I failed my amazon whiteboard interview, I couldn't write a flawless binary search and as a result the guy said my entire CV must be a lie. There was a bug in the code somewhere, couldn't figure it out without a compile and a debug run. I've been coding for 38 years and I've built a world class product but hey, whiteboards don't lie right? Personally I think it was the fact that I was dealing with a lot at the time, personal stuff, plus I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why my socket server wasn't scaling properly to serve a large network, and I was nervous as heck.
If you want a developer who can rattle of a computer science algorithm, then whiteboard interviews are the way to go. I would rather ask the developer how she would create a password authentication scheme, and in doing so potential avoid a data breach down the line when they fail to apply proper security principles. Or I would challenge them on how they normally approach a problem, so that I could see how teachable they are. People who are not teachable are bad for business. I would also ask them to share a technique with me to see how willing to share information they are because IT people who don't like to share information are equally bad for business.
Lastly 'culture fit' is about finding more drinking buddies, if that's what you're hiring manager is doing you should fire him asap.
If you want a developer who can rattle of a computer science algorithm, then whiteboard interviews are the way to go. I would rather ask the developer how she would create a password authentication scheme, and in doing so potential avoid a data breach down the line when they fail to apply proper security principles. Or I would challenge them on how they normally approach a problem, so that I could see how teachable they are. People who are not teachable are bad for business. I would also ask them to share a technique with me to see how willing to share information they are because IT people who don't like to share information are equally bad for business.
Lastly 'culture fit' is about finding more drinking buddies, if that's what you're hiring manager is doing you should fire him asap.