It's bizarre to me that you think that whiteboard coding tests "communication", in any way. It's not like a presentation, or anything. It's one-sided combat where someone with a secret tries to get someone who doesn't know the secret to regurgitate the secret, on the spot, while pretending that s/he didn't memorize the secret in advance while cramming a great big "Cracking the Programmer Secret" book to prepare for the entire silly exercise in Kabuki theater.
If you want to test communication skills amongst programmers, I dunno...ask them to write something in coherent English. Or here's a crazy thought: ask them to document some code. I guarantee that 80% of working "rockstar coders" will fail (but not before whining, crankily, about how unfair it is that you would actually make them do such a useless thing, since, y'know...never actually documents anything IRL, dude).
Programmers like whiteboarding because it lets them believe that interviews can be reduced to purely objective functions, and because GooAmaSoftBook does it. They're too scared to deviate from the pack, lest people think they aren't as "elite" as everyone else.
If you want to test communication skills amongst programmers, I dunno...ask them to write something in coherent English. Or here's a crazy thought: ask them to document some code. I guarantee that 80% of working "rockstar coders" will fail (but not before whining, crankily, about how unfair it is that you would actually make them do such a useless thing, since, y'know...never actually documents anything IRL, dude).
Programmers like whiteboarding because it lets them believe that interviews can be reduced to purely objective functions, and because GooAmaSoftBook does it. They're too scared to deviate from the pack, lest people think they aren't as "elite" as everyone else.