Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#241

Post by davely » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:36 AM UTC

dahart wrote: post #180

wsintra2022 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it cheating if I can solve the problem using the tools of AI, or is it just solving the problem?

Interviews aren’t about solving problems. The interviewer isn’t interested in a problem’s solution, they’re interested in seeing how you get to the answer. They’re about trying to find out if you’ll be a good hire, which notably includes whether you’re willing and interested in spending effort learning. They already know how to use AI, they don’t need you for that. They want to know that you’ll contribute to the team…

> Interviews aren’t about solving problems.

Eh, I wish more people felt that way, I have failed so many interviews because I haven't solved the coding problem in time.

The feedback has always been something along the lines of "great at communicating your thoughts, discussing trade-offs, having a good back and forth" but "yeah, ultimately really wanted to see if you could pass all the unit tests."

Even in interview panels I've personally been a part of, one of the things we evaluate (heavily) is whether the candidate solved the problem.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#242

Post by esafak » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

These days I ask real-world debugging questions where the root cause is not the error on the screen. I allow LLM use as long as I see how.

In my unfortunate experience, candidates who covertly rely on LLMs also tend to have embellished resumes, so I try to root them out before asking technical questions.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#243

Post by nouveaux » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

dakiol wrote: post #76

nouveaux wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you spent a lot of time trying to hire people? I guarantee you there is no shadow council trying to figure out how to hire "busywork" worker bees. This perspective smells completely like "If I were in charge, things would be so much better." Guess what? If you were to take your idea and try to lead this change across a 100 people engineering org, there would be "out of the box thinkers" who would go against your…

My take is: - “big” tech companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft came up with these types of tech interviews. And there it seems pretty clear that for most of their positions they are looking for cogs - The vast majority of tech companies have just copied what “big” tech is doing, including tech interviews. These companies may not be looking for cogs, but they are using an interview process that’s not suitable for t…

And what is wrong with being a cog? Not everyone is going to invent the next ai innovation and not everyone is cut out to build the next hot programming language.

Bugs need to be fixed. Features need to be implemented. If it weren't for cogs, you'd have people just throwing new projects over the fence and dropped 6 months after release. Don't want to be another cog? Join a startup. Plenty of those hiring. The reality is that when you work at a large company, you're one of 50,000 people. By definition, only 1% are in the top 1%.

Someone has to wash the dishes and clear the tables. Let's stop looking down at jobs just because it's not hot and sexy. People who show up and provide value is great and should be appreciated.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#244

Post by joquarky » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:41 AM UTC

mmh0000 wrote: post #167

shaneoh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently interviewed for my team and tried this same approach. I thought it made sense because I want to see how people can actually work and problem solve given all the tools at their disposal, just like on the job. It proved to be awkward and clumsy very quickly. Some candidates resisted it since they clearly thought it would make them judged harsher. Some candidates were on the other extreme and basically tried…

Over the years, I've walked from several "live coding" interviews. Arguably though, if you're looking for "social coders" maybe the interview is working as intended? But for me, it's just not how my brain works. If someone is watching me, I'll be so self-conscious the entire time you'll get a stream of absolute nonsense that makes me look like I learned programming from YouTube last night. So it's not worth the time.…

I need my default mode network to produce good code, and I don't talk while it's active

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#245

Post by hnisoss » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:42 AM UTC

chowells wrote: post #144

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So depressing to hear that “because of rampant cheating” As a person looking for a job, I’m really not sure what to do. If people are lying on their resumes and cheating in interviews, it feels like there’s nothing I can do except do the same. Otherwise I’ll remain jobless. But to this day I haven’t done either.

Here's the thing: 95% of cheaters still suck, even when cheating. Its hard to imagine how people can perform so badly while cheating, yet they consistently do. All you need to do to stand out is not be utterly awful. Worrying about what other people are doing is more detrimental to your performance than anything else is. Just focus on yourself: being broadly competent, knowing your niche well, and being good at commu…

Yea but I also suck in 95% of FAANG like interviews since I'm very bad at leetcode medium/hard type of questions. It's just something that I never practiced. It's very tempting at this point to trow in my towel and just use some aid. No one cares about my intense career and the millions I helped my clients earn, all that matters (and sometimes directly affects comp rate) is how I do on the "coding task".

