I am the "grand OP", the guy who was called out by the post. Statistically, only 20-30% of the candidates are nervous and about half of those end up passing. So we see no bias due to nervousness. On the other hand, the people that do not pass, in large part not nervous fail for different reasons:

- some are completely and utterly incompetent (they can't write a line of code at all)

- some write some code but it's just bad quality or they are incredibly slow

- some lack basic notions we require (e.g. don't know what a byte is)

- some blatantly cheat with ChatGPT or other tools

- some rage quit ("how dare you ask me to code")

- some fall into deep rabbit holes, overthink everything and make a mess

On the other hand the people that pass:

- all of them solve this in half the time we give

- even if they are nervous

In other words there's a chasm between the hires and no hires. Assuming that this interview only measures nervousness is a completely wrong notion.

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