But when working with people in the normal job, nobody is watching them type they just eat the sausage.
I can relate. I don’t have anxiety generally with work and have been praised on my interactions with customers. But I feel anxious during interviews because they are actively trying to judge me.
Then again, maybe I'm biased because I write the same sentence multiple times in quick succession. And I go back and re-write previous sentences if they don't flow well with what's coming next. But when people have watched me do it, they have only expressed wonder and admiration over it, never negative feelings.
What doesn't work is when someone starts verbally editing my first draft the instant I've typed it out. Yes, I know it's bad -- it's the first draft. I just needed to get something on the page to see where I should go next.
I would imagine that, if anything, seeing you pause after an initial draft, adjust some grammar and tone, pause...even re-write a sentence or paragraph - and then say "done"...would impress, not detract.
As far as your technique, drafting then editing down is a totally legit way to write. I wish more people did that!
Adaptation only goes so far. More training won't turn a dwarf into a basketball centre, or a heavyweight bodybuilder into a champion marathoner. Sometimes you've got to work with what you have, both in terms of abilities and limitations.
Intellectual and psychological limitations may be less manifestly visible but are no less real.
Do we really have no way of evaluating candidates more holistically for an accurate signal?
they neglect the reality of rapid corrective and
evolutionary iteration towards the desired outcome
by each employee
Some of them were horrible. There was one where I had to code on a literal whiteboard while a pair of, uh, let's just call them "people with distinctly non-wonderful personalities" critiqued everything. I did horribly.
I've also had many that went well. There was a live coding environment, and they allowed for exactly what you said - correction and iteration. They also collaborated with me to an extent. I felt these sorts of interviews were excellent and I did well. They also gave me a great feeling of what it would be like to work with these folks.
It's perhaps also worth noting that I began a lot of these by saying, "These sorts of interviews make me nervous, but I'll give it my best!" or something similar. And you know what, a good interviewer knows and understands that. They know these kinds of interviews make 99% of the population nervous. So acknowledging that fact helped me to feel at ease.
So, done well, I think they can be great.
My best interview experiences were like this. I thought I did well and left those interviews feeling great, positive reinforcement, great performance of code, plenty of time left over! Just for a faceless and ambiguous rejection letter :) I started getting an aggregate view that people just didn't want to pay me that much, or that there's some external factor on a search engine or within the industry about me that I'll never be aware of, but I landed on my feet on the entrepreneurial side.
So guess I'll never know!