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>Don't hire like FAANG companies, don't use their best practices, don't use their super oiled processes, don't play their same games with the same rules. I'm b

>Don't hire like FAANG companies, don't use their best practices, don't use their super oiled processes, don't play their same games with the same rules. I'm back on the job market for the first time in 4 years and it seems like things have changed a lot. I'm now stuck in this weird twilight zone where every single company I talk to has the exact same process that they run through the motions as if it were dictated from somewhere, and I've yet to even have a genuine conversation. It inevitably leads to a "live coding" session over the phone where I completely go blank and am unable to perform because programming under a time constraint with someone staring at your screen is absurd. Problems on the level of fizzbuzz become impossible because my mind simply goes blank in those situations and I freeze up. It'd be nice if someone would just give me a take home project where I can actually code something properly and show off my skills, rather than conclude that I'm an idiot who can't even code after 20 minutes of struggling with some toy problem through my intense anxiety.

01100011 8y ago
I understand the blank mind feeling. I was on a phone interview with Oculus 2 weeks ago and had a simple circular buffer question. I was expecting something a lot harder, frankly, and hadn't practiced writing a circular buffer in a while. I was doing fine until I got half-way through and wanted to refactor my code. Since we're under time constraints I tried to push through and use my existing design choice but it started the anxiety train rolling. In a couple minutes my mind fogged over and I literally couldn't comprehend the code I had written a few minutes ago. The interview ended poorly and I didn't get the job. I finished the code after the interview, along with some test cases, and the whole thing worked great. It wasn't that I didn't understand the problem, I just couldn't implement it with someone breathing down my neck. I interviewed with Nvidia a week later and almost had a similar issue but in that case the interviewer sensed my reaction and managed to talk me through things. I managed to recover and now I'm scheduled for an on-site.
- superqd 8y ago
  Good luck

01100011 8y ago

I understand the blank mind feeling. I was on a phone interview with Oculus 2 weeks ago and had a simple circular buffer question. I was expecting something a lot harder, frankly, and hadn't practiced writing a circular buffer in a while. I was doing fine until I got half-way through and wanted to refactor my code. Since we're under time constraints I tried to push through and use my existing design choice but it started the anxiety train rolling. In a couple minutes my mind fogged over and I literally couldn't comprehend the code I had written a few minutes ago. The interview ended poorly and I didn't get the job. I finished the code after the interview, along with some test cases, and the whole thing worked great. It wasn't that I didn't understand the problem, I just couldn't implement it with someone breathing down my neck. I interviewed with Nvidia a week later and almost had a similar issue but in that case the interviewer sensed my reaction and managed to talk me through things. I managed to recover and now I'm scheduled for an on-site.

superqd 8y ago
Good luck