Just for fun, I found among my dad's papers the written tests he had to pass before he could even sit in the cockpit of an F-86 Sabrejet. They were quite comprehensive and full of minutia. For damn sure the AF wasn't going to let anyone fly one of those monsters without proving they could study and learn everything about them by heart. No excuses about brain freeze is going to fly (pun intended).
One day, he was flying along in his F-86 over the Arizona desert when the engine conked out. He radioed the situation to the tower, who advised him to bail out. But he knew how to figure out hour far he could fly given his speed, altitude, weight of the fuel, wind speed, etc. and calculated that he could make the strip. And he did, with a few feet to spare.
There's no way I would even dare fly one without mastering all that stuff, either.
> calculated that he could make the strip. And he did, with a few feet to spare.
Stories like that give me goosebumps. Your dad has (had? if so, I'm sorry) just absolute balls of steel. Not to mention an incredible mind. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, because flying a war jet under pressure and landing it in the desert is the same as writing software over 5 months in an office. /s
Test anxiety is real. Anxiety disorders are real in general, not to mention ADHD, autism and more where these disabilities can interact in bad ways in interviews. It does not mean that people with these issues are bad engineers. If your instrument is inaccurate, it does not mean the thing it is measuring is wrong.
One of the best and smartest engineers I have ever hired had visible anxiety and objectively did not pass the interview but we pushed for it anyway and was hired as a jr engineer. He is a staff engineer now, leads various large company library projects and is the go to expert about various systems in the entire company and will probably become a sr staff engineer. He also probably hasn't changed jobs because he knows he's bad at interviews, which is incredibly sad.
No, that optimizing and interviewing for performance under pressure is not needed for most software engineers, while it makes sense for fighter pilots. It's is definitely more stressful.
I'll repeat that the cure for test anxiety is preparation, preparation, preparation. Avoiding it, like your engineer employee, won't be helpful. Keep going to interviews, and the performance anxiety will also dissipate.
The first few times I did public speaking, I'd freeze up and squeak. I speak regularly now, and it's not a problem anymore.
(Again, I attended Caltech. Most of us were nerds, and many Aspergers. I have worked with many people "on the spectrum" and am not at all ignorant of their differences.)
When I worked as a firefighter/paramedic, one of the axioms was that you don't train until you get it right, you train until you don't get it wrong. That, at 3am, sleep-deprived, it's so ingrained in you what to do, you can do it automatically, leaving your mental capacity for the variables of the situation, not the bare minimum of "what do I do next?"
One day, he was flying along in his F-86 over the Arizona desert when the engine conked out. He radioed the situation to the tower, who advised him to bail out. But he knew how to figure out hour far he could fly given his speed, altitude, weight of the fuel, wind speed, etc. and calculated that he could make the strip. And he did, with a few feet to spare.
There's no way I would even dare fly one without mastering all that stuff, either.