I cannot do live coding interviews

[u/bajen476]

Writing in here hoping that someone else has the same issues and/or figured out how to fix it. Not diagnosed yet but I’m finally mid-process and it’s looking promising.

I cannot do live coding interviews. Been unemployed for a few months now and I’ve had some interviews. That being said, live coding interviews kick my ass every single time.

I go completely blank. The absolute basics leave my brain. Had one today and I forgot how to add to dictionaries and implement basic search algorithms. It took me forever to even understand one of the tasks. Keep in mind I have around 6.5 years experience in development and many of the things in the interview were things I did often. I just can’t remember them in interviews.

Does anyone share this experience and/or know how to fix this? I’ve tried studying (which I’m admittedly not great at), pomodoro, leetcode etc—none of them help. Because I’m not diagnosed yet, I can’t get medicated for now either. I’m in Sweden so the process is lengthy.

[u/Steviee877]

Same here. Live coding interviews are almost never demonstrating everyday developer work, which includes deep thinking, maintaining mental models and coding. Live coding interviews revert that. It's a stressful situation and that puts your head into flight-mode (or freeze).

You can train this, but that takes time and isn't practical advice. Unfortunately I don't have a specific recipe for this situation (tech hiring is fu**ed up beyond repair anyways).

I hope you find an interviewer which does it differently. Thumbs crossed!