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Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#11

Post by calabin »

blackbear_ wrote: post #7

Ask them to share their screen, walk you through their code and explain their solution live. Every once in a while ask why they did it in that way and what alternative approaches there could be. Then change the problem a little and ask them to modify their code, again live. Generally, try to go deep and ask follow-up "why" or "how" questions. Those who "don't remember" or only offer vague and shallow answers are like…

This is generally what we do and what raised our suspicions in the first place - they both could "walk us through" their code, but had trouble explaining why they did certain things, how they could improve things, etc.

We thought that the approach you've outlined would generally be good enough, and has led us to catch instances where people are leaning heavily on LLMs, but our issue now is that everyone appears to be using these things. Admittedly, our sample size here is low (n=3). But it's still frustrating nonetheless.

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#12

Post by calabin »

uberman wrote: post #2

While I'm personally not keen on LLMs, I admit I do have the co-pilot extension installed in Visual Studio and have been pleasantly surprised at how tab-completion is working. It seems effective for small blocks of code. So, remembering that I not really a fan when I ask this... but why do you care if a candidate uses an LLM or Google as part of your interview? Do you care if they use an IDE or if they use a code com…

The screen we are performing here is a basic "can you program" type of evaluation.

We've run into a number of people with seemingly-decent resumes (several positions as engineers at reputable albeit non-FAANG companies like insurers or e-commerce firms) who have struggled to complete basic tasks like the Pascal's Triangle question mentioned above.

The intent here is to toss them a couple of softballs that they should be able to knock out of the park, almost like if they were helping a younger sibling with CS 1XX or 2XX level work.

We're not against the use of Copilot, etc. once onboarded. We just want to make sure that these candidates possess basic skills that their resumes would suggest they mastered years ago.

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#13

Post by grajaganDev »

calabin wrote: post #10
grajaganDev wrote: post #6

The problem is Leetcode style interviews, not ChatGPT.

We're definitely not doing any "Leetcode style" interviews over here - these are basic "can you perform basic programming tasks as you've stated" type questions.

Do you really need all three of them (FizzBuzz, Pascal's and non-primes) to demonstrate basic programming tasks?

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#14

Post by calabin »

charleslmunger wrote: post #9

Sieve of Erastothenes is often introduced alongside prime numbers in elementary school math class and it has a funny/memorable name - it's not that weird for someone to know it. It is weird to lie about having a practical use case for it since running it to the point of a cryptographically useful prime length is infeasible and it requires O(n) memory. It seems vanishingly unlikely that this type of question can provi…

Great point on the Sieve - knowing it off of the top of his head wasn't itself a red-handed indicator of cheating, but claiming that he'd used it in a B2B SaaS app was. Especially given that he wasn't able to explain how he'd allegedly used it.

The candidates we're bringing into this screen typically have 1-3 prior positions on their resume, so the point here is to throw them some softballs that they should be able to crank through with some ease to demonstrate that their basic programming skills are there.

We've had experiences where people who have held legitimate programming jobs at F1000 companies struggle greatly with some of the basic questions that I've listed above. I'm not sure why, but it's the case.

We try as best as we can to adjust for anxiousness, I know that programming in front of others can suck, but all the same we're just trying to establish, "before we go forward, can you do some elementary tasks that anyone with your claimed experience should be able to do"

Do you have any suggestions on better questions?

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#15

Post by calabin »

grajaganDev wrote: post #13
calabin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're definitely not doing any "Leetcode style" interviews over here - these are basic "can you perform basic programming tasks as you've stated" type questions.

Do you really need all three of them (FizzBuzz, Pascal's and non-primes) to demonstrate basic programming tasks?

Not really, since failing FizzBuzz basically ends the interview.

That said, Pascal's and Non-Primes allows us to do a few minutes of basic, "that looks great, what are some ideas for optimizing it" work together once they have established that they have the basics of programming.

I am incredibly open to suggestion on better ways to evaluate people for both (a) their basic ability to code, and (b) their ability to think about code/optimization.

