| I'm one of the most low-key, relaxed people you might meet, which makes my test anxiety worse: since I've learned strategies to mask my anxiety around whiteboard coding, I just look incompetent when my mind goes blank and I can't think clearly. Contrast this to my daily work, which is often highly technical and high pressure in a wide variety of areas. The tech interview is broken. The problem is that there aren't many good ideas to replace it. Every large company is focused on eliminating personal bias, easing the process of training new interviewers, and improving repeatability. Pass/fail-type challenges (or perhaps a simple grading system) are the easiest way to achieve those things. Additionally, companies like Google and Facebook can absorb large numbers of junior candidates directly from schools. Most of these exams are geared toward those fresh from an academic setting. Small companies adopt these techniques because they also want "the best" without actually considering their real needs. As a result, a cargo cult has arisen around making the technical interview increasingly long and baroque. Here is some practical advice: 1. Talk to your doctor about your situation and tell them you've heard beta blockers[0] help stop the flight-or-fight response. 2. As others have said, practice over the course of months. Do the same problems again and again. If you can't solve these toy problems without pressure, you definitely won't solve them with pressure. 3. Ask the company ahead of time for a take-home as an alternative. Explain the situation. Ultimately this situation won't change until engineers in decision-making positions force it to change. Interviewers also need to be trained on how to recognize test anxiety and what strategies they can employ to ease that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_blocker |