests are rate limited globally plus per user.

4\. We'll wipe your data shortly after deactivation _if_ there are no abuse reports on your account. In which case we keep a photo ID and birthdate so you can't sign up again and get a clean record. This is needed to protect user's safety. But at least a photo is not so readily searchable. Maybe Facebook can do it, but if we _were_ to somehow

1: [https://medium.com/@PinkApp/pink-app-trading-latency-for- ano...](https://medium.com/@PinkApp/pink-app-trading-latency-for-anonymity- and-other-techniques-815ee21c6da4)

<comment><USER15> I have to admit, combining prostitution, securities fraud, and blockchain technology in one single project is impressively ambitious even by normal startup standards.

<comment><USER14> Calling it securities _fraud_ is rather unfair if you ask me. Why do you say fraud? Sure, we do not follow the SEC rules. In fact, the SEC opinion on ICOs is what galvanized us to go all out and insist on offering real equity to investors. It's far better than the nonsense ICOs come up with to tokenize themselves.

People like the Tezos group, asking for donations... it is disgusting that investors go for that. Demand equity. We always choose morality over legality. Following SEC rules technically, while ripping off investors ... I'd rather be in the clear ethically.

The blockchain part is for payments, so not that big of a deal. Though to raise money, we'd be better off finding a blockchain angle to the platform! Truthfully though, our app is not breaking new tech ground, apart from privacy and security (see the link in my original post).

We are ambitious though! I think we'll be the first blockchain-funded unicorn. Escorting is fragmented and high friction, and we're going to fix it. Our VP of Product is an active sex worker and very tuned in to the real issues facing workers and clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> this is extremely basic, obvious, and probably below the technical level I'd expect from a HN fp item :(

it opens suggesting an insider's view, and then just list obvious trivia.

</comment><comment><USER17> its harder to create email accounts than it is facebook accounts, lately</comment>


Cycling and entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://www.pranavbhasin.com/2010/06/23/cycling-and-entrepreneurship/

<comment><USER2> As an avid cyclist for nearly 16 years, and working in the start-up world as a team member or starting my own business, for the last 12 years, I've often thought about this connection, and why cycling is so popular in Silicon Valley (though I don't live there, I've biked there).

It's great to hear the perspective of someone with a business background and new to cycling.

Though I disagree with the challenges point. I find that in cycling, you look at a peak and think "i'll never make it up there", but then put in the effort, and before you know it, you're at the top.

I've dreaded developing certain features, thinking that the task would take forever, and then, in a few hours, it's done. I've also had the experience where you think something will be simple, and it takes days or even weeks to get through it.

The 'gears to conserve energy' point is interesting too. I ride a single speed mountain bike and live in the Coast Mountains. I don't have the luxury of conserving energy on a climb. You gotta give it all you got, and keep your momentum.

Similar to how I look at start-ups.</comment>


Hand-crafted integers - <AUTHOR> http://www.missionintegers.com/

<comment><USER2> For the uninitiated, a very elaborate joke: (unique) integers as a service:

<http://brooklynintegers.com/about/>

<comment><USER3> That's pretty good. They are now my second favorite integer-related joke site. Almost, but not quite good enough to displace the prime-shitting bear: <http://alpha61.com/primenumbershittingbear/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> f'ing brilliant. And actually a usefully gentle introduction to API construction and use.</comment>


Show HN: Type-safe metaprogramming for Java (and other killer lang features) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/manifold-systems/manifold <comment><AUTHOR> Think code generators are the only way to type-safely connect your Java code to JSON, XML, SQL, Javascript, etc.? Think again. Manifold offers a radical new way to connect Java to structured data.

IntelliJ IDEA provides comprehensive support for Manifold via the Manifold Plugin. Connect directly to your data without wedging an expensive code gen step in your build. Make incremental changes to files and type-safely access the changes instantly. Plus usage searching, deterministic refactoring, navigation, template editing, hotswap debugging, etc.

Manifold is both an API to build powerful metaprogramming features AND a set of awesome prebuilt features such as: \- JSON Schema support \- Extension methods (like C# a Kotlin) \- Template files, 100% Java scripted \- Structural Typing (like TypeScript and Go) \- more

Manifold is just a JAR file you can drop into your existing project – you can begin using it incrementally without having to rewrite classes or conform to a new way of doing things.

Give it a go: [http://manifold.systems/](http://manifold.systems/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Uhhh... How in the world does this work?! This is amazing. I hate IDE's and Java, but this makes me want to use both of them.</comment>


Anyone else thinks that Whiteboard interview is just covered ageism? - <AUTHOR> It's the second time in a few months I'm being turned down with the pretext of a failed whiteboard interview. Things like improper syntax and not getting the damned recursive solution fast enough. Given that I am 42 yrs old and been at this line of work for 14 yrs now I think it's safe to assume that I neither have the time nor the appetite to constantly exercise on solving mind puzzles in whiteboard. I am good at what I do -and I do it at a top level company- but it has nothing to do with coding on a whiteboard. I'm sure that anyone who is a few years _out_ of the university and _into_ a real job finds it both hard and surreal to go through these hoops to land a job. Whiteboarding simply tests for skills that are not needed nor exercised once you're out of uni.
Thinking all that it then dawned on me. Maybe this abomination is just a way to take out older candidates and favor young ones. A form of ageism that is legally safe for the company.
Dunno - what's your thoughts?
By whiteboarding here I mean testing the form of questions one can find in places like hackerank and the like. Obviously, drawing a large system design or using a whiteboard as an aid to describe/analyze other aspects of a system is not the topic I'm touching on here.
PS 1: I'm done with that sh1tshow myself. I sincerely hope I'm never that desperate to put myself through that again.
PS 2: For what is worth here's a repo with all companies that do not use whiteboarding: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards <comment><USER5> I'm even older than you and have no problem with using a whiteboard during interviews. That said, interviewers who get hung up about precise syntax are poor interviewers and need coaching. Or are just looking for an excuse to ding someone. More to the point, I don't see how asking to put answers to technical questions on a whiteboard favors younger people over older people.

<comment><USER6> I agree. What would age have to do with recalling syntactic idiosyncrasies, or being able to theorize about problems with a dry-erase marker and a whiteboard (or a pen and pencil, or a keyboard and a computer)?

Reading between the lines, you seem upset about having to answer questions about technical problems you perceive to be irrelevant, and that these technical problems are more likely to be solved successfully by those who have recently practiced them (e.g. graduates).

I too agree that, while abstract technical interview questions have little bearing on most day-to-day work, they do some things quite well:

1 - Define a well-bounded problem of sufficient difficulty 2 - Give the interviewee a good baseline for objective success 3 - Exercise a person's mind to think about complicated problems

While they are contrived and not entirely representative of daily work, they are not without value.

