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

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

#661

Post by ddingus »

biztos wrote: post #470
radium_raven wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my email I encouraged the candidate to teach me something unrelated to our work, or programming related if they preferred that. What if I decide to teach you something about the Quran and you don't hire me? Perhaps this is just urban legend but from the stories I've heard hiring for FAANG-type companies there are people out there interviewing with their only goal being baiting you into a topic they can sue you o…

Or, you can choose to not live in fear.

This is the way.

Secondly, share that place by example. Radiating non fear can do wonders for the people around us, as can honest and frank conversation.

When all members of a team, or even small companies come to understand not all environments are about blame and shame, magic happens!

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

#662

Post by rrrx3 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #435
fhd2 wrote: post #416

The last time I've used a leet code style interview was in 2012, and it resulted in a bad hire (who just happened to have trained on the questions we used). I've hired something like 150 developers so far, and what I ended up with after a few years of trial and error: 1. Use recruiters and network: Wading through the sheer volume of applications was even nasty before COVID, I don't even want to imagine what it's like…

When I was interviewing candidates at IBM, I came up with a process I was really happy with. It started with a coding challenge involving several public APIs, in fact the same coding challenge that was given to me when I interviewed there. What I added: 1. Instead of asking "do you have any questions for me?" at the very end, we started with that general discussion. 2. A few days ahead, I emailed the candidate the pr…

I love this. I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to steal it for when I am back in the saddle interviewing folks. We need much more of this and a lot less of the adversarial BS.

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

#663

Post by arthens »

feoren wrote: post #348
codeyperson wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High level - having a discussion with the LLM about different approaches and the tradeoffs between each Low level - I'll write up the structure of what I want in the form of a set functions with defined inputs and outputs but without the implementation detail. If I care about any specifics with the functions I'll throw some comments in there. And sometimes I'll define the data structures in advance as well. Once all…

> High level - having a discussion with the LLM about different approaches and the tradeoffs between each I honestly can't imagine this. If the AI says "However, a downside of approach B is that it takes O(n^2) time instead of the optimal O(n log(n))", what do you think the odds are that it literally made up both of those facts? Because I'd be surprised if they were any lower than 30%. It's an extremely confident bul…

> I honestly can't imagine this. If the AI says "However, a downside of approach B is that it takes O(n^2) time instead of the optimal O(nlog(n))", what do you think the odds are that it literally made up both of those facts? Because I'd be surprised if they were any lower than 30%. It's an extremely confident bullshitter, and you're going to use it to talk about engineering tradeoffs!?

Being confidently incorrect is not a unique characteristic of AIs, plenty of humans do it too. Being able to spot the bullshit is a core part of the job. If you can't spot the bullshit from AI, I wouldn't trust you to spot the bullshit from a coworker.

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

#664

Post by sbarre »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #643
sbarre wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is slightly tangential to your questions, but to address the "remembering details about your past work", I've long-encouraged the developers I mentor to keep a log/doc/diary of their work. If nothing else, it's a useful tool when doing reviews with your manager, or when you're trying to evaluate your personal growth. It comes in really handy when you're interviewing or looking for a new job. Julia Evans calls it…

Yeah, my resume does include a summary of what I did each job, but it sounds like the brag doc idea would involves much more detail. Honestly, putting those details in writing in a way that I retrain after leaving might leave me vulnerable to claims of violating my corporate NDA. But legalities aside, yes, it would help with these kinds of interview issues - prospectively only of course, not retrospectively. Annoying…

Got it.. I will admit to being unfamiliar with the challenges of ADHD so I apologize if my suggestion appeared to disregard said challenges.

If I can ask a follow-up question: Is it the act of writing it down, or the whole recall aspect of it that is challenging? Or something else?

I've personally starting using audio transcription with a voice recorder to capture ideas more easily when I'm not at my computer (I hate typing on my phone keyboard) and that has made building these kinds of diary/log/notes documents a lot easier because I can just speak my ideas into the recorder whenever it is convenient for me, instead of waiting until I'm at a computer.

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

#665

Post by adastra22 »

michaelt wrote: post #634
adastra22 wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice story, and completely irrelevant. Different orgs scale different ways, and ultimately hiring is done at the team level. You have a vacancy or need on a team to fill. Big org or small org, the situation is the same.

