Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much data around hiring outcomes because companies really don’t have a reason to share that information. For a lot of people, it comes down to personal experiences.

I’ve definitely interviewed with companies where I was put in really unnatural situations that I struggled to shine in. For example, I bombed an interview in which I had to do a live coding challenge where I had to talk through what I was thinking while coding, which the interviewer insisted on so they could understand “how I think”.

I thought it was an incredibly cumbersome and useless request because I never talk when I code, and coding in front of others in an interview is tough enough as it is. I asked if we could discuss the solution once I completed the problem, but they declined that idea.

Needless to say, I didn’t get the job and the assessment felt like a huge waste of time. I think a lot of people see companies doing stupid stuff like this and get frustrated because candidates are often capable while being placed in high-pressure situations that don’t enable abstract creative thinking, which programming requires.