<comment><USER7> I think most of the dislike comes from the tendency of typical whiteboard questions to favor someone who happens to have seen a very similar problem recently, the same way someone who comes up with the correct answer to a brain teaser very quickly is usually someone who's seen it before. Many rely on that, in fact, since otherwise they'd be asking people to come up with a publishable (once published, perhaps) finding, under pressure, on the spot, in maybe an hour.

This might be fine if the "very similar problem" is something you'd likely have encountered in your work, but often they questions are drawn from a pool that _most_ people in this line of work see rarely if at all, and if they do it's likely to be some very small subset of the questions, so dedicated study of the remainder of the pool still puts one at a large advantage, regardless how useful it is in doing your actual work.

They're measures of "how bad you want it" (how much of your time you spent memorizing stuff you don't actually use to prep for the interviews) and/or how recently you took an algorithms course. And maybe those are things worth measuring, I dunno. Maybe the absence of strong enough signals on either of those is important enough that it makes sense to use them to reject people who are otherwise very capable of doing the actual work.

<comment><USER8> > Many rely on that, in fact, since otherwise they'd be asking people to come > up with a publishable (once published, perhaps) finding, under pressure, on > the spot, in maybe an hour.

In much of science the hard part is asking the right question rather than coming up with the solution, so figuring out these algorithms is not equivalent to making publishable research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "It's the second time in a few months I'm being turned down with the pretext of a failed whiteboard interview. Things like improper syntax and not getting the damned recursive solution fast enough."

Is it a pretext, or did you actually fail the interview? I want to work for West-coast-pay company at some point, and it seems that the idea there is for me to spend 6 months learning stuff I will never use, so I can compete with the kids who spent 4 years learning mostly stuff they will never use.

That is, if I fail it, it's not because I am older, it's because I don't know stuff fresh grads know.

IT is full of grinding pretty meaningless stuff (especially at lower levels), as much as we romanticize it.

<comment><USER10> > _That is, if I fail it, it 's not because I am older, it's because I don't > know stuff fresh grads know._

I believe this is exactly the point that the parent poster is making. You don't know the stuff fresh grads know _because_ you're older (obviously this isn't an absolute, but likely). Therefor, structuring the interview around stuff that only fresh graduates are likely to be up-to-date with would be discriminating against older people.

If you fail, it _is_ at least related to you being older, if the focus of the interview was designed around hiring fresh graduates.

<comment><USER11> College dropout here. Young people sometimes don't know this stuff either.

This is probably less ageist than it is education-ist, which is not too far away from classist.

Personally, I do think it's worth testing candidates on these pure CS skills, even though I myself didn't have them and had to study before I interviewed at Google. What I've found since then is:

1\. Surprise, surprise, I actually have used quite a few of these concepts in my work. My experience may not be typical, but my role really does benefit from my having a better grounding in algorithms than I did before.

2\. When communicating with other people at the company, it is _very_ helpful to be able to presume a baseline understanding of algorithms, data structures, and big-O. A lot of code reviews and design discussions are easier and faster when you can just say "yeah, but that's O(n^2)" or "BFS would let you early out more frequently here".

As an interview technique, I also think there is some value in testing an arbitrary skill a candidate might not have, because it's a good gauge of hustle and discipline. Yeah, learning algorithms is a chore and a hassle. But... a lot of shit you have to do at work is a chore and a hassle.

If the interviewer can see that you're able to make yourself do that for the interview, it's a good sign you'll have the discipline to do some of the grunge work that is inescapable in the software field.

<comment><USER12> I agree with your first points, but...

> Yeah, learning algorithms is a chore and a hassle

> If the interviewer can see that you're able to make yourself do that for the > interview, it's a good sign you'll have the discipline to do some of the > grunge work...

This doesn't make any sense, unless very, very specific bounds are put on the interview questions beforehand...

Without that, what is a candidate to do? Memorize all known data structures and algorithms?

<comment><USER11> _> Memorize all known data structures and algorithms?_

No, but you should know the classics. That's kind of the "general contract" for how these big tech companies interview. Most also proactively tell candidates what material they should expect to be interviewed on, like:

[https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/interview/#onsite- int...](https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/interview/#onsite-interviews)

A good interviewer is not aiming to ask gotcha questions where if you don't know that one specific weird algorithm for that one specific data structure, you're entirely hosed. That provides almost no useful signal to the interviewer.

But they will ask questions where some well known data structure is part of the solution and then provide guidance as needed based on what you seem to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're writing code on a whiteboard in an interview, syntax, library calls, etc, should not at all be part of the evaluation process. You dodged a bullet on that one.

Being able to "get the recursive solution fast enough"? Depends a lot on the expectations, might or might not be an eliminating criterion. Definitely a problem e.g. for functional-heavy environments, where that style of reasoning is expected to be your bread and butter.

In the general case, I've seen fairly senior developers crash and burn on basic programming interviews (be they on a whiteboard, on a laptop, or whatever other format) due to genuinely weak programming skills, so I don't agree with the assumption that some candidates are "above" these interviews.

Also, a lot of seemingly pointless questions are good questions phrased wrong. E.g. I will never ask you to implement depth-first tree traversal on a whiteboard, but will ask to pretty print a directory structure, and make a note of whether a candidate notices this actually _is_ depth-first traversal dressed up as a practical day-to-day problem.

Of course, just because the interview format is not fundamentally flawed doesn't mean that plenty of companies don't mess up implementing it in practice...

Then again, your PSes suggest you don't want a reasoned discussion so much as you just needed to get that off your chest, which is fair enough.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my experience, whiteboard interviews are absolutely a form of gatekeeping. Whether the firms know it or not, they are excluding candidates who would have succeeded in the role by including weird unrelated side content in the interview. As the OP rightly mentions, nothing you program on a whiteboard has any application once you are actually in the job. It can be incredibly frustrating to know that you can do the work of a job, but be denied because of an old superstitious test.

The only silver lining is that, ultimately, companies hire the candidates they interview for. If a company makes its hiring decisions based on trivia quizzing and whiteboards, they'll ultimately produce software that reflects that. During my last big job search, I eventually started asking upfront if there was whiteboard coding in the interview. I don't want to waste my time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Beyond whiteboard based coding being a bad medium, on-the-spot programming exercises are a super noisy, poor medium for assessment compared to the alternative: a work sample in the form of a 4-8 hour programming exercise done by the person on their own terms. No exploding deadline, no restrictions on tools other than those necessary to show the person's relevant job skills. Make a bunch of them, put the time into them, and let the candidate have a chance to pick from a library of exercises that are interesting and fun to do.

