Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by yardie 4311 days ago
My first technical interview they asked me to write a constructor and I completely panicked. It still haunts me to this day that I think the guys in the room thought I was some sort of idiot.
4 comments

I have this issue as well. I get extremely nervous and forget very basic things during phone and in person interviews.

I like reading these kinds of articles because they make me feel like less of an idiot, but that's not going to help me get over the issue.

I think the next time I'm actively looking for a job I'll have to just buckle down and practice interviewing and whiteboarding code, which unfortunately is time I would rather be spending building real things instead.

I suspect this is the origin of most of the "can't code fizzbuzz" stories. More accurately "can't code fizzbuzz when terrified".

When I was younger I had my best luck at interviews when I didn't give a F and felt I was just showing up for practice because I had a perfectly good job, but this new one looked mildly interesting. I'm not sure reaction to interview stress correlates positively with dedication to your new feudal overlord.

I had a coding test with Amazon to do some pretty basic stuff with a pretty basic data structure. I spent the entire hour panicking, ran out of time, and ended up submitting code that didn't even build. That hurt.
Once on a phone screen I could not do maths. Calculated 2^10 as 512 :) So no more cake for me.