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How I (Accidentally) Found My Co-Founder on Indie Hackers
By
Tony
May 10, 2018
How I (Accidentally) Found My Co-Founder on Indie Hackers - Build > Ship > Repeat
What would be cool is if you guys had a section for "sandbox" jobs. These jobs would be whiteboard free but the basis for being hired would be determined by a small assignment that would take no longer than a couple of days to complete. You still get paid for the assignment either way, but this way both parties don't waste months to figure out that the employee won't work out and the employee won't have a blemish on their resume.
Good idea, thanks! We've talked about doing something very similar to this so it's nice to get some validation. We're still mulling over other approaches too as we experiment and expand.
Very cool! Awesome to see actual partnerships happen because of IH :)
Definitely, very thankful for @csallen and @channingallen for creating this awesome community, and for all the indie hackers who contribute!
Congrats Tony I left a comment on your blog. As a developer I agree very much with the inadequate means by which we are evaluated so anything that you and Victor can do to make it better for all of us you should. — Full speed ahead
Let’s talk as I will like to share two experiences I had recently. One that showcases all that is wrong and the other than landed me my current position.
Thanks for the support Michael! Would love to learn more about your experience. Please shoot us an email at hello@whiteboardfree.com.
I hope it will be the same for me :)
Don't mean to sound daft, but what's whiteboarding in the context of a job interview?
No problem! In this context, whiteboarding refers to a type of technical screening popular with many tech companies. In a whiteboard interview, developers are asked to write out algorithms and solve computer science trivia on a whiteboard, without access to a computer.
Ah, I see. My company does a short written test for interviewees on paper which covers some basic programming concepts like OO programming, etc. Would you consider that whiteboarding as well?
How do you make sure that the job postings you get are from companies that do not engage in those testing practices? From what I hear these days, a lot of companies are doing project-based interviews, which is arguably worse cause some of them can take a day or more to complete and you're obviously not even getting paid for that time.
Great points and questions!
We use whiteboarding as a metaphor for CS trivia that has no real relationship to the job the developer is actually performing. We don't believe that asking a developer to write code without their normal tools is a good indicator of skill (just like you wouldn't judge an artist on how well they could paint without providing them a brush).
Instead, we support technical screening such as short take home projects, review and discussion of previous code the candidate has written, paid contract assignments or peer programming with another developer.
You are right that some companies use lengthy take home projects that require days to complete. We do not support this type of unreasonable assignment.
We rely on our users to let us know if companies that post on Whiteboardfree.com engage in these types of interviews.