Tech Interview Anxiety

It seems like for you preparation is even more important than usual. It is understandable to not be comfortable under an artificially created pressure situation (such as in an interview room). In that case, you need to prepare at least 3 times harder beforehand. First, research (online and offline) about all possible questions that they may ask. Having an idea about their codes and what they're doing will help with this. Then, prepare answer for these questions and rehearse them unti

Yes :(I'm just exceptionally sensitive to rejection and evaluation, and over the years, the interview process has become more traumatic for me, rather than less. Even decent technical interviews (ie - complete the task 100%, don't flub, don't blank out) can take me days to recover from - my physical/emotional reaction is often very far from where my rational mind perceives the situation. I was once deeply distressed by an interview where I ultimately received an job offer.

Just being IN the interview to begin with is likely to be higher pressure than any sane or sustainable working environment would be.I've interviewed people who didn't know the answer to some of these tech questions, and honestly, I was more impressed by them calming saying "I'm not sure on this one, I would probably need to go look it up".

(Not an expert at all)Maybe everyone else is just as stressed as you?It's like any other skill I guess, everyone is bad the first time, and you get better with practise.>I would love to know whether that particular interviewer solved that particular problem when they encountered it for the first time everWhy not ask, when they ask if you have any questions?! If that's the one thing you really want to know, why not.Also, I've found in a lot of situations, people f

Most people freeze on interviews and its normal entirely.Also, most problems are not solved in the 45 minutes and in day to day coding , we generally have a minimum of day to think on the problem and solve it without people looking over our shoulder, google or ask someone :)

People can be nervous on job interview and therefore "shut down" and fail simple tests. This does not reveal a persons real problem solving skills.I don't consider myself especially nervous in job interviews and when taking tests and exams. But I still had a much harder time solving simple programming tasks than I would "back at my desk" with no-one watching. YMMW.It would suck to want a job so bad you completely freeze up on simple interviewing tests :(

I think people feel comfortable in settings where they draw on a concrete body of knowledge (like most normal job interviews). With programming though, everything is logic, being able to dynamically model rules and patterns in your head is everything. You build these models in your head, using your programming talent, but they are like volatile memory, and you always need to reconstruct them. So when you go into an interview, you have little concrete knowledge to lean on, so off the bat you lack

Medical people talk about this problem as "differential diagnosis". There can be multiple reasons why some symptom is exhibited (in this case, failing the interview). Its not enough to know that the interview question was failed - you also want to know what happened.A much more common example is that (particularly young) candidates tend to make job interviews into big, stressful things in their head. Then they don't sleep properly the night before, and during the interview they

I've said before to other technical folks that the interview process in tech is more a measure of ability to handle anxiety and stress than whether one can solve problems competently and gracefully. Granted, in my current role I make it clear to candidates that they may have to perform under pressure at 2 am when there's an outage possibly due to their code or even others' and many people are relying upon you in particular for guidance. I also make it clear that we do a LOT of thi

Exactly. I don't think they are accounting for how some people react to interviews. I've had candidates who have been explicitly nervous and stuttering, and we've consciously had to decide not to hold that against them. They turned out to be a great hire.I think I can do okay in coding interviews, but only if I prep for that style of work first. It's definitely different. I'm perfectly (or at least acceptably) competent in my day to day.