Anxiety during coding interview

IamtheWalrus

I choke when asked to pair during a coding interview. The interviewer could ask me the simplest question and my mind goes blank. I think I'm a good developer and if I was given the task at home with no pressure, I'd pass the test.

I know practice should help me with it, and I do lots of that, but it doesn't help as it doesn't recreate the actual interview setting.

Anyone any advice on managing this?

Atomic Pineapple

I suffer the same anxiety and I've found practice and preparation are the key to limiting it. I found many of the chapters in the "Cracking the coding interview" book to be very helpful in preparing for an interview and this in itself helped me build confidence and limit the anxiety during interviews.

If it's a truly deep anxiety then I'd also recommend you visit your GP to talk about the anxiety and they can help explain further actions you can take including remedies or prescriptions that can help.

Dermo

Do you have any friends you could do pair programming exercises with to practice?

IamtheWalrus

Dermo wrote: »

Do you have any friends you could do pair programming exercises with to practice?

I did some TDD with a more senior work colleague today. It was going ok until he told me to refactor a simple piece of code. I stared at it and whilst I tried to understand the code, I panicked and went blank (although for the rest of it I did ok).

I think the issue is that my coding skills are very average, in comparison to the type of people most top companies seek. If you give me a story in work, I can take my time, write it, google it, change it; in the end you'll see a good end result but not how I got to the solution. In an interview, I'd be afraid to show them my 'roundabout way' of coding, hence the panic.

IamtheWalrus

Atomic Pineapple wrote: »

If it's a truly deep anxiety then I'd also recommend you visit your GP to talk about the anxiety and they can help explain further actions you can take including remedies or prescriptions that can help.

No, it's not a medical issue, just a 'shit the pants under pressure' kind of thing.

Atomic Pineapple

IamtheWalrus wrote: »

No, it's not a medical issue, just a 'shit the pants under pressure' kind of thing.

Sorry my post wasn't clear on that, it doesn't need to be a medical condition for it to be worth a trip to the doctor, they can help with the anxiety even if it's not a medical condition.

14ned

IamtheWalrus wrote: »

I did some TDD with a more senior work colleague today. It was going ok until he told me to refactor a simple piece of code. I stared at it and whilst I tried to understand the code, I panicked and went blank (although for the rest of it I did ok).

I think the issue is that my coding skills are very average, in comparison to the type of people most top companies seek. If you give me a story in work, I can take my time, write it, google it, change it; in the end you'll see a good end result but not how I got to the solution. In an interview, I'd be afraid to show them my 'roundabout way' of coding, hence the panic.

It's odd how developers think companies prefer to interview and hire "cathedral builders" rather than "janitors", but inevitably they prefer and moreover more greatly need the latter, not the former. Most interviewers know this and will take a less able candidate with humility and a good understanding of their (in)abilities in preference to a rock star developer with a high belief in their own abilities.

All that said, interviews can only hire what is demonstrated, and if you can't demonstrate anything then they can't hire you. Me personally I very rarely code off the cuff, I tend to sleep on a problem, come up with a solution, and I usually don't actually know why I chose it. This approach fits very poorly with interviews where you must rationalise a solution on the spot. This is why I've failed every one of the many Google interviews I've done, and I expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

All I can say is practice helps a lot. Do ten interviews and you'll find a lot less problem with blanking out on the tenth. Though, it does still happen, I'm coming up on my third decade in tech and I still blank out in interviews, I still find them very unnatural and far removed from what I normally do. Still, it's the way it is, so do the best you can.

Niall

lawred2

I've been developing for over a decade

First I'v heard of this pairing interview process... lol

mrcheez

IamtheWalrus wrote: »

No, it's not a medical issue, just a 'shit the pants under pressure' kind of thing.

Yeah no need to get doctors involved

It's perfectly normal, especially coming from a working environment that doesn't always involve non-stop verbal communication.

As mentioned before preparation is great but also lots of practice. The first interview might go "meh", but you come out of that one with a feeling of confidence for any other interviews you might do that week.

Also found going for a run a few hours before the interview helped clear my head and release any pent up anxiety.
(obviously allow for time to have a shower after!)

Evil Phil

I think this problem is why some companies are moving to online technical tests prior to an interview. It gives you time to code like you would in your working day instead of coding on a white board with a pen that's nearly run out. That's just awful. I've actually got to the point where I'll request a technical interview over the phone first because this is less nerve wracking for me.