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#246

Post by terrabiped » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

ADeerAppeared wrote: post #224

kortilla wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply. What you’re suggesting here isn’t any different than submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications.

> The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply. What you're missing here is that this is an individual's answer to a systemic problem. You don't apply when it's _one_ obnoxious employer. When it's standard practice across the entire industry, we have a problem. > submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications. This is already worryingly common…

You make a valid point that while the rules of the game are known ahead of time, it’s strange that the entire industry is stuck in this local maximum of LeetCode interviews. Big companies are comfortable with the status quo, and small companies just don’t have the budget to experiment with anything else (maybe with some one-offs).

Sadly, it’s not just the interview loops—the way candidates are screened for roles also sucks.

I’ve seen startups trying to innovate in this space for many years now, and it’s surprising that absolutely nothing has changed.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#247

Post by jacobsenscott » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:48 AM UTC

NotMichaelBay wrote: post #221

jacobsenscott wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are pretending to have knowledge and skills you don't have you are cheating. And if you have the required knowledge and skill AI is a hindrance, not a help. You can solve the problem easily without it. So "is using ai cheating"? IDK, but logically you wouldn't use AI unless you were cheating.

Knowledge and skill are two different things. Sometimes interviewers test that you know how to do something, when in practice it's irrelevant if you A) know how to retrieve that knowledge and B) know when to retrieve it.

There is foundational knowledge you must have memorized through a combination of education and experience to be a software developer. The standard must be higher than "can use google and cut and paste." The answer can't always be - "I don't need to be able to recall that on command, I can google/chatgpt that when I end up needing it." Would you go to a surgeon who says "I don't need to know exactly where the spleen is, I can simply google it during surgery."

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#248

Post by nradov » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:48 AM UTC

BowBun wrote: post #202

Aeolun wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to be paid though. What do I care about the terms of the interview as long as they hire me? What is being suggested here is not participating in the mind numbing process that is called ‘applying for a job’.

If you lie about your qualifications to a degree that can be considered fraud, employers can and will sue you for their money back and damages. Wait till you discover how mind-numbing the American legal system is!

Nonsense. I don't endorse lying about qualifications, but employers don't sue over this. Employment law in most US states wouldn't even allow for that with regular W-2 employees.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#249

Post by dahart » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:53 AM UTC

icecube123 wrote: post #234

dahart wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviews aren’t about solving problems. The interviewer isn’t interested in a problem’s solution, they’re interested in seeing how you get to the answer. They’re about trying to find out if you’ll be a good hire, which notably includes whether you’re willing and interested in spending effort learning. They already know how to use AI, they don’t need you for that. They want to know that you’ll contribute to the team…

Isnt one of the ways of solving the problem using all the tools at your disposal? If at the end of the day, isnt having working code the fundamental goal? I guess you could argue that the code needs to be efficient, stable, and secure. But if you could use "AI" to get part way there, then use smarts to finish it off. Isnt that reasonable? (Devils advocate) The other big question is the legality of using code from an…

Yes that’s a fair question. Some companies do allow LLMs in interviews and on the job. But again the solution isn’t what the interviewer wants, so relying on an LLM gives them no signal about your intrinsic capabilities.

Keep in mind that the amount of time you spend in a real job solving clear and easy interview style problems that an LLM can answer is tiny to none. Jobs are most often about juggling priorities and working with other people and under changing conditions, stuff Claude and ChatGPT can’t really help you with. Your personality is way more important to your job success than your GPT skills, and that’s what interviewers want to see… your personality & behavior when you don’t know the right answer, not ChatGPT’s personality.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#250

Post by donatj » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 1:59 AM UTC

Oh man, I have kind of hunkered down and not interviewed anywhere since the start of COVID. I had not even thought about how AI might affect things let alone people not being in office.

Last time I interviewed I spent about half of it standing at a whiteboard.