Reddit Question · Apr 2026

How to handle anxiety the night before the big day?

5 upvotes 9 replies

Question Details

Hello everyone, I may have botched my first code interview at Google due to horrendous sleep caused by anxiety the night before. I'm curious what your suggestions and strategies are to ease the anxiet

Full Details

Hello everyone, I may have botched my first code interview at Google due to horrendous sleep caused by anxiety the night before. I'm curious what your suggestions and strategies are to ease the anxiety and actually get good rest. Optional context for those interested: A recruiter reached out to me and let me go through the interview process because the local office is expanding. Google is my dream company, so I accepted. I had a little under 2 weeks to prepare. I had never done leetcode before, so I really grinded it hard. I was getting pretty confident that I'm ready but on the night before I had difficulties falling asleep because of anxiety. Once I managed to, I woke up twice because my sleep wasn't deep. The second time was due to neighboring construction work randomly starting at 6am when I wanted to wake up at 8am. This pulled me out of REM and I couldn't sleep anymore. Worst rest of the year. I couldn't think straight and couldn't string thoughts together past a certain point. Come interview, it made me stumble a few times, needing minor hints to get back on track. I cut the clarifying questions and planning phase short because I felt my mental context shutting down. So, I rushed to implementation. I was very slow compared to what I'm used to, but I tried explaining my thought process. At the end there was only time for testing one of the two methods I implemented. I found two bugs and fixed them there. Then time over. We quickly discussed the time complexity and he said he can't think of a more efficient solution top of his head. I'm frustrated and embarrassed by how that went. I can handle anxiety really well when conscious, but I have no clue how to deal with it when I'm unconscious (sleeping). The problem was pretty easy too, like one of the easier leetcode mediums. So, if anyone has advice on calming the nerves for some good rest, I (and maybe others) would appreciate it. Worst case, for next time, I'll piss someone off and hope they knock me out clean lol

About This Question

This is a reported interview question from a google interview for a swe role reported in 2026.

It covers the following topics: Strings, System Design .

Difficulty rating: Easy