The main downside to a work sample is that a lot of people will say they simply don't have the time to do it. That's fine, you'll lose some people, but you'll also have people applying who really want to work for the company. From there, you'll have a small number of people who do a great job on it. By the time they are in your office interviewing, the idea that you'd reject them because of a slip-up on a small coding exercise on a whiteboard is absurd, because you already have a mountain of evidence regarding their skills as a programmer. The in-interview exercises will be there to test other skills like communication and collaboration, not writing good programs.

<comment><USER11> I think there's a good argument that larger-scale work-sample exercises like this are even _more_ ageist because older candidates are more likely to have family commitments that give them less free time to allocate for things like this.

<comment><USER15> Frankly, I've heard this before and I disagree. (I'm a parent.) It does mean you have to be selective with regards to what companies you apply to: you don't have infinite time (and nor does anyone.)

It's a catch-22, however. I look for companies that have good interview processes, because it means they are going to have good employees. I feel pretty strongly that good skill assessment is a critical component to hiring good people. I don't think you can hire programmers based upon resumes, references, or 'track record' alone. I think you need to assess their skills in a very deep way during the interview process, since there are a lot of candidates who look good on paper and can talk the talk (deliberately) but when actually put to work aren't up to the job.

So, I look highly upon companies that actually provide a good forum for showcasing my skills: not just because it means my interview will be fair, but it also means that the people I'm working with will have had their skills assessed in a similar way. I'm willing to make that tradeoff in time and prioritization. It's basically this tradeoff: unless you think you can hire good programmers without a assessment, you either should expect to be assessed (and should look kindly upon assessment mechanisms you feel do a good job of assessing your skills, like a work sample), or you should expect to work with less skilled programmers, on average, if you get the job.

edit: should add, I love your game programming book! :) thanks for writing it.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I agree with you overall. I'm not crazy about the algorithms-on-a- whiteboard process, even after having been on the other side of the table many times. I have very little confidence on my ability to judge someone's suitability as an engineer based on their performance at a whiteboard.

At the same time, I just wanted to point out that deeper interviews have flaws too. The time commitment is a real challenge, in particular for people that have kids or are in an economic place where they may be working multiple jobs. You don't want someone's inability to commit the time to interview to inadvertently filter them out. Especially because the people who have the least time are often the ones most in need of a good-paying, stable software job.

 _> edit: should add, I love your game programming book! :) thanks for writing it._

You're welcome! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tend to avoid places that whiteboard, the one time I did have to do it I sucked it up only because a friend stuck their neck out to get me the interview. I was told syntax didn't have to be perfect. Yeah I think they may come up with stupid excuses basically to not hire you.

Honestly, interviews go two ways: you figure out if you _really_ want to work there, and they do as well. If they don't want you, assume it's for the best, you would of had to deal with worse: coworkers who hate your personality or have a toxic personality.

<comment><USER17> _you figure out if you really want to work there, and they do as well_

I don't think this can be overstated. If you don't enjoy the interview process, you probably don't want to work there.

At the same time, interviewing is often the only way you can find out if a company is really serious about hiring. In my experience, most companies with organized HR have certain positions that they are "always hiring". Which isn't really true, they just want to have the light on in case a rock star happens to be looking for a job.

I've been on a bunch of interviews where it was clear neither the company or hiring manager was enthusiastic about finding someone to fill a position, but that HR was pressuring them to keep the light on.

<comment><USER18> _I don 't think this can be overstated. If you don't enjoy the interview process, you probably don't want to work there._

I disagree with this. The interview that I enjoyed the most was with founders who took me out for beer. We talked a bit about software but most of the discussion was small talk.

After a few months of working there, I realized that some of the people in the office didn't really have any qualifications except "liking beer" and it wasn't a professionally interesting place to work.

My least pleasant interview experience was with Google but I enjoy working there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was not prepared when I had my last interview like this, but if I ever go interviewing again I'll make sure to have my own algorithmic problem at hand (to which I'd know by heart all the tricks and improvements).

Then at the end of the interview I'll ask the interviewers to solve the problem (or just give a description of how it would work). Point being - <USER2> they interview you on this stuff but can't do it themselves without knowing the solutions before, then how could they reasonably claim to be assessing you? And would you want to work for someone who does this to potential employees?

It sometimes seems like these interviews are d __k measuring contests between the two parties.

<comment><USER20> That's perfect. If you think an interview went badly. Give them an algorithm problem at the question session that very likely they won't be able to solve. That's a perfect way to show them their bias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It amazes me people still actually do this. Why would you, in 2019, not just ask a person to bring their laptop with their preferred development environment set up on it and ask them to solve some basic coding exercises there instead.

Physically writing code with a marker on a wall seems akin to asking a mechanic applying for a job to demonstrate their skill at repairing cars by performing a 'repair' on a miniature car made of lego bricks.

Edit: one thing I noticed once I started having candidates work on their own laptop was a) some very unqualified people slipped through the screen and this can be obvious when they have no programming tools on their personal machine and b) you can learn a lot quickly from seeing someone use their own machine -- you get a clean signal if they are adept at using their text editor, git, build tools, etc, without risk of a contrived setup making it a false negative.

<comment><USER21> Square's interview was like that a few years ago. Even has pair programming with the interviewer. Most fun I had in an interview!

Still stings when you thought you had a positive experience but they didnt think so. Only other time I had that experience was with first dates that I thought went well.

<comment><USER15> Yep nobody likes getting turned down by a potential employer, but it stings 'less' if you feel like you were treated fairly and given an objective, un- biased forum to showcase your skills. Nothing is more demoralizing than being able to replay in your head the point in the interview where you got 'dinged' for something ridiculous due to a quirk of the process like marker-based- programming and feeling that sent you on the trajectory for a rejection. In those scenarios, it can even be a self-fullfilling prophecy, since if you are intimidated by marker-based-programming it can just lead to little mistakes due to nerves that ultimately cost you the job.

<comment><USER21> > Nothing is more demoralizing than being able to reply in your head the point > in the interview where you got 'dinged' for something ridiculous due to a > quirk of the process like marker-based-programming and feeling that sent you > on the trajectory for a rejection.

Honestly, I'm so desensitized to that so I don't feel that way. I go in expecting a random brain teaser that I BS my way through.

I actually land most jobs by recycling interview questions and answers from prior interviews.

"Let me know if you've seen this question before" NOPE

But more companies have also done more core competency related exercises with IDE's set up or take home exercises. Haven't been paid for a take home exercise yet, but I'm hearing thats happening a little more too. I think a lot of startups in the bay area are content that their employees will stay for around 18 months, so they dont need the brainteaser rationale that they need to interview an engineer on the idea that they change teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't have a problem with whiteboarding, I collaborate with teammates all the time to design rough sketches and even bits of code on the whiteboard. The only critism I would have is if the interviewer is overly strict on things like syntax and API names.

White boarding questions should be related to the fundamentals of computer science and programming. Trees, hashes and arrays have been and will be around forever, it's fair game in an interview setting.

