[titanix2]

It can hurt in my experience.

I've been interviewed by Google for position once because they contact me on LinkedIn; I didn't think this site was actually useful before that. I had the classic code writing phone screening with a question I figured the answer but I had to reschedule it because of bad wireless connection (university library, home was not even my wifi). The next time my setting was better but the interview was harder and I failed it. After that I got kinda bad feeling over my skills, lack of luck, being not-smart-enough and the graduate work to do I didn't do in favor of interview preparation.

In the end it was not so bad because getting a job there would have mean not doing my international student exchange year and give up my second master degree, for which I worked even more.

Another time I applied for an internship at Microsoft, I got a programming question that was not in the book (unlike Google) but I managed to got a solution. I was thinking it was fine despite a silly right/left error but still get rejected at the skype screening step. I didn't really get accustomed by my first failed attempt at Google so I lived it like a confirmation of my lack of skills. I felt so bad about it I didn't program for a while after that (three weeks or maybe even one month).

I guess mental preparation is almost as important or even more than algorithmic one. Maybe be I'll try it again one day, not to stay on a fail.

[euyyn]

I see what you're saying. If it helps, remember that impostor syndrome is a real thing, and that many that work at Google failed their first interview too. I think the hiring process if biased towards avoiding false positives at all cost, which means it has many false negatives.