[fragmede]

Practice, practice, practice. Since you're willing to do the silly hat dance; some thoughts on the type of practice you could do: Program with your laptop hooked up to your TV to your empty living room, to get used to the feeling of being watched. Then have a close and trusted friend be in your living room and just sit quietly. Add a cafe background noise track playing[0]. After you're comfortable with that, stream yourself solving leetcode/whatever problems on Twitch. Doesn't actually matter if anyone comes in to watch you, but talk out loud and explain your thought processes as you work your way through each problem.

[0] eg https://youtu.be/gaGrHUekGrc

[neoncontrails]

This is all great advice. I won't pretend that, after a slew of embarrassing incidents early in my career, I've learned to embrace the livecoding interview. No way. I still find the experience stultifying and a bit demeaning. After taking a part-time teaching gig, though, I can confirm that regularly coding in front of a live audience isn't just helpful practice.

This will probably sound hokey or hyperbolic to a fellow anxiety-sufferer, but solving problems in real-time while other people watch kind of... changed me. For the better, I think. In that it fundamentally transformed the way I approach the tech interview. No longer am I the obligate performer of "silly hat dances," but more like... an unflappably cool Jazz saxaphonist at a smokey cabaret, waiting for my drummer to give me a beat. The technical interview doesn't make me anxious anymore because I don't even think of myself as "interviewing" for something — I'm just a musician with an instrument in my hand, trying to figure out if we can make music together, if that makes sense.

[amozoss]

Thanks for your perspective.

I like what you're saying in that I should stop worrying about being someone I'm not. Show up and be honest about what I am good at stop focusing on all the puzzles that might show up.

My interview today I felt went a lot better. I at least solved the problem, although it was super easy... but so were the others... I just felt unprepared (and hadn't slept), so I think my brain left me, maybe?

Today I at least had a plan: 1. Write a simple test case first 2. Get the most basic version working 3. iterate from there

It's what I do everyday. I just wish my brain would have remembered that for all the other ones.