What do you do if you're faced with a high-pressure coding challenge?

When you’re in a high pressure situation, you’ll want to panic. Giving in to the feelings of panic and overwhelm is natural, but it leads to less effective logical thinking. Logical thinking is something you need more of in high pressure technical situations. First, expect yourself to feel more stress. It’s normal. But decide ahead of time that your reaction to stress will be rising to the challenge rather than panicking. Next, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Remind yourself you’ve done hard things before. This is another hard thing that you can do. Finally, follow the problem-solving steps you’re familiar with. Break down the problem into its component parts. Solve each of those. Apply the solution to the overall problem.

When you feel overwhelmed or stressed, take a moment to pause and take several deep breaths. Deep breathing can help calm your nerves, reduce stress levels, and improve concentration.

When faced with high-pressure situations, the natural inclination is to panic. However, succumbing to panic and overwhelm can hinder your ability to think logically, which is crucial in technical scenarios under pressure. It's important to acknowledge that feeling stressed is normal. Instead of letting stress overwhelm you, prepare yourself to rise to the challenge. Take a moment to close your eyes and take a deep breath. Remind yourself that you've overcome difficult challenges before, and you can do it again. Lastly, rely on your problem-solving skills. Break down the problem into smaller parts, solve each part individually, and then apply those solutions to the larger problem.

Take your time to read and understand the problem statement thoroughly. Pay attention to details, constraints, and any specific requirements mentioned. Don't rush into coding until you have a clear understanding of what is being asked.

You want to solve the problem, yet it’s surprisingly easy to rush into the fix and inadvertently make it worse. Take the time to understand the problem completely so that you can develop a whole solution.

Before diving into coding, take a moment to plan your approach. Consider the most efficient way to solve the problem, and outline the steps or algorithms you intend to use. Having a clear plan in mind can help you stay focused and organized during the coding process.

Begin by writing pseudocode or outlining your solution in plain language. Describe the logic and steps of your approach without worrying about syntax or implementation details. Pseudocode can help solidify your understanding of the problem and guide your coding process.

In a high pressure technical situation, it’s tempting to skip steps in order to get the fix out as quickly as possible. Don’t do it. Take the time to validate that the changes you’ve made actually do what you expect. Are there side effects you didn’t intend? What about edge cases? Test your solution before sending it off as the answer.

After completing the challenge, take some time to review your code and reflect on your approach. Identify areas for improvement or optimization, and refactor your code if necessary. Learning from each challenge and iteration will help you grow as a coder.

Recently, we had a bug in our production service that resulted in some users not seeing images on the site. I had all eyes on me because that was a service I owned. I panicked, pushed up a “fix” without validating it, and 10 minutes later the problem was now affecting 100% of users. I grabbed a coworker and together we slowed down, worked to understand the problem fully, wrote a solution, tested it, and released it. Images were loading again! Had I slowed down and followed those steps the first time, the high-pressure situation would have been resolved more quickly and without additional impact.