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#16

Post by blackbear_ »

calabin wrote: post #11
blackbear_ wrote: post #7

Ask them to share their screen, walk you through their code and explain their solution live. Every once in a while ask why they did it in that way and what alternative approaches there could be. Then change the problem a little and ask them to modify their code, again live. Generally, try to go deep and ask follow-up "why" or "how" questions. Those who "don't remember" or only offer vague and shallow answers are like…

This is generally what we do and what raised our suspicions in the first place - they both could "walk us through" their code, but had trouble explaining why they did certain things, how they could improve things, etc. We thought that the approach you've outlined would generally be good enough, and has led us to catch instances where people are leaning heavily on LLMs, but our issue now is that everyone appears to be…

You could try to give a challenge that has a few hidden gotchas, and discard candidates that do not spot them. How to do this depends on the role you are hiring for.

For example, in our data scientist interviews we also candidates to analyze datasets with imbalanced classes, outliers, correlated samples, etc. Correctly dealing with these issues requires particular techniques, and most importantly the candidate has to explicitly check whether these issues are present or not. Those who use LLMs mindlessly will not even realize this is the case.

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#17

Post by TheMongoose »

calabin wrote: post #12
uberman wrote: post #2

While I'm personally not keen on LLMs, I admit I do have the co-pilot extension installed in Visual Studio and have been pleasantly surprised at how tab-completion is working. It seems effective for small blocks of code. So, remembering that I not really a fan when I ask this... but why do you care if a candidate uses an LLM or Google as part of your interview? Do you care if they use an IDE or if they use a code com…

The screen we are performing here is a basic "can you program" type of evaluation. We've run into a number of people with seemingly-decent resumes (several positions as engineers at reputable albeit non-FAANG companies like insurers or e-commerce firms) who have struggled to complete basic tasks like the Pascal's Triangle question mentioned above. The intent here is to toss them a couple of softballs that they should…

Your questions are pointless. I have no interest in CS puzzles at all, I don't memorize or practice them, and that's what you're testing for. I write code to build stuff.

Why not have a conversation with them about things they have built instead? Not form questions that say "tell us about a time you encountered a problem you had to solve" but an actual conversation. Like... an interview.

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#18

Post by calabin »

thecrumb wrote: post #4

This would be like asking a carpenter to build you something without a hammer. At this point we need to realize LLM is a tool like everything else. Maybe give them a LLM challenge - how to do X. What is your prompt. Why?

I disagree with the carpenter-hammer analogy here pretty strongly.

We're basically trying to figure out if they can code generally, or if somehow they've skated by in their last positions without the fundamental skills of programming.

I'm not sure how, but we've come across a number of programmers from F1000 companies that can't seem to hit some of the basics in their chosen language.

LLMs have their place as a tool, but before we empower them with the latest and greatest programming assistance, we want to make sure that they have the skills to do things like critically interpret the output of Copilot, etc.

We want to make sure we're that the people we hire possess the skills they claim, and that they won't serve as a very-slow wrapper for the LLM tools we already pay for.

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#19

Post by calabin »

maxwell wrote: post #5

Ask questions that involve trade-offs, be they design or performance related, and explicitly tell candidates that you're benchmarking against ChatGPT and expect something beyond what an LLM would give, i.e. you're looking more for creative/critical thinking than mere correctness.

This is an interesting direction - especially benchmarking against GPT and telling the candidate we are.

Do you have any suggestions about the type of questions we could be asking here?

Re: Ask HN: How do you guard against ChatGPT use in technical interviews?

#20

Post by calabin »

sandropuppo wrote: post #3

It's a great question. What we are doing is to ask the candidate to have hands visible to the camera for the interview. But some systems are working with voice only and this will not be working in those cases. Probably the best way would be to have the ChatGPT answer beforehand and confront it with what the candidate is saying?

Having the GPT answer beforehand would allow us to confront them about it sooner, but at that point we're definitely not hiring them since they thought it a good idea to use an LLM to cheat on questions they should be able to do in their sleep.

Interesting that you're asking the candidate to have their hands visible. We haven't wanted to have to go that way, but we might.

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