<comment><USER20> Right but these questions can get mind bending. Like count the amount of ways to make change for a dollar. That's a basic tree question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Anyone else thinks that Whiteboard interview is just covered ageism?_

It really depends on who is interviewing you. It can be. Even the Google Hangouts, screen-sharing one can be. I've definitely had that sense from one interview.

 _Given that I am 42 yrs old and been at this line of work for 14 yrs now_

I'm a bit older than you, and have just a bit more experience, so I think I know where you are coming from.

 _Whiteboarding simply tests for skills that are not needed nor exercised once you 're out of uni._

Again, this greatly depends on who is applying the technique and how it is being applied. It _can_ be applied to see if the person can actually do the kind of systems thinking to put a new design together and make it specifiable, such that someone could go and implement it.

That said, I've also taught courses to high school, college, and professional students, and I think the skill set for interviewing and the difficulty of learning good application of the techniques is of the same scale as teaching. In other words, don't expect to get good outcomes by just giving interviewers a few seminars, then telling them to go at it. You'll get the same level of interviewing as the level of teaching you get by doing the same thing to TA's with no experience.

The biggest single issue I've seen in whiteboard interviews, is the interviewers being hyper focused on what they want to find, and not listening to what the candidate is saying.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yesterday I read that Google actually decreases their expectations in the white boarding exercises for experienced hires because they realize the leetcoding techniques will not be as fresh in an experienced dev's mind. The expectations are higher in regards to system design and resume questions. That seems to be fair imo.

Later in the material it said that they reject over 80% of people who make it onsite. The bar at FAANGs is just relatively high regardless what kind of role you are trying to get. My mentality is preparing for high bar whiteboard interviews best case lands a job at a FAANG and worst case makes it incredibly easier to land a job elsewhere at a company that doesn't rely on whiteboarding or has a lower bar in general. That's to say investing in whiteboard practice has little downside and has an acceptable time/reward ratio given the results if you are even just ok at it. In terms of ageism whiteboarding is not required to filter older devs out. Resumes viewing can do that. Why would they waste 6+ hours of their expensive Sr. devs time to put someone through a pointless exercise? Serious candidates will commit the same 1-3 months of study whether they are 23 or 43.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear that. I went through that hell (of course fell into the 80%) a few moths ago. Needless to say I was in total awe by the whole process. Awe as in, what the heck did I waste whole weeks for? How can the -seemingly best IT company- hire like that? Funniest part was that the recruiter giving me the bad news was assuming that I'd spent some more time in the future trying again to get in g. Like this is a life purpose or sth and she actually mentioned exactly that. Most people don't get in at first attempt. Which is like saying "we know we do it wrong because we hire the same people the second time around" so what the heck is all that supposed to test? Perseverance? Anyway - after that I had serious doubts that I'd ever be happy working there anyway so I was pretty confident that there wouldn't be no second time.

<comment><USER25> They hire that way because they are optimizing to avoid hiring bad engineers. Their entire process is shaped around that goal. In such a process, passing on good people is not considered a problem -- especially when they will reapply, which they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it's a bit in between. FWIW, at 54 I've never failed a whiteboard interview, including at my current FAANG employer, so this is most certainly not sour grapes.

While not _deliberately_ ageist, I think whiteboard interviews work out a bit that way. What can be tested in such an interview? Only a sampling of domain knowledge. It will tend to be a sample weighted toward the particular problems and algorithms that will be super-fresh in the minds of people still in or fresh out of school (usually because the interviewers themselves are). To someone older but still well versed in that domain, those _particular_ details might have been crowded out by a thousand other things learned since. They might seem less familiar because of changes in language, notation, or idiom. Those same differences will also affect how the result is "graded" even if the candidate solves the problem quickly and well.

Whiteboard interviews also fail to measure other things such as ability to select algorithms or higher-level approaches, people or organizational skills, industry knowledge, or a developed "instinct" about what symptoms suggest what problems in the relevant kinds of code. As more weight is given to whiteboard skills, less weight is given to literally everything else.

As I said, I don't think any of this _intentionally_ disadvantages older workers, but it can have that effect without intention. It has never hurt me personally, but I have plenty of peers who I know beyond doubt could code rings around the people who interviewed them. They just couldn't dance that particular dance well enough in that moment and got rejected. That's a loss for the (potential) employer as well as for them.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not saying that whiteboard interviews are perfect, but is there something inherent to them that makes them favorable to younger applicants? Your main argument to this effect is:

> Whiteboarding simply tests for skills that are not needed nor exercised once > you're out of uni.

But I don't know if "whiteboarding skills" are any more useful _during_ college either. Also, I always thought explanations were the crucial part of the interview, and I think technical explanation is an important skill.

That said, it may be a flawed practice. I'm open to arguments to that effect. But so is everything else[1]. I'm interested to hear some thoughts.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law)

</comment><comment><USER28> 100% not ageism. Whiteboarding itself is just a skill to practice. I don't pick jobs based on the interview process, I pick the companies I wanted to join and practice the skills needed to pass the interview. After 10 years in the industry my whiteboarding was always terrible until my last round of interviews where I decided to actually focus on it and I passed the interviews at Facebook and Google. My problem was that I could always solve the problems but I was too slow without the keyboard and the compiler to help. So I practiced writing code without those tools and got faster. I think if anything my experience helped, so I've come around on whiteboarding. It's not perfect, but any good coder can learn it and the bar is not really that high.

</comment><comment><USER29> Same with "culture fit" interviews imo. How people don't think they just create massive bias is amazing to me.

<comment><USER30> "Not the right culture fit" is pretty much code for "we have reasons we'd like to reject the candidate which we don't want to go into too much detail about".

The vaguer the reason for rejection the more suspicious I tend to be that it's at least implicitly related to some sort of shameful prejudice.

<comment><USER31> Dinging a candidate on culture fit is very rare for me, and basically means "I think some people would quit to avoid working with this guy."

<comment><USER30> IME when a candidate gets dinged for a reason that would make people quit to avoid working with him (e.g. "he obviously doesn't shower") then people don't tend to invoke the words "culture fit".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I do not think white boarding is a cover for ageism.

I think a group collaborative exercise where you're sketching, drawing, or otherwise visualizing an abstract concept to explain a point, answer a question, or justify a decision is a skill that talented, effective people can leverage regularly to get great results at work.

I think testing for this skill is a really good idea.

I think that doing this in a way that's equitable and emotionally supportive to the candidate takes thoughtfulness and effort, and not every company/person in this process does this well.

I also think there's a great number of people who turn this concept in to a boogeyman to rationalize their interpersonal or technical ineffectiveness.

