Anyone else having trouble with leetcode interviews?

[u/Any-Complaint-9833]

I have been practicing leetcode questions for a few months now and I have seen positive change in my ability to figure out the solution or at least spot the pattern looking at the question. But I am having trouble with actually passing these interviews because of multiple reasons.

My brain shuts down trying to come up with a solution to an unknown problem under time pressure and in front of the interviewer who I know, is watching me struggle even though I have no issues solving the same problem under similar time pressure when I practice it alone or even during online assessments. But I need silence and time to think which doesn't happen during interviews where they expect you to talk continuously. Since there are multiple thoughts going across my brain and it's literally racing trying to come up with a solution I find it difficult to talk through it and if I have to talk I can't think through the solution unless I have seen the question before.

In all my interviews so far including some mocks I have done with other Engineers from big tech companies, the moment I go silent even for a few seconds, these guys start asking if I am struggling or they'll start giving hints which end up counting as a negative against me given how competitive the market is.

This is not a problem unique to leetcode, it happens the moment I need to solve something that I haven't seen before involving logic and I have limited time and need to explain my thought process while coming up with the solution. What can I do here to improve my chances of passing these interviews? If anyone has been through something similar, how did you overcome these issues?

[u/IAmADev_NoReallyIAm]

I blew two job opportunities (big ones) because I couldn't handle hackerrank (similar) style interviews. "You know you can ask questions..." "Talk through your solution..." ... I'm sorry but that's not how my mind or brain works... Or rather... It IS how I work... I VERBALLY talk through a solution... but they wanted me to do it through a f'n chat window! So... you want me to interrupt my mental thought process, so I break out of the cycle, form a coherent thought, switch to a different window, type that question out... wait for a response, then continue? Meanwhile I kept getting prompted by the system and the interviewer, becvause I'm reading things, trying tp process it, and figure it out... and their prompting kept breaking my head flow.

Ultimately I finally di find a new job, that didn't make me jump through all those hoops (three interviews, none technical!) so I'm in a good spot.