I have dinged people because they wouldn't write on the whiteboard. To be fair, every time this actually happened, I gave the candidate the chance to write his solution on paper, and I ended up dinged him anyways because his work was sub-par.
At every company I have worked at, from two-person startups all the way to Google, we have used whiteboards extensively. Most meetings and architecture reviews are conducted in front of a whiteboard. The first thing I do when I found a startup is to buy a whiteboard and nail it to the wall. Whiteboards are a necessity for collaborative brainstorming and working together.
I'm not sure I agree with anything the OP says in this article. I think he's trying to sound smart and rationalize the reasons he didn't get hired. I say this not as a troll, but to provide constructive feedback. If you want to get hired by a big company, you have to play by their rules. End of story. There are a few exceptions (like engineers at Google without college degrees), but they are exceptions - most people who work for Google or Facebook or Palantir went to good schools, and did well, and wrote on the whiteboard during their interviews.
At every company I have worked at, from two-person startups all the way to Google, we have used whiteboards extensively. Most meetings and architecture reviews are conducted in front of a whiteboard. The first thing I do when I found a startup is to buy a whiteboard and nail it to the wall. Whiteboards are a necessity for collaborative brainstorming and working together.
I'm not sure I agree with anything the OP says in this article. I think he's trying to sound smart and rationalize the reasons he didn't get hired. I say this not as a troll, but to provide constructive feedback. If you want to get hired by a big company, you have to play by their rules. End of story. There are a few exceptions (like engineers at Google without college degrees), but they are exceptions - most people who work for Google or Facebook or Palantir went to good schools, and did well, and wrote on the whiteboard during their interviews.