The best interview advice I've ever been given. "Phil, they don't want the best programmer in the world, they just don't want to end up working with a pr*ck".

It's very true.

14ned

Evil Phil wrote: »

I think this problem is why some companies are moving to online technical tests prior to an interview. It gives you time to code like you would in your working day instead of coding on a white board with a pen that's nearly run out. That's just awful. I've actually got to the point where I'll request a technical interview over the phone first because this is less nerve wracking for me.

Most of the big tech multinationals do a phone technical test first, and if you pass then you do a five hour onsite interview during which there are multiple sessions with a whiteboard on wildly differing topics. If you do well enough to be asked to continue after lunch, the interviews after lunch tend to be about soft skills, personality and fit.

I've found the lunch tends to make me groggy and I go blank a lot. Also, as I age I'm finding I can only sustain that hyper intensity for a few hours before I sag. I'm not sure if there is an age bias per se in tech hiring, but those five hour interviews sure don't favour those of us of a more mature constitution.

Niall

magooly

Maybe you are placing too much emphasis on the coding task. The interview situation is stressful enough so just try to roll with the punches and base your answers on your work history

If i was pairing with you Id be interested in your approach, how you break down a problem and how you will tackle/test each part separately.

This can all be explained via a sketch on paper and some basic psuedo code. The actual code that comes out the other side is irrelevant really as long as you stick to one level of abstraction per method and mention your test approach.

You could start learning off the usual coding challenges like fibonnaci or reverse a string but if I spot you had done this id rip you apart technicaly for pulling that on me.

I try to hire someone who is willing to learn, make mistakes and enthusiasticly wants to contribute.

I did one interview recently over skype where the interviewer asked me to implement a sort algo on a google shared doc so he could see my approach. No IDE was allowed so I struggled to get it complete and explained I dont know anyone who writes code in a word doc.

*I do know someone who copy pastes code into MS Word because he likes the colors he told me.. and completely screws up his workspace when he cant understand why the formatting and encoding in his IDE goes haywire when he pastes his Stack overflow answer in!

14ned

magooly wrote: »

I did one interview recently over skype where the interviewer asked me to implement a sort algo on a google shared doc so he could see my approach. No IDE was allowed so I struggled to get it complete and explained I dont know anyone who writes code in a word doc.

Yeah that bugs the s*** out of me too. I've become far too reliant on VS2015 putting red underlines where C++ code is incorrect (the IDE C++ parser is *far* more accurate and standards correct that Microsoft's actual C++ compiler) to be able to write a bit of text and have any expectation that it's correct first time round. I've been in an interview where the guy kept telling me that the code I wrote on the whiteboard was wrong and I needed to fix it before we could move on, and I kept thinking it had some algorithmic flaw. Turns out I was missing a single semicolon ...

I know it's no excuse in a way, but equally only the diehards are still using emacs and vim to write all their code, and even those nowadays will auto-run clang-format on your code as you type and such so you no longer have to care about laying out your code as you type. Any candidate using only a plain text editor is likely someone without much practical coding experience, or else they are someone who won't be as efficient a coder as others who let the automation help them write.

I'm told that some of the tech multinationals now have CI systems which background run smoke tests on your code as you type using their spare cloud compute, and you see little flags popping up for tests which are failing as you're coding. I'm not sure if that wouldn't be very distracting in practice, but it is quite cool.

Niall

dazberry

14ned wrote: »

I've been in an interview where the guy kept telling me that the code I wrote on the whiteboard was wrong and I needed to fix it before we could move on, and I kept thinking it had some algorithmic flaw. Turns out I was missing a single semicolon ...

In an interview situation that's just crazy really. It's 10 years since I was involved in the interview process on the other-side, and I always looked on it being as much my responsibility to get the best out of a candidate at interview as it was the candidates themselves. We did have written technical tests - but it wasn't about dotting every i and crossing every T. What was interesting was how badly some of the developers took to getting questions wrong when discussing our expected answers - reflected badly on them.

Having said that some tech interviews I've done - the interviewers are just terrible - arrogant, passive aggressive, dismissive, assholes really - that makes my mind up about an organisation very quickly.

