[organsnyder]

I did that for an interview for what is now my employer. It was via Skype with a shared code editor. The interviewer asked me to implement a data structure that I had not used (directly—I'm sure plenty of libraries I use utilize it) since college, and I said as much. I told him I was quickly looking it up on Wikipedia, skimmed the article (mumbling to myself, I'm sure), and then proceeded to implement it. My candor and ability to quickly synthesize information on the fly must have reflected well on me, because I ended up getting an offer.

This wasn't at a big name tech company, though. From the sounds of it, most of those places don't give interviewers nearly as much leeway as mine had.

[bilekas]

It's certainly true that larger tech companies will not allow much of the 'workflow' into the interview, but this is usually down to the interviewers not being technically sound on the project(s) and most of the time just given a script with certain criterea, who are usually contracted to do so.

This is no fault of those recruiters, just that sometimes they are given very strict guidelines which can hamper creativity within an interview.

[nostrebored]

Which companies are you seeing this from?

This wasn't my experience at any point with Google, Microsoft or AWS

[ProZsolt]

My problem I can do this when I'm alone or when it's a real pair coding. During an interview when stress and adrenaline kick in. I'll make a silly mistake and after that, because I'm judged by the other person my brain locks up. I'm feeling like a total fraud.