I’ve found in my interviewing that since having a child I am way worse at coding interviews—in ways I never was before. Perhaps this is due to being at a higher level of stress all the time—worrying about a young child’s wellbeing is a full time stressor (it doesn’t even stop when they go to sleep!)—but it also seems like there is so much more riding on an interview. When it was just me, and I was younger, if I failed, “oh well, I’ll get it next time.” Now there are concerns about health insurance, a mortgage, retirement &c.

I get stuck in ways I’ve never experienced in my life; my brain feels like it stopped working (but has reserved the bandwidth to shout at me the whole time “you’re blowing this!”). Then shortly after the call ends, sitting quietly, a path forward opens and suddenly I’m working on a solution, which it’s own special kind of hell—to know you could do it but didn’t and now some stranger out there thinks you’re a real idiot.

Studying/practicing has mixed results as you are taking away time from your partner and kid, this causes feelings of guilt. I found the more time I spent practicing, the more leetcode hards I solved, the worse I got. It was paradoxical! It was additionally demoralizing!

I only share all of this to say that circumstances change; you change. What once was easy becomes hard—maybe just for now, maybe forever, I don’t know. What I do know from my time at Big Co., is that this style of interview (often aped at smaller co.) is employed as one of the stated goals is to remove opportunity for biases (test everyone the same "quantifiable" way). However, my experiences lead me to believe that it falls short in that regard. As I said, people change, and a candidate who becomes a coworker with a high tolerance for stress today might not have the same appetite in a few years. Surely removing biases is about seeking balance, but I think certain types of interviews are blind to the imbalances they might cause.