I would use a whiteboard interview to evaluate a candidate (and have), I would happily submit to a whiteboard interview (and have), and I think that all things being equal, the noise around them mostly comes from people who perform poorly on them and if I'm a betting man, a team made up of people who performed well on an equitable, well structured whiteboarding exercise would outperform one made of people who did not in the work context of building software as a team.

</comment><comment><USER33> Some of the most impressive whiteboard/coderpad performances I've seen have been from middle aged candidates. When someone has been using a language for 15+ years, their agility and fluency in expressing their algorithmic ideas in code is incredible. Most candidates seem to understand and articulate a solution by the end of the interview, but it's the fluent ones who can prove it with end to end working code.

</comment><comment><USER34> Whiteboard interviews would be great if they tested the kind of things that we would do on a whiteboard, namely design and _maybe_ pseudocode. If someone is interviewing for an algorithm job, I'd expect they could write text in boxes that might describe how the algorithm works. If someone is interviewing for a front end position, I'd expect that they could draw some boxes describing the UI, and depending on the underlying technology maybe add the info on the containers and subwindows, or describing the MVC model, or high level actions drawn with arrows that show what gets affected if some button or UI item is pressed or selected. If someone is being hired for a networking job, then I might expect to draw up some boxes that show a topology for some scenario and identify where the security structures might need to be. For a straight-up programming job, maybe I could see drawing flow charts or sequence diagrams or something that might actually be useful to draw out. I would certainly not expect to write code on a whiteboard. That's not what whiteboards are for.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've been on both sides of the whiteboard interview (candidate and interviewer), and I've failed a good number of them. The last one I had as a candidate was about 4 years ago, incidentally when I was 42 (I did get that job and I'm still with the same company).

The best whiteboard interview evaluates a candidate for technical skills and soft skills at the same time. I want to see if candidates ask questions and can deal successfully with ambiguity as much as knowing the "right" answer. At the same time I'm asking questions about their previous work, specifically looking for concrete examples of how they balance the needs of different stakeholders in a project.

The worst whiteboard interviews look to evaluate knowledge of a specific algorithm, and don't provide help when the candidate is stuck. The very worst is just a pretext to cover up the interviewers biases.

In my experience, the right company is out there for you, but as an older candidate it can take waiting a long time for the right opportunity where you can highlight the specific skills you've spent your life accumulating.

</comment><comment><USER36> i wouldn't take it too personally nor read too much into it. the whiteboard interview wants to extract signal ranging from "make sure this person isn't a complete n00b/fraud" to really relevant problems that should probably be eminently doable, depending on role. but due to a variety of factors it doesn't do this very well. for many the biggest is social pressure where at least 1 person is completely watching you work, which is stressful if novel or you're shy. or lack of familiar tooling, or whatever.

yes there are myriad better ways to extract this signal but, as the saying goes, you get to choose the game you play but not its rules. you've enumerated one option which is refusing whiteboard interviews, but you could also level up your whiteboard game without too too much effort. personally i don't think it's time to reach for malice after 2 failed attempts at something i'm inferring you haven't done in awhile.

</comment><comment><USER37> You're suspicions and frustrations are valid and are based on your experience alone. No one else here was in those interview rooms with you and if you subconsciously picked up on the presence of an age bias you probably weren't pulling it out of thin air. In my experience in multiple industries as both interviewer and interviewee I've felt similar biases and often had them inarguably confirmed. And I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I've partially acted on such biases as well in rare cases. Interviewees deserve better treatment and more transparency, period. No one should have the right to exert that kind of toxic power dynamic on a fellow professional. I'm 32 in a new workplace in SF and I can already feel the subtle force of ageism lurking in the subtext of interactions with coworkers. I appreciated this post, thank you for speaking out on this. PS I love white-boarding.

</comment><comment><USER38> There's a basic truth about being a knowledge worker that most people don't think about. This truth holds for young, old, programmer and non-programmer alike.

If you want to stay relevant and fresh long term, you need to be continuously learning. You can get away with not worrying about ongoing learning in the short term, say 8 years or less, but in the long term it's going to catch up with you.

This is one key reason programmers tend to move to other careers or into management after 10+ years: it's a lot of work to continuously learn. And worse than that, it's uncomfortable and makes you feel dumb when you know you're really smart and capable. Learning to embrace that feeling of being dumb, of being a beginner, is key to growth. And once you stop growing and learning, you start getting old.

For developers this means learning new languages, techniques, technologies, methodologies. If we accept that this learning is going to be happening, then it's not too much to ask that data structures and algorithms refreshers are part of this ongoing learning say 1 out of every 3 or 4 years.

Most engineers actually don't do this, and just stick with what they've been doing for the most part. Or just happen to passively learn whatever is rolling by them in the course of doing their job.

For engineering, there are actually tons of things that need to be studied that are technically not part of the job: writing skills, communication skills, math skills. Sometimes these things help you even though they're not part of the daily grind. The same goes for algorithms and data structures.

Studying these things also sends a signal to your interviewer: you're willing to go figure it out even when it's not fun and not convenient. As a hiring manager, I like that. And we can debate whether it's a good thing, but it is what the situation is at many places. Plus, it's fun to study a lot of it, so it's a good option to get on the learning.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Whiteboarding simply tests for skills that are not needed nor exercised once > you're out of uni.

In today's tech industry, these algorithm questions is now used as an effort to trip up candidates and to always try to "See how you think" in an unrealistic scenario. The questions I've been given and have seen are mostly irrelevant and are always done for us in the libraries I use at work.

I had interviewed at one startup in the UK who asked me a algorithm question that they admitted that they don't use and their excuse is the same: "To see how you think." Not only this doesn't make sense if one has already seen this problem, but the fact that they don't use it makes you wonder the real reason why they are doing this.

The simple answer is: Because it works for FAANG (Who actually do use these algorithms); Thus everyone else copies them. This is why hiring in this industry is a complete circus.

> Things like improper syntax and not getting the damned recursive solution > fast enough.

A problem statement like that is like: `Design and implement the optimal solution to this 'problem' in X language in less than 15 minutes.`

This is a red flag for you as a candidate who is allowing room for the interviewer to nit-pick you here to waste your time. It should never be that important to worry about the specific language semantics here due to the time limit. But again the interviewer is there to be impressed on how much the candidate knows about the intricate details of the language + data structure + algorithms all in 15 minutes which is nonsensical requirements for a typical software engineering role.

Frankly speaking, the interview dance in the tech-industry is an excuse to trip up candidates who have not practiced for more than 6-9 months on data structures and algorithms and the latest tools that everyone is adopting. It is so 'broken' that interviewing at FAANG companies is an entire industry itself.

For them, whiteboarding like this is essentially trying to find a silver needle in the sky.

<comment><USER25> A lot of teams at FAANG companies don't use those algorithms either.

