Ask their own whiteboard question? That would be strange, as I'm a manager and don't write much code these days. But, if I ask a whiteboard question (or any tech question), asking me related questions as a means to further the discussion would be a good signal.
> That would be strange, as I'm a manager and don't write much code these days.
I'm a manager that rarely codes as well, but was still asked coding questions in an interview. It's a bit annoying, but having had managers that have never written a line of code ever, I understand wanting to verify that the manager could theoretically do the work themselves.
I can theoretically do the work and I certainly understand the technical problems my teams are solving. I'd happily write some pseudocode to prove I know general things, but asking me to write the fastest version of X isn't going to prove I can manage people. Heck, that's not even a good question for most developer positions.
FWIW, I recently interviewed for a manager role and there was a coding element. It required a small amount of cleverness and some knowledge of basic data structures. It felt appropriate to me, at least to establish that I would have some clue about how things work.
That said, it was the only one of my four interviews that actually included any coding.
FWIW, I make a white-board available, but don't require it's use. I'm not looking for syntactically correct code. I want to know how a candidate would approach a problem. If that involves them drawing or writing pseudo-code, that's fine with me. If they can talk through the questions without the board, that's fine too.
