Ask HN: Live-code tests for senior dev roles?
Backstory:
* I'm a pretty senior developer: ~25 years in the industry, and a PhD in computer science.
* I experienced my first layoff about 5 months ago, and I'm still looking.
* During this job search, there were several positions where I was a strong candidate, but I bombed the live-coding interviews.
* Until this string of failures, I'd assumed it was just performance anxiety. But I now believe my fundamental programming skills really had atrophied.
* After that string of failures, I've started working through some practice problems [0]. I was surprisingly slow to solve some of the basic challenges, but practice has absolutely helped.
* I'm also finding that completing these practice-problems is improving my self-confidence. So now I'm feeling more relaxed about future live-coding interviews. This partially addresses (for me) the concern about live-coding interviews failing because of performance anxiety.
[0] The challenges I've found most useful so far are [1] and [2].
[1] https://www.metacareers.com/swe-prep-techscreen/ Their practice environment isn't great, but IMHO the problem set is fantastically designed.
[2] https://www.hackerrank.com/ Pretty decent coding environment and problem set.