However, if you want to hire generalist programmers who are good at solving problems and can work on a variety of projects, it's perfectly reasonable to want to see how they think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've only done whiteboarding in interviews for system diagram type stuff and explaining high level ideas. At my job, this is mostly what we use the whiteboards for in day-to-day work. Some people say they built a system, but when you ask them to draw the boxes and arrows to describe how data flows, it becomes obvious what pieces (if any) they actually touched. I think the people who do best in these are either more senior in their careers or have done a lot of side-projects from scratch. They have either seen a system evolve over time and solved scaling bottlenecks or they've set up many systems with a few different stacks and have thought about what the pieces are for.

</comment><comment><USER41> It depends. If you're talking about whiteboarding code, I only have to do that once a year or so, usually because I'm in a meeting and want to demonstrate what I mean and code is easier. If you're talking about whiteboarding a design, I do that much more frequently. I prefer a pair programming exercise in this case, but I've reverted to whiteboard in cases where there were technical issues. It's not my favorite but neither is trying to do it in a text editor without support.

I see nothing wrong in having to show a high level design of a system as a senior engineer, because we are asked to do that quite often.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm older as well, but I usually ask my candidates to use the whiteboard to workout solutions. It demonstrates that you can communicate effectively, as well as think on your feet :) I don't think it should be all about coding riddles, but I also don't think you should be surprised by them.

As a developer, I've always used whiteboarding as a way to communicate ideas, architecture, etc. There have been whiteboards in every office of every company I've worked at.

I'd say somewhere around 75% of all interviews I've had for positions at other companies have included whiteboarding.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't see ageism in it.

If you're, say, six years out of school you are still quite young but your school skills that might give you an advantage at a whiteboard will be pretty damn rusty.

Interviews in general are not really "fair" since the employer really has no way to get out of a short meeting (or series of short meetings) what they really want to know.

Given that it isn't possible to have reasonable certainty and the massive cost of being wrong, a strategy of erring on the side of rejecting good candidates rather than accepting poor candidates isn't unreasonable as long as you feel your pool of candidates is rich enough.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm young and have also been turned down often due to whiteboard interviews. What surprises me is that you were only rejected twice in a few months. I had to go through many, many more rejections than that much quicker than that before I found a good fit. Don't assume these interviews favor young people, it certainly didn't feel like that to me. I think most places just want to reject most people, because it's easier to justify rejecting someone good than accepting someone bad.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm going through this right now, with 26 years of professional experience and an undergrad degree in CompSci.

There are many problems with hiring. Many. And as with standardized testing in public schools, one problem is how to judge the capability of many people (applicants, in this case) in a reasonable time, ESPECIALLY when the judges may not be experts in all relevant topics. The popular answer is to test against standards that are easy to measure. In the end, the companies may end up with fewer false positives (hiring an idiot), but will accept the likelihood of having more false negatives (missing out on a good employee).

I don't agree with this approach, but mainly because of more a fundamental reason. The #1 reason that most hiring is broken nowadays is that it focuses on specific skills (often an unlikely/unrealistic laundry-list of technologies) rather than focusing on the candidate's ability to learn, think, and communicate.

Regarding filtering out older candidates, this is more a side effect of testing on topics that would be more familiar to more recent grads. Likewise, if interviews included demonstrating how a candidate would choose between C#, Python, Ruby, Go, C++, Java, or Javascript for a given fantasy scenario, or when to choose between bare metal servers onsite or virtualized hardware onsite or managed or unmanaged cloud resources, younger and less experienced candidates would fail more than older ones. They just don't have enough experiences in different situations to know how to make these decisions (with an reasoning to back them up).

The practical reality that I see is that older developers just may not be worth the extra cost compared to younger, less experienced ones. This will be especially true in many corporate environments where the more experienced, more senior dev will have higher expectations, want more authority and autonomy, and otherwise feel stymied by corporate drag. If the older worker hasn't ascended into management, they have little road left to travel.

What many of us older devs didn't realize is the situation we would now be in. At this point, we must forge our own paths - by starting a consulting business, forming a startup, building a SaaS or other income-generating product, etc. It does little good to be angry at the system (since our complaints will absolutely not change anything).

</comment><comment><USER46> I buy this. But then again, why go through all the trouble? They can just reject you once they see how old you are (and blame something else or not tell you at all).

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm 45, had dozens of interviews in the last 10 years, only one or two rejections and 5 jobs. I am a developer and haven't had anything resembling a white board interview.

For the job I have now, I was hired as a developer but never actually had any development related questions besides asking about my previous projects and architectural decisions. I also don't live anywhere near Silicon Valley and mostly worked at your standard Enterprise shops.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please contribute the names of these companies to [https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without- whiteboards](https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards) You'd make me and a lot other people a big big favor. Thanks a mil.

<comment><USER47> I can tell you that it's every company I've interviewed with in Atlanta for the last 20 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Anyone can crash and burn in a situation like that, particularly since it sounds like they are putting too much emphasis on the wrong things. I have had a couple of interviewers go back to the question and ask how I would approach it in a more realistic setting, meaning that they were more interest in process than the solution. Unfortunately, that was the exception rather than the rule.

</comment><comment><USER49> If we stipulate that whiteboard interviews might be useful for evaluating candidates in some cases, a good whiteboard interview would have specific criteria expressed in some sort of rubric or other document. That document would be shared with the candidate and evaluator(s) in advance of the interview. This ensures that the candidate and evaluators have a shared notion of what constitutes success before the interview. An opaque process, unfortunately, can cultivate the type of suspicion that you're expressing here. It sounds like your whiteboard interviews did not give you a good sense of the types of skills they were looking to evaluate during the interview.

I think it's great that you have such high self-esteem and aren't doubting yourself just because some other people don't see your value. That said, I think more data is needed before concluding that whiteboard interviews in general are tantamount to an age filter.

Edit: please note that I have said "if we stipulate," not "if we accept as an a priori truth" that whiteboard interviews are good. It's simply a rhetorical device for evaluating whether or not your whiteboard interview is at risk for evaluator bias.

<comment><USER14> This is a ridiculous position to take. The amount of code that I have to write on a whiteboard to successfully do my job as an engineer is shockingly close to nil. The very notion of having a whiteboard section for a programming job is insane.

You wouldn't expect a driver's test to include a significant oral portion, where the drivers spend an hour describing how they would parallel park. A whiteboard interview makes just as much sense, regardless if you're sharing a rubric.

<comment><USER25> Whether or not whiteboard interviews make sense for programmers is a different question than whether or not they are intended as an age filter.

<comment><USER14> If there is a portion of a programming interview that doesn't make sense for programmers; but the results of this section skew the results of the interview highly towards recent college graduates, what would you say is going on?

