You're just lumping two different things together. Everyone has performance anxiety at times - whether rare, mild, common, or occasionally overwhelming it's so

You're just lumping two different things together. Everyone has performance anxiety at times - whether rare, mild, common, or occasionally overwhelming it's something everyone deals with. Something like public speaking to a room of strangers or flirting with a super model really doesn't share many physiological triggers with diagnosing code you wrote while people you're friends with look on anxiously. Assuming that because something's easy for you (and most people) that anyone who has trouble with it is likely to be broken in lots of ways isn't too safe a bet. If someone gets overwhelmed by vertigo on a skyscraper does that mean you won't be able to trust them to drive in rush hour traffic? If a guy pisses his pants when he gets a gun pulled on him does that mean he can't be trusted to be an airline pilot? Those are exaggerated to make the point, but interviewing is an art. You have great latitude in terms of making people comfortable or uncomfortable depending on your goals. With enough effort I'd be willing to bet you could engineer an interview that would send almost anyone over the edge. So now that it's just a case of degrees, all you have to do is decide whether you're hiring someone that needs to be able to solve programming puzzles in front of a stranger that's actively critiquing them.