The pressure is a little higher than real life, but the problem is easier.  The phone interview questions are things like &quot;write atoi()&quot;, not &quot;write a database system to handle 4000 transactions per second per entity group with globally-consistent reads across three continents&quot;, which is the kind of work you might be interviewing for.<p>I think success at a phone interview question is a good positive signal.  That&#x27;s all you can get in interviews, signals.