[thinnerlizzy]

I just had a Google technical phone interview. I won't divulge the question but it was related to a design pattern that JavaScript developers use every day in frameworks like Vue/React, yet probably never had to program from scratch. I identified the pattern, described the API correctly, but then I had to implement the API and that's when I knew I was finished. Evidently my intuition of how it should be implemented was also correct, but I started stumbling on relatively minor things (structure of a JSON object) because I didn't have the time I needed to develop an extremely clear mental image of what the details of the solution looked like and I had to keep coding anyway. I'm certain that 20-30 minutes alone would have been sufficient to develop a working proof of concept.

After the interview I ran the problem by a couple very senior front end devs at fang companies and they wouldn't have gotten it either. Before the rejection I thought I might be ok - it's not about getting it correct, they say, it's about the process - but slow thinking is a very real problem in the context of interviews like this.