Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 735 posts

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

#271

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

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…

> 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

I admire this worldview, and wish for it to be true, but I can't help but see it in conflict with much of what floats around these parts.

There's a recent thread on Aider where the authors' proudly proclaim that ~80% of code is written by Aider itself.

I've no idea what to make of the general state of the programming profession at all at the moment, but I can't help but feel learning various programming trivia has a lower return on investment than ever.

I get learning the business and domain and etc, but it seems like we're in a fast race to the bottom where the focus is on making programmers' skills as redundant as possible as soon as possible.

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

#272

Post by johnnyanmac »

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #99
twoparachute45 wrote: post #70

My company, a very very large company, is transitioning back to only in-person interviews due to the rampant amount of cheating happening during interviews. As an interviewer, it's wild to me how many candidates think they can get away with it, when you can very obviously hear them typing, then watching their eyes move as they read an answer from another screen. And the majority of the time the answer is incorrect an…

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.

sounds cheesy, but keep being honest. Eventually companies will realize (as we have years ago) that automating recruiting gets you automated candidates.

But YMMV. I have 9 years and still can get interviews the old fashioned way.

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

#273

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

twoparachute45 wrote: post #70

My company, a very very large company, is transitioning back to only in-person interviews due to the rampant amount of cheating happening during interviews. As an interviewer, it's wild to me how many candidates think they can get away with it, when you can very obviously hear them typing, then watching their eyes move as they read an answer from another screen. And the majority of the time the answer is incorrect an…

I'm using AI for interview screeners for nontechnical roles that require knowledge work. The AI interviewing app is very very basic, its just a wrapper put together by an eng, with enough features to prevent cheating.

Start with recording the session and blocking right-click, and you are halfway there. Its not hard.

The AI app has helped me surface top candidates. I don't even look at resumes anymore. There's no point. I interview the top 10 out of 200, and then do my references and select.

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

#274

Post by johnnyanmac »

terrabiped wrote: post #246
ADeerAppeared wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

I don't want to be too crass, but I'm not surprised people who can startup a business are precisely the ones who hyper-fixate on efficiency when hiring and try to find the best coders. Instead of the best engineers. When you need to put your money where you mouth is, many will squirm back to "what works".

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

#275

Post by punk_coder »

dijit wrote: post #115

I've always just tried to hold a conversation with the candidate, what they think their strengths are weaknesses are and a little probing. This works especially well if I don't know the area they're strongest in, because then they get to explain it to me. If I don't understand it then it's a pretty clear signal that they either don't understand it well enough or are a poor communicator. Both are dealbreakers. Otherwi…

This is how I interview potential hires. I’ll admit I haven’t interviewed someone below a senior level in probably 10 years, so I interview someone that has a resume with experience that I can draw from. I read what they’ve worked on and just go from there. I hope I never have to submit someone to some stupid take home test or Leet Code interview.

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

#276

Post by johnnyanmac »

Aeolun wrote: post #152
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.

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’.

> What do I care about the terms of the interview as long as they hire me?

well that's the neat part... they aren't going to. All this AI stuff just happened to coincide with a recession no one wants to admit, amplifying the issue.

So yea, even if I'm desperate I need to be mindful of my time. I can only do so many 4-5 stage interviews only to be ghosted, have the job close, or someone else who applied earlier get the position.

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

#277

Post by WatchDog »

The last interview I ran was back when copilot came out.

My company at the same had been using the same coding exercise for years, and many candidates inevitably published their code to github, so copilot was well trained on the exercise.

I had a candidate that used copilot, still flubbed the interview, while ignoring perfectly good suggestions from the LLM.

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

#278

Post by johnnyanmac »

twoparachute45 wrote: post #145
ryandvm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I kind of feel like leetcode interviews are a situation where the employer is cheating. I mean, you're admittedly filtering out a great number of acceptable candidates knowing that if you just find 1 in a 1000, that'll be good enough. It is patently unfair to the individuals that are smart enough to do your work, but poor at some farcical representation of the work. That is cheating. In my opinion, if a…

I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used. My company has never used leetcode-style questions, and likely never will. I work in security, and our questions are pretty basic stuff. "What is cross-site scripting, and how would you protect against it?", "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach thi…

>I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used

because it matches my experience. I work in games and interviews are more varied (math, engine/language questions, game design questions, software design patterns). I'd still say maybe 30% of them do leetcode interviews, and another 40% bring in leetcode questions at some point. I hate it because I need to study too many other types of questions to begin with, and leetcode is the least applicable.

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

#279

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

b112 wrote: post #44
satvikpendem wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have an effective and well designed open ended interview that's more collaborative, you get a lot more signal to filter the wheat from the chaff. I understood their point but my point is a direct opposition to theirs, that at some point with AI advances this will essentially become impossible. You can make it as open ended as you want but if AI continues to improve, the human interviewee can simply act as a…

This is called fraud, and it is a crime. People don't really call the police, nor sue over this. But they can, and have in the past. If it gets bad, look for people starting to seek legal recourse. People aren't developers with 5 years experience, if all they can do is copy and paste. Anyone fraudulently claiming so is a scam artist, a liar, and deserves jail time. So you create an interview process that can only be…

> People aren't developers with 5 years experience, if all they can do is copy and paste. Anyone fraudulently claiming so is a scam artist, a liar, and deserves jail time.

I won't name names, but there are a lot of Consulting companies that feed off Government contracts that are literally this.

"Experience" means a little or a lot, depending on your background. I've met plenty of people with "years of experience" that are objectively terrible programmers.

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

#280

Post by CSMastermind »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #192
CSMastermind wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've been doing the same. Have been pretty stunned at people's inability to use AI tools effectively.

What does effective use look like? I have attempted messing around with a couple of options, but was always disappointed with the output. How do you properly present a problem to a LLM? Requiring an ongoing conversation feels like a tech priest praying to the machine spirit.

Candidates generally use it in one of two ways: either as an advanced autocomplete or like a search engine.

They'll type in things like, "C# read JSON from file"

As opposed to something like:

> I'm working on a software system where ... are represented as arrays of JSON objects with the following properties:

> ...

> I have a file called ... that contains an array of these objects ...

> I have ... installed locally with a new project open and I want to ... How can I do this?

No current LLMs can solve any of the problems we give them so pasting in the raw prompt won't be helpful. But the set up deliberately encourages them to do some basic scaffolding, reading in a file, creating corresponding classes, etc. that an LLM can bang out in about 30 seconds but I've seen candidates spend 30 minutes+ writing it all out themselves instead of just getting the LLM to do it for them.

Post reply on HN