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Ask HN: Hiring in the age of AI-assisted coding: what works?

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Re: Ask HN: Hiring in the age of AI-assisted coding: what works?

#21

Post by snicky »

eleventhborn wrote: post #5

I'm interviewing currently. I've come across the following. * Non-technical recruiters using a list of technical trivia questions and a keywords list to check if you answer correctly (e.g. what is the default isolation level in postgres) - this is the worst. * Code reviews but on non-generic code, like on a specific framework/product/SDK code in which you may or may not have prior experience - slightly less worse, bu…

> * take home assignments where they say "we recommend you to not spend more than x hours on this", but then, they expect a very sophisticated work and will reject you if you turn-in a "simple" implementation. Maybe they expect speed and quality?

I never finished a take-home assignment within the given time frame. Once I even spent a whole weekend working on a solution to something that was described as a 2h problem. I feel it's just a way for the companies to make it look like it's a small commitment and they are not wasting your time excessively. If you decide to spend 2 days instead of 2 hours then "it's on you" ... But if you don't you'll fail.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring in the age of AI-assisted coding: what works?

#22

Post by cdnsteve »

Have them show you and talk about what they built. If they are not curious and building side projects, doing open source for excitement and making an app for a friend's business, their family member or some passion project, to me that's a red flag.

We are in a new age when the barrier to building is literally the lowest it's ever been. If your GitHub still is a dead graveyard fix that immediately.

I have over 2k commits in 2026 alone and I'm not even an IC anymore. Not including my work account.

I have like 12 side projects being built usually, working on 3-4 in parallel. A few are open source and growing.

All of this has helped me learn at a crazy rate. If your candidate is still just slogging 9-5, doing stand-ups then clocking out without anything extra.... That's all you need to know.

Curious, self learning, high potential people with a track record and good communication skills. That's it.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring in the age of AI-assisted coding: what works?

#23

Post by mettamage »

eleventhborn wrote: post #5

I'm interviewing currently. I've come across the following. * Non-technical recruiters using a list of technical trivia questions and a keywords list to check if you answer correctly (e.g. what is the default isolation level in postgres) - this is the worst. * Code reviews but on non-generic code, like on a specific framework/product/SDK code in which you may or may not have prior experience - slightly less worse, bu…

I only do takehome assignments if they can be useful boilerplate/starter projects for me and then spend all my hours on them. Recently I had 5 working days to create a backend for a chatbot. I spent about 80 to 100 (including the weekend).

It's good starter code for AI-enabled projects that are cloud agnostic and have good security practices :)

It also, probably, got me the job. At this point, that's honestly secondary. I can create new tools way faster!

One failed takehome assignment, years ago, became an amazing portfolio piece for 2 jobs down the line. The reason the original company failed me: not a standard full-stack web app. I broke the client-server model and made a P2P web app (drawing together etc.).

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