That is a difference people make in their mind. I don’t see a difference. The criticism is the critism. If you receive enough negative feedback on PRs after being hired, you will be fired for not be good enough.

The only way to take away the stress of an interview is to not care about the outcome. I don’t and interviews are stressful for me. I present myself as I am and if they don’t like it oh well, but that is a confidence I think most people don’t have. I have been like this since I was junior so it’s not the arrogance of experience. It’s not even the confidence of easily being able to get jobs because in my early career it would sometimes take months to get a new job. I’d ask for feedback if I could get it and accept or disregard it. Some feedback amounted to, “this wasn’t the job for you” and that’s okay.

I just don’t think it’s worth worrying about any particular job when hiring is like dating. You can be perfect for one job and an obvious no for another, so it’s not worth worrying about the outcome. They like you or they don’t.

Your post was about stress not anxiety and theu are different things. My point is that these these kind interviews approximate what you will actually do at work. If someone finds them stressful then they should think about if this is the career for them. Feeling anxious is another thing, but you can feel anxious while being confident because anxiety is about fearing and unknown outcome.

My point is that people should fine these interview styles stressful and that has always been my point and what I have been replying to since you never brought up anxiety until now.

The literal point if interviews it to judge. The point is to find people who will work in the environment you have. I have done work on codebases where bad code means people die, by indirect or direct results. This probably biases me. For example, I have coded in front of a group several times. This year in fact. Sometimes a problem involves multiple people thinking through it. That’s probably why I don’t care about panel interviews as well. I have had to explain myself in front of a group several times.

These are things that people find stressful, but they are part of my job and have been at nearly every one of the little over half a dozen jobs I have held. My current job isn’t even doing anything important. No one dies if I make a mistake and I’ve still experienced explaining myself in front of a group and coding with several people onlooking. I just assumed that’s how the job is as my friends in the same field have similar kinds of stories

People can be stressed I guess, but is normal and common events in your job are highly stressful, then I still say that’s a sign that it’s not the career path for you. For all we know, these jobs have these things because it’s common on the job and a candidate should really feel at ease doing it. That’s my opinion anyway. We can only form opinions based on experience and apparently, mine differs from yours.

I don’t agree at all. I’ve definitely been in lair sessions where the other person has been assigned to babysit me to the correct answer. It’s just an experience that mostly happens with juniors. I’ve babysat juniors to the solution myself.

There can also be zero trust between colleagues forced to pair, especially in debug sessions. I have worked a lot of jobs, so maybe it’s just my experience, but I would not say that if categorized every single pair session I’ve had in my entire career anywhere near half involved two colleagues who trusted each other and didn’t judge.

I’ve definitely been judged as a senior for dumb dumb moments and that’s okay. If you care about people’s opinions too personally as a software engineer, I’m not sure this is the career for you. It’s a career that involves a lot of negative feedback even as an experienced professional.

I guess my question why should anyone feel stressed from live coding? There are some jobs where this is legitimately a common occurrence at your job. Some jobs are big on pair programming. And I don’t think I’ve ever had a single job that at least a couple times a year didn’t have me living coding through a problem. It happened way more often when I was a junior and needed a lot of assistance. If you are stressed by being watched while you code, that’s not great because you are going to have to do it regularly or semi-regularly at your job. That’s whether someone is sitting right next to you or they are screensharing. It’s why I personally am comfortable with live coding. It’s literally a thing I do at work, albeit not with toy problems.

The problem with only hiring people you have met personally is that you miss out on a whole world of people who would be great to work with but had no chance of ever meeting you or your network. I agree that network recruiting is the safest route, but having diversity in your employees is great. If you only hire through your networks you’ll see quickly quickly how you only get one kind of person.

I have seem this happen a lot in smaller companies. It’s also the story of how I’m typically the sole woman in the department. I by happenstance happen to seed my professional network from college with a lot of men (because I accidentally picked a college that like 80% men). I’m a unicorn because many men’s networks include so few women since in IT they tend to be non-traditional and/or generally excluded from younger men’s social groups.

I get tapped via my network all the time. But if the company basically only does referral based hiring me and perhaps one other woman is there for the whole engineering department. It’s way more balanced at 20%-30% of the department at companies that don’t do this. There is some value in shotgun hiring even if it has a higher fail rate than referral hiring. Different kinds of people can bring fresh perspectives and considerations.