Oh man, I feel this so much. Solidity interviews used to wreck me, especially when they’d throw a contract at me and say, “Find the bug.” Like, cool, let me just casually have a panic attack first. 😅
The biggest problem? I knew the concepts, but spotting issues under pressure was a whole different beast. I’d either overthink and miss something obvious or second-guess myself into oblivion. If that sounds familiar, here’s what helped me:
Pattern recognition is everything. Interviewers love asking about the same types of vulnerabilities—reentrancy, integer overflows, storage collisions, unoptimized loops. Once I started actively looking for patterns in smart contract bugs, things got easier.
Debugging speed matters. My biggest mistake early on? Taking my sweet time to figure things out. In an interview, you have minutes, not hours. I started setting a 10-minute timer when solving practice questions, forcing myself to find the issue fast. It sucked at first, but it really helped.
Break things yourself. Reading about attacks is fine, but writing a vulnerable contract and actually exploiting it? That’s next-level learning. I started messing around with test contracts—triggering reentrancy, messing with storage, calling selfdestruct. Once you’ve broken things yourself, spotting those same issues in an interview becomes second nature.
Stop relying on tools (at least at first). Slither, Mythril, all great. But I used to lean on them too much instead of trusting my own analysis. Now, I first debug manually, then check with tools to see if I missed anything.
Mock interviews + talking out loud. This was huge. I forced myself to explain vulnerabilities like I was teaching someone. If I couldn’t explain why a contract was broken in simple terms, I knew I didn’t fully get it.
Honestly, it’s just a mix of practice, pressure testing, and breaking stuff until it all clicks. It does get easier—I promise. Hope this helps, and if you’re stuck on specific types of questions, drop ‘em here!