D.

mrcheez

dazberry wrote: »

Having said that some tech interviews I've done - the interviewers are just terrible - arrogant, passive aggressive, dismissive, assholes really - that makes my mind up about an organisation very quickly.

D.

Heh I got that while doing an interview for a certain US bank situated along the Quays that's infamous for treating programmers like crap (can't say the name but most will know the one I mean).

They wouldn't even call me, I had to call them for the phone interview :rolleyes:

Said I was "wrong" several times in the interview, even though my answers were legitimate when I looked them up later.

14ned

dazberry wrote: »

Having said that some tech interviews I've done - the interviewers are just terrible - arrogant, passive aggressive, dismissive, assholes really - that makes my mind up about an organisation very quickly.

Worst I've ever experienced was a phone technical interview with a household name tech multinational which was I think my fourth in quick succession with the same. Given my prior three non-passes, I decided to be more assertive this time round, so when the interviewer made a technical mistake I'd call them on it (normally I'd not do that, I just stay silent).

Well, that interview turned into real fun! Things got more and more aggressive as I called the interviewer on repeated inaccuracies and incorrect statements. About half an hour in, he went nuts, started screaming down the phone about how I was a f***** and I could go f*** myself. He then threw the speakerphone at the wall, and stormed out of the room slamming the door.

His colleague (as with all big multinationals, you always have two people on the line) then proceeded to offer one of the most grovelling apologies I have ever heard, at the end of which I said "Look I was being deliberately bolshy no doubt, and everybody has bad days, and I'm going to assume that was a bad day for your colleague. But to be honest I'm no longer interested in working for your company, nor I suspect will I ever wish to work for you if that's the kind of pressure you put people like your colleague under".

Said tech multinational appeared in an expose a few months later on the pressure cooker they force their employees to endure. Lots of tales of employees being fired for getting pregnant, being suggested to get an abortion or else they'd be punished, that sort of thing. Everyone I know at that company mass resigned not long after too. Definitely dodged a bullet there.

Niall

Raging_Ninja

14ned wrote: »

Said tech multinational appeared in an expose a few months later on the pressure cooker they force their employees to endure. Lots of tales of employees being fired for getting pregnant, being suggested to get an abortion or else they'd be punished, that sort of thing. Everyone I know at that company mass resigned not long after too. Definitely dodged a bullet there.

What the utter fúck

Evil Phil

Heh I got that while doing an interview for a certain US bank situated along the Quays that's infamous for treating programmers like crap ...

Ha! I actually had a recruitment agent tell me that they couldn't get anyone to apply there when I told her I wasn't interested in working for that particular company again. She was laughing when she told me. :pac:

14ned

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

What the utter fúck

Agreed. Some multinationals can go real nasty despite the high salaries and white collar job roles. That particular multinational used to practice "rank and yank" where every three months you anonymously would rank your colleagues. Those who fell in the bottom 10% of rankings got physically moved into the "needing assistance" desks right at the front outside the elevator so everybody else walked passed them every day so they could see who was a failure. If you didn't rank higher next performance review, you were fired. This caused a lot of bottom level managers to put undue pressure on their subordinates with informal advice like the above given. There was also problems with bullying, manipulation, anything necessary to meet targets set by upper management and survive the quarterly popularity vote driven cull. It's not like upper management told bottom managers to do that sort of horrible stuff, it's more they created the pressure and incentives which caused it to happen, then they claim horror that it happened at all and that the cause was clearly a few bad eggs only.

Microsoft was practising a slightly milder form of rank and yank in the Ballmer years, the idea was taken from the same practice in Enron where it had such clearly positive outcomes. That practice was eliminated with the new CEO. You may have noticed a marked change in how Microsoft behaves since rank and yank was stopped, Microsoft is actually competitive again. Before everyone was too scared to ever do anything unpopular i.e. take any risk whatsoever.

This kind of stuff is what I mean by choosing mom and pop family run affairs over multinationals sometimes despite the lower pay. Family run companies often have many dysfunctions of their own, but they are usually in spite of themselves rather than being systematically planned and enforced deliberately by senior management as a method of torturing "maximum productivity" from expensive employees.

And for the record, the people I knew at that multinational before they all quit said it was just fine working there, no complaints. It was considered a good job, pay was high, conditions and perks good. But then they never ranked at the bottom of the anonymous ranking and were usually ranked top decile. I suspect that makes for a very difference experience.

Niall