Live coding sucks
Why I believe live coding is NOT fair
Some people enjoy live coding interviews. I’m not one of them.
Two days ago, I stumbled upon a post on LinkedIn:
Sounds absurd at first. Why would a senior engineer, who has been writing code for years, struggle with something as simple as a basic algorithm? Did they suddenly forget how to code? Maybe. But I have a different perspective.
A quick story
Four years ago, I applied for Toptal. I passed the initial stage(s). I passed a 90-minute Codility assessment (three problems as I recall it). Then, I failed to finish a live coding test for a full 30 minutes (more or less, I don’t remember exactly). I revisited the test a few hours later, and I solved the problem in no time.
That was super confusing. The problem wasn’t that hard really. I was able to solve it, but failed to do so in the live coding session.
This triggered my curiosity, and I did some research back then. Turns out it’s a well-known phenomenon in the scientific literature. It’s all about stress.
Your brain under stress
When you’re placed in a high-stakes, time-pressured situation, like live coding, your brain reacts exactly like it would to any other threat. The amygdala gets activated. Cortisol levels spike. Your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for complex reasoning and working memory, gets impaired. Either mildly, moderately, or severely, depending on the individual and their baseline stress resilience.
Working memory is the most reliable proxy (I know of) for fluid intelligence, your ability to reason, solve novel problems, and think abstractly. It’s what you mostly need to pass live coding tests, I believe. When your prefrontal cortex is impaired due to stress, your working memory capacity shrinks.
For some people, especially those with even mild performance anxiety, it becomes nearly impossible to think clearly. Your attention narrows. You can’t hold multiple steps in your head. You forget what you just typed a few seconds ago. It feels like your IQ dropped by 30 points. In fact, it feels like you’re a completely different version of yourself; a much dumber one.
The definitive paper
As I was writing this post, I found a paper that absolutely surprised me. It’s a rigorous scientific study done on this exact topic: performance during live coding.
The paper titled “Does Stress Impact Technical Interview Performance?”, and it’s co-authored by researchers at Microsoft. They basically asked participants to solve a coding problem in two settings:
- Private setting: Alone in a room; no one watching.
- Public setting: In front of a proctor, while thinking aloud.
Same task. Same time limit. Just different levels of stress.
Here’s what they found: The participants being watched scored half compared to those who were alone.
The cognitive performance in the public setting had both a lower average and much wider spread (high variance); indicating that some candidates are disproportionately impaired under stress, while others perform as usual or even slightly better. That’s why live coding is so unfair.
All of these findings are no surprise to me. But here’s a surprising finding: not a single woman in the public setting passed, while every woman in the private setting did. So if your company wants to “support women in tech” but still do live coding interviews… congrats, you’re running a scientifically validated exclusion filter.
Performance under stress
I like to think of live coding as a proxy for performance under stress. The paper I just mentioned shares the same view.
Some companies genuinely care about this. Some even mention it in their job descriptions. They want candidates who perform well under pressure. If that’s the case, then sure, live coding might help.
But that’s not how most companies frame it.
Most hirings don’t mention stress resilience. They don’t describe the job as “high-pressure.” They’re not looking for someone to “perform well under pressure.” They just want a good engineer.
The engineer who froze during a 30-minute LeetCode exercise might be the same person who quietly ships flawless code, writes excellent docs, and debugs complex systems. You’re not rejecting a bad engineer, you’re rejecting someone who doesn’t perform well while being watched.
That’s not a skill most jobs require.
Companies frame live coding as a test of your coding skills; it’s misleading. Even worse, it compounds performance anxiety. It makes candidates believe this test is a reliable measure of their coding skills. That’s never true for most engineers.
Live coding fails to measure what we think it measures. It’s more accurately measuring cortisol under stress than coding skills.
Mitigating the stress
We can’t change the fact that live coding is a common practice in tech interviews. But we can try to mitigate the stress it causes.
The best way to desensitize your brain to stress is repeated exposure. Do mock live coding sessions that mimic the real thing: use platforms like Pramp, Interviewing.io, or LeetCode’s mock assessment.
You could also set a timer, record yourself (to simulate being “watched”), and think aloud. Gradually increase pressure (e.g., invite a friend to watch).
I’ve also been thinking of experimenting with some supplements that I believe might help with performance under stress.
- L-tyrosine: Stress depletes catecholamines, which may underlie the cognitive deficits we see during stressful situations. Supplementing with L-tyrosine may help replenish these neurotransmitters under stress.
- L-theanine: An amino acid found in tea that promotes relaxation. It has been shown to reduce stress and improve focus. I haven’t tried any of these yet (during an interview), and I’m not encouraging anyone to do so. But I think it might be worth experimenting with, especially if you struggle with performance anxiety. You should definitely test it in practice sessions first. Everyone is different, and what works for one person may not work for another.
Being bad at live coding doesn’t mean you’re a bad engineer. It means you’re human.
Edit #1
Wow! This post had so many great comments and discussions on HN. Thank you HNers for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
Highlighting the top comment as I think it deserves more attention.
I won’t attempt to generalize from my case, but let me offer a personal anecdote.
I’m now a successful, self-employed indie developer. One of the main reasons I stuck with indie development through the hard times—the maxim that it takes 5 years to become an overnight success was true for me—was that I became practically unhireable. There are multiple strikes against me: I’m middle age in an industry rife with age discrimination, I don’t have a computer science degree, and I experience brain freeze during live coding interviews.
I would note that not all stress is the same. Firefighters rush into burning buildings for a living, and what could be more stressful, yet many of them would panic at the idea of giving a speech to a non-burning roomful of strangers. I have no problem with stress on the job, and I’ve successfully navigated many work emergencies during my career, but something about strangers standing over my shoulder judging me, determining my financial future by providing or withholding a job, like the sword of Damocles, turns my stomach inside out. And like the article author, I can revisit the coding problems and solve them afterward, as soon as the interview is over. Interviewers must think I’m a fraud who can’t code, yet all evidence from my career, now almost 2 decades long, suggests otherwise.
A lot of commenters causally speak of “false negatives” as if they were random, but some people, myself included, are always the false negative. I am consistently filtered out by audition-style interviews. I’m not a stage performer.
Edit #2
Another powerful comment on HN which brings a whole new dimension to the conversation. If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment there.
I am working on a documentary film on the software engineering interview process, Computer Silenced, which is feature length extension of my project Whiteboard Challenge(R). This film focuses on this exact issue, but more specifically how it affects people diagnosed with hidden disabilities, e.g. Autism, ADHD, and Anxiety as well as PTSD and other stress related symptoms.
I have 25+ years in software engineering and have been filtered through the non-job related interview process described here. I also have a medical diagnosis of ASD L1 and ADHD along with stress induced dyslexia.
Can others here please read the following federal law and confirm it applies. Through the film, I am trying to amend the definition of a disability, so we have equal rights.
Title 42 U.S. Code § 12112(b)(6) “using qualification standards, employment tests or other selection criteria that screen out or tend to screen out an individual with a disability or a class of individuals with disabilities unless the standard, test or other selection criteria, as used by the covered entity, is shown to be job-related for the position in question and is consistent with business necessity”