Interestingly large companies will often have a hiring pipeline that isn't specific to a single team and role. In the past Google made a lot of hires where they first give people a phone screen, then five in-person whiteboard interviews, then the interviewers send a dossier to a committee, then that committee decides whether to hire or not, then "team matching" lets hiring managers see the resumes. So the interviews…

Yes that is how FAANG works, but they’re the oddity. Most large organizations don’t hire that way. Google invented this method of hiring, and others copied. It is debatable whether it has been good or not for them.

Usually what happens in a large org is (1) a department gets allocated a head count, and it eventually trickles down to team allocations; (2) a team needs a role that they can’t backfill from the rest of the company; (3) the team lead puts out an ad, receives resumes (directly or through HR), schedules interviews, and makes the hiring decision themselves. Exactly the same as a small company or startup in the last step.

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

#666

Post by koliber »

I've been recruiting a lot over the past 8 years. First as a manager, later as an engineering department leader, and most recently in the role of a specialize recruiter.

I've seen a few things change.

The interviews themselves are for the most part unchanged. Occasionally I see someone who seems to be using AI during the interview. It's sort of obvious. They fist give a vague answer. It's as if they repeat the question. Then they answer while not maintaining eye contact. When asked a followup or a "why" question, they fall apart. They do poorly.

I find more people pass the written screen nowadays and then bomb the interview. I'm guessing they use AI. C'est la vie.

It seems that a lot more people are looking for work now than 3+ years ago. It seems that for roles that require top-notch coding ability, there are relatively few people on the market. Im guessing that great people are staying at their jobs longer now. Makes sense.

After a candidate gives an answer, probe. Ask why they think that. Ask what alternatives they might consider. Watch their body language and how quickly they answer.

For context, I hire very experienced developers in Poland for very demanding remote roles in the US.

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

#668

Post by Dwedit »

sshine wrote: post #55
Pooge wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that meant what you typically write in the "Experience" section. GP, am I wrong? Is everyone writing a "Projects" section by rewording what they wrote in "Experience"?! For me, "Projects" should strictly be personal projects. If not, maybe that's what I'm missing.

Projects are personal projects, or at least projects in which you did a distinguishable effort. They don't have to be public to the whole world, you can have links that are only in your resume. But if they're on GitHub, they have to be public, since there aren't unlisted repositories.

Github does allow private repositories.

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

#669

Post by roenxi »

sbarre wrote: post #551
roenxi wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(3) is biasing the process strongly in favour of people who spin a good story. If you're looking for a certain team culture then OK but this is going to neatly screen out anyone who just wants to do their job well and doesn't particularly know how to sell the extra-curriculars they have.

That person can teach OP something about code then? They said it doesn't have to be work-related, but it can be. I don't know that many programmer/developer jobs where you can just put your headphones on and code without ever talking to another person. Being able to explain/teach your work is part of "doing the job well" for a developer (IMO).

Sure, they can do that. Then the average interviewer is going to recommend hiring the person who was the best at spinning a good story rather than the person who has the clearest explanation (which might easily come across as boring or simplistic). The problem here isn't getting through the interview; it is what the interviewer does next in the hiring pipeline.

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

#670

Post by dheera »

jpc0 wrote: post #648
dheera wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are evaluating how well people code without LLMs you are likely filtering for the wrong people and you are way behind the times. For most companies, the better strategy would be to explicitly LET them use LLMs and see whether they can accomplish 10X what a coder 3 years ago could accomplish, in the same time. If they accomplish only 1X, that's a bad sign that they haven't learned anything in 3 years about how…

> ... LET them use LLMs and see whether they can accomplish 10X what a coder 3 years ago could accomplish... Do you seriously expect a 10x improvement with the use of LLMs vs no LLMs? Have you seen this personally, are you 1 10th the developer without an LLM? Or is the coding interview questions you ask or get asked, how to implement quicksort, or something? Let's make it concrete, do you feel like you could implemen…

> implement a correct concurrent http server in 1/10th the time with an LLM than what you could do it without

Absolutely fucking yes.

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