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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?

#711

Post by dahart »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #602
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…

Yeah everyone says that they are interested in how you got there but this isn’t true in reality from my experience. Your bias inevitably judges them on the solution because you have many other candidates who got the correct solution.

You’re right, interviewers will still care about whether you come up with a solution, and they care about the quality of the solution. The part you might be missing is that what I said and what you said aren’t mutually exclusive; they are both true. Interviewers do have to compare you to other candidates, and they are looking for the candidates that stand out. They want more than a binary yes/no signal, if at all possible. What I was trying to say is that the interviewer doesn’t need the solution to the problem they ask you to solve, what they need is to see how well you can solve it. I hope that’s stating the obvious, but it’s worth really letting it sink in. It’s super common for early-career programmers to be afraid of interviews and complain about them. Things change once you start doing the interviewing and see how the process works.

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

#712

Post by fhd2 »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #647
fhd2 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say I've interviewed someone to which this applies - unfortunately! Probably just doesn't get surfaced by my channels. I would definitely not expect someone out of work for a while to have any meaningful side projects. I mean, if they do, that's cool, but I bet the sheer stress of not having a job kills a lot of creativity and productivity. Haven't been there, so I can only imagine. For such a candidate, I'd…

Thanks for being understanding and compassionate about the situation! I like your idea of a time limited freelance gig, though immigration obstacles do sometimes make that quite complicated (as in my current situation). It's way better than not considering that people might have a reason for a resume with gaps or other irregularities which is not being a bad employee. Beyond immigration types of obstacles, somehow re…

Well, it could be "just" naive hiring processes. It's pretty natural for people to use themselves and their immediate circles as thought guinea pigs for any process they come up with. And unfortunately, quite often, people in positions of power don't work their way up there, so it takes more effort than they are usually willing to invest to relate. Which is a shame, because doing things beyond what everybody else is doing can be a huge advantage.

One of the problems I see in big corporates is that feedback cycles for bad policy can be so long, whoever caused something is far away when the effects hit. AKA nobody really cares. But to be fair, I've always tried to care, and worked with many others who do.

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

#713

Post by throwaway2037 »

axegon_ wrote: post #526
throwaway2037 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like take home tests are meaningless and I always have. Even more so now with LLMs This has been discussed many times already here. You need to set an "LLM trap" (like an SSH honey trap) by asking the candidate to explain the code they wrote. Also, you can wait until the code review to ask them how they would unit test the code. Most cheaters will fall apart in the first 60 seconds. It is such an obvious tel…

"Drawbacks" was the wrong word to use here, "potential problems" is what I meant - collisions. Normally a follow up question: how do you solve those. But drawbacks too: memory usage - us developers are pretty used to having astronomical amounts of computational resources at our disposals but more often than not, people don't work on workstations with 246gb of ram.

Good point about collisions. When I wrote the original post, I didn't think about that. As a primarily CRUD developer, I never think about collisions. The default general purpose hash map in all of my languages is fine. That said: It does matter, and it is a reasonable topic for an interview!

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

#714

Post by kortilla »

OutOfHere wrote: post #538
kortilla wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing fraudulent about using LLMs. There is if you’re asked not to.

Negative. They are not the law.

What are you talking about? If you lie to get a job, you are committing fraud. The company is not making any law here.

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

#715

Post by kortilla »

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?

Because committing fraud to get hired is a pretty shitty way to live your life

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

#716

Post by kortilla »

nsxwolf wrote: post #230
H8crilA wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud.

That doesn’t make any sense. The best engineers I know can’t pass these interviews because they started working long before they became standard.

That doesn’t matter. If the current qualification bar is “must do X” and you fake it, you’re committing fraud.

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

#717

Post by kortilla »

davely wrote: post #237
H8crilA wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud.

> Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud. What? No, it isn't. Regardless, if the job requirements state "X years of XYZ experience" and you have to have >X years of experience, then using AI to look up how to do a leetcode problem for some algorithm you haven't used since your university days is absolutely not "false pretenses" nor fraud.

If the interview process says, “you must do X without using AI” and you use AI and hide it, you’re committing fraud.

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

#718

Post by throwaway2037 »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #582
throwaway2037 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like take home tests are meaningless and I always have. Even more so now with LLMs This has been discussed many times already here. You need to set an "LLM trap" (like an SSH honey trap) by asking the candidate to explain the code they wrote. Also, you can wait until the code review to ask them how they would unit test the code. Most cheaters will fall apart in the first 60 seconds. It is such an obvious tel…

What if I use an LLM but I understand the code? The drawback is that elements in a hashmap can’t be sorted and accessing a specific element by key is slower then accessing something in an array by index. Linear search is easier to implement. These are all trivial questions you ask to determine if a person can develop code. The hard questions are whether the person is the cream of the crop. The amount of supply of dev…

    > What if I use an LLM but I understand the code?
That's OK. I wrote: > If anything, I would love it if someone told me that they used an LLM and explained what was good and bad about the experience. Or maybe they used it and the code was sub-par, so they need to make minor (or major) changes. Regardless, I think we are kidding ourselves if people will not make (prudent and imprudent!) use of LLMs. We need to adapt.

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

#719

Post by andyish »

For tech and nontech, it's terrible.

Nontech roles are just a sea of prompt-generated answers, they don't tie into the applicants' experience and are usually about 200 words of waffle. If you're applying for something, type out a few sentences then give it to a prompt to refine. Don't just paste the question in.

Tech roles we focus on the combination of soft skills and technical skills and so we've gone back to a 'pair' programming exercise and a whiteboard architecture exercise. In reality, it's just a spectator sport that we nudge them forward if needed.

In Java looking for them to cover the basics of debugging a problem, writing a test, and mocking out some services. I would say 50% are unable to or unwilling to write a test to prove the error or don't know how to mock out a service.

Whiteboard exercise looking for them to explain a system they've worked on in the past. We question some of their decisions and see how they handle themselves. Not many get defensive (though some do).

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

#720

Post by palata »

vanceism7_ wrote: post #454
Stratoscope wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That sounds really cool. I wish I was running into more job interviews like the one you describe. The adversarial interviewing really hurts the entire feel of the process

> The adversarial interviewing really hurts the entire feel of the process

Agreed. I have been through technical interviews where at the end, my feeling as a candidate was "I don't want to work with this asshole".

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