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