<comment><USER49> I think you're addressing a symptom, not a problem. When any candidate evaluation process is opaque, you invite bias into the process. Whether whiteboard interviews are useful or not is subject to debate (it's not a factual statement that whiteboard interviews are universally bad). Whether a whiteboard interview is done fairly and without bias is a different proposition altogether, and the interviewers can do a lot in order to address this concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm a bit older than you, and am really wary and tired of lame interview stuff too.

</comment><comment><USER51> IMHO two samples isn't quite enough to form useful data. It's a rough trend, certainly, but more tests are needed to be sure.

Could be you dodged a bullet. Could be the interviewers were hungry. Could be they didn't like your clothes.

42 is not that old.

<comment><USER52> Could be his attitude. The older we get, the more rigid we come across. I know I personally put up with a lot less shit than I used to, hence why I doubt many would want to work with me - and that's fine by me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is a discrimination issue, and this thread is full of comments about people that have not been discriminated against. good for you, but it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER54> I think leetcoding has become the norm to increase the friction when considering new job opportunities and keep wages lower. It incentivizes people to cut down on job hopping.

<comment><USER55> That makes zero sense. Companies may want to increase friction for people leaving them but they want to DECREASE friction for people joining them. Using white boarding as part of your recruiting process would increase friction in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER54> If everyone uses whiteboards and leetcode, existing employers win. Now, I'm less incentivized to join $NEW_FANG because I have other obligations in life and can't commit to that much leetcode. On second thought, it does lead into the OP's point: it seems like a legal proxy for age discrimination. New grads, which will work for less and offer no experience (beyond internships), will have more aptitude for leetcode-style assessment.

<comment><USER55> Read my comment again. White boarding increases friction in the wrong direction. Companies make decisions to benefit themselves, not the industry as a whole.

Also hiring people who are willing to work for less money is not age discrimination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Literally only college grads are marginally good at that. Nobody likes whiteboard interviews and has to brush up. Everyone knows tech interviews are inefficient.

2nd interview in a few months you were rejected? The only ageism here is that you probably dont have time to interview at the number of companies that your competition does. Last time I interviewed I did 16 interviews in one month at probably a dozen companies, received 2 offers. There are some blogs posted here where people talk about doing many many more than that.

I would say whiteboards suck but no not the ageism you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER56> You're giving zero details here aside from "i failed the whiteboard interview and it was horrible"

What happened?

Maybe it's you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Most juniors fails white-boarding as well, so we can assume that most seniors would fail whiteboard interviews when they were young as well. So I think this isn't ageism, just people with lots of experience who don't want to admit that they weren't the top X% of their cohort. Of course it is easy to believe you could have passed them back then due to the Dunning Kruger and the "Good Old days" effect, but that doesn't mean that it is true.

If your argument is that you barely passed those interviews a decade ago and it takes too much energy to practice again, then I'll say it is a feature. The more we discourage less capable people from joining the better, don't you agree?

Of course this all assumes that white-boarding is a good indicator, but the companies administrating them has pretty good statistics that they work. Also it doesn't have to be on a white board, at least Google lets you write on a Chromebook since a few years back. The important part is that the candidate has to solve and code a non-trivial problem not available in public (meaning they can't have seen it before).

</comment><comment><USER56> You're giving zero context here aside from "there was a whiteboard and it was horrible."

What happened?

Age has nothing to do with it - if you can't communicate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've already said way more than I should considering I need to stay in this business for a good few more years. Communication was fine if that's what you're asking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm a bit older than OP - just recently turned 46. I've been a software engineer (professionally) since I was 18 years old when I was first hired by a small mom-n-pop shop.

One would think I could simply plop my resume down, do an in-person interview, show a bit of code I've written in the past, plus my github, and that'd be enough. Alas, it isn't.

I've had good interviews that used a whiteboard, and bad ones that did. Overall, though, I detest whiteboard "challenges" and I specifically avoid them. Currently, with my use of recruiters, I tell them specifically not to send me to such interviews if they use a whiteboard (it would have to be something really unique for me to consider it - maybe for a ground-floor startup opp, or something in robotics or AI, etc).

The best interview I had that used a whiteboard was basically where they asked me to write fizzbuzz whiteboard style. Whenever I am given such a task (ie - write code), I ask the interviewer if they mind if I use "pseudocode" \- just to get the whole "wrong syntax or keyword" issue out of the way. I've never had a turn-down from this ask. I liked that they wanted me to show I could do fizzbuzz "from memory" because it would show I wasn't copying/pasting from that github repo of "all versions of fizzbuzz", and it would also show I had some idea about programming. After that, and the in-person portion of the interview, they gave me a take-home challenge to write some piece of small software (IIRC, it was a random-number dice game or something), and upload it to their system for evaluation. I actually ended up getting an offer of a position from that job, but I ended up taking a different position with another company.

The worst whiteboard interview I had, though, felt like a complete grilling session. It started off reasonable enough; ushered into a large conference room, and I was questioned by a couple of programmers on their team, plus their hiring manager. All seemed ok. They asked me to do some whiteboard work - some SQL coding IIRC, among other things - all was going ok as I was writing down an answer, but every time I turned around to the interviewers - <USER3> were more people in the room. By the end of it all, it felt like the entire staff of the company was in that room and nobody was out doing their job. Had to be 20 or 30 people in there. To be honest, it rattled me - mainly because it was so odd.

I didn't get an offer on that job - and to this day, I am glad I didn't. While the company and the office location all had a "hip and upcoming" startup-like vibe, plus open-office floor plan, etc - at the same time, I wondered why they had such a large SWE team (10+ people from what I recall) for what was essentially a basic PHP CRUD application.

It was interesting to note OP's idea of it being a potential age filter; I'm not sure I agree with that fully. I wonder if it isn't meant as more of a filter for those who didn't go to school to learn the craft. I mean, I've probably done at least once certain things being asked for - but if they couch them in terms that are "defined in the literature" (this also covers asking about "patterns") - I'll most likely be lost. Because I don't know all of that terminology, or what it applies to. I've been coding in some fashion or another since I was 10 years old, but I haven't gone to school for it (aside from a couple of community college classes for C/C++ - algorithms and/or patterns were not discussed).

If so, it's kinda on them because they didn't read my resume carefully; I note up-front that I don't have that education, that I am a self-learner, and that I don't like to be a "specialist" in a particular language or framework-du- jour. Rather, I'm a business problem solver - the ultimate choice of how that problem is solved is an implementation detail that has only a certain bearing on the problem solution. Mainly, it's better to come up with a solution and then choose a language for the specifics of that solution that will work to implement it. 9/10 times you don't need the latest language or framework for most problems. It's more knowing when you do, rather than just picking one and sticking with it forever (ie - I don't want to become someone mired in only using and knowing COBOL). Likely, any problems that crop up in a solution tend to do with how the solution was implemented, not what language/framework it was implemented in.

Lastly - something I have noted post-interview is the fact that seemingly none of the potential employers care to contact or do contact any references you give them. You can ask them if they want/need references, but even those that do, never follow up on them. I am not sure why this doesn't happen - <USER4> it's just a simple constraint of time vs number of resumes/interviews? Or maybe it's due to past candidates gaming the system, and making it an unreliable metric to the process?

</comment><comment><USER58> This is an interesting take. I'm in my forties, will/hope to be a direct tech contributor for my full career, and definitely make sure to prepare well for whiteboard interviews. I find them fun to a degree, and I used to nail them in my youth...and still do well...

Still, the ageism take is interesting but I don't like falling back to that kind of thinking b/c it is counterproductive.

The evolution of my own performance in whiteboard interviews (and anecdotally what I've heard from other experienced developers) is interesting:

I don't feel like it is directly due to age or cognitive change/decline, but more to do with mastery/experience.

As you get more experienced in this craft (as with others), one of the most important skills you learn is navigating _context_. After solving real world problems repeatedly, you move further away from the aseptic environs of academia/learning and find that prioritization and contextual understanding is far more important to superior execution.

More explanation...

I was in an interview recently and got the typical line of puzzle coding questions. These puzzle questions are completely denuded of context (which is irritable to a professional practitioner). Or, rather, the context becomes not to solve a problem with a given set of _outcome_ constraints (real world) ... but solve a problem and try to guess what the interviewer's particular fetishes are and try to hit those.

Do you get the impression the interviewer has a fetish for OO solutions? You better angle on that or your going to get the ding. Do they want to see you pull out a cool data structure like a min heap? You better realize that right away and get there. Generally speaking, you can "win" in these types of interviews if you angle for big-O optimality (I've found).

I've interviewed this way, myself. But over time -- with experience -- I've found that this doesn't really even correlate that well with outcome. I've interviewed and worked with people that absolutely nail these whiteboard problems but when you get them on the job, and with real world curveballs thrown at them, they freeze - either due to some issue of work ethic, psychological issue/fear, or in the absence of _grades_ they just can't seem to make a move.

What I've found is interviewing with just a Q & A style response and digging into the work they've done and finding out how much ownership they have taken in their past work, how much curiosity they show (for any given piece of tech, just ask and see how well they know it and can even teach it to you if you don't know it), how much drive they have to get things not just done, but get them done well/solidly. Then, pretty quickly I can tell you if we've got a good hire.

Conversely I've made hires where the candidate did not do so well in the whiteboard but proceeded to excel in the professional context.

Think about this: if you have a person that is curious and drives to build the thing well... imagine the day (and these days come but not so often) that they encounter some need for a difficult algorithm. What is this conscientious person going to do? They're not going wing it and write a bad solution. They are going to go do their due diligence, their research, consult with their team members, and they'll get the right solution. So, say they are not so great with coming up with a novel algo on their own. One, that's a skill they can develop, but two -- it's a skill that's only needed in a few people on your team and then you'll overcome those steps at the intermittent times that they come through.

Now of course this ^ way of interviewing requires a personal skillset in one's self -- that is, you have to have a good work ethic, be intensely curious, very responsible, etc in order to recognize these same qualities in the candidate.

Unfortunately, I've found the industry dominates with "smart people" but who tend toward what I call a 'philistinic' position. They lean way too much on their natural intelligence and use that as an excuse to not really grow their skillset. This is what some people call 'expert beginners' and there are far more of these, ime, than truly skilled practitioners.

So -- back to the ageism thing. I think it's less ageism and more an overall industry deficit. If we understood our work better and could produce more masters/professionals then I'd think we'd see an increased valuing of experience.

Blaming it on ageism I think only deters us from getting there.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why are you still applying to entry level dev roles at 42? Do you have a portfolio?

<comment><USER60> I'm around this age and haven't applied for entry-level dev roles since I was truly an entry level candidate.

I've endured whiteboard sessions for every role I've gone for.

<comment><USER59> shouldn't you have built up a body of work that conveys your level of knowledge so you dont have to endure these assessments?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> If it was trivial you would have completed the exercises, no?

Truth is you're using age and "years coded" as a cover for competency. Hit the books, refresh your knowledge stack. There's no shame in improving.

<comment><USER62> I'm 40. As it happens I like Haskell and I've spent some time with it, and I expect I could get through most recursion interview tests, so this is not sour grapes on my part, but: I really can see just how easily my career and hobbies could have turned so I would be a good developer that should pass interviews, but stumble and fall when trying to write a recursive version of some algorithm.

(I'd add that in practice, almost nobody ever _directly_ writes a recursive version of anything anymore. You should generally be using combinators like map and filter and the crazier stuff Haskell provides rather than directly writing recursion schemes by hand. It does happen in Haskell for a couple of specific cases, but even the ones I can think of are exceptional cases for dealing with certain optimizer corner cases, not places where it was absolutely necessary to write direct recursive code. Even for a pure-FP job I wouldn't hammer on it in an interview; I'd want to very rapidly move up the stack to more interesting and relevant questions in our precious interview time. I suppose it's an integration testing approach to interviews rather than unit testing; I'd rather find something where recursion is used in passing to ensure that you've got it than sit there and pound on that specifically. It's not a good interview question unless that's all your interviewee can handle.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The whiteboard threads are always interesting to me because with more than ten years experience in software development in enterprise and startups now, I've never had to do a whiteboard interview.

Are they common outside the big six names? I.e., outside of Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix? I wonder what the actual percentage of "Needed to pass a whiteboard-based Q&A to get a salaried position" is.

From my viewpoint, having never run in to them, they seem like something that was much more popular in the past, but now rarely used or only used at the aforementioned big six companies.

<comment><USER64> In the 2019 Stack Overflow developer survey, 27.8% of respondents said they encountered whiteboarding as part of their last successful interview process that resulted in a job offer.

[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#work-_- interv...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#work-_-interview- practices)

<comment><USER63> Oh cool, thanks for the link! I should have thought to look at SO, as I generally read those survey results, but it didn't occur to me to look for this question there. 28% is a bit higher than I would have guessed even to that answer.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Strife Ground – the facts on each public controversy - <AUTHOR> http://www.strifeground.com/strifes/coronavirus-are-we-fucked <comment><AUTHOR> I made a tool to read and write the facts on each public controversy, with liked evidence and in a hierarchy of upvotes and objections.

The aim is to have a place where, in one or two minutes, one can read the main facts on any controversy, instead of having to plough through 10+ hours of material where the factual gems are often hidden. Towards bullshit-free utterance.

The link points to the topic on Coronavirus.

Anyone can add new controversies, add and upvote facts, add objections, and upvote objections. A bit of a Reddit (decentralised hierarchy) / Wikipedia (factual) / Twitter (brevity) cross.

Email login is a bit buggy though works. Google login is faster.

Do you find it helpful?</comment>