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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?

#541

Post by OutOfHere »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #150
OutOfHere wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing fraudulent about using LLMs. If people can use them on the job, it's okay to use them on the interview. They're the calculators of tomorrow if not of today. Interviewing just needs to adapt such as by assessing one's open source projects and contributions. Not much more is needed. And if the candidate completely misrepresents their open source profile, this can be handled by an initial contract-to-hi…

I agree that there's nothing fraudulent with using a tool you would use on the job when you are interviewing. But in no way are LLMs equivalent to calculators. Calculators actually give the correct answer reliably, unlike LLMs. A sporadically reliable tool is worse than no tool at all.

LLMs have come a long way. If you give gpt-o3-mini the same interview question five times, chances are good that it will get it right all five times. Yes, it's not a calculator, but it's approaching one.

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

#542

Post by _heimdall »

I went through a round of interviews the second half of last year. Interviewing felt the same as it had over the last 5 or 10 years honestly.

I had a few coding challenges, all were preinterview and submitted online or shared in a private repo. One company had an online quiz that was actually really interesting to take, the questions were all multiple choice but done really well to tease out someone's experience in a few key areas.

For what its worth I don't use LLMs and the interview loop went about as I'd expect in a tough job market.

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

#543

Post by cupofjoakim »

roenxi wrote: post #536
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…

(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.

Specifically for engineering I think it could work if you really press on that it's about teaching something. A core part in an engineering team is to walk eachother through concepts, so judging how you can explain concepts to someone is actually a good thing i believe?

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

#544

Post by znpy »

Stratoscope wrote: post #524
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…

I gave candidates the option to teach me something, if they wanted to. As you can see from the examples I gave, what they taught me was completely up to them. It was just a fun exercise that I and every candidate enjoyed. Forgive me, but I just don't see the problem here. If you did decide to teach you something about the Quran, that would be great! I don't know enough about these holy books, and I always welcome a c…

> Forgive me, but I just don't see the problem here.

There is no problem. But some people will create problems out of thin air, when there is none.

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

#545

Post by joshstrange »

It doesn’t affect our process, we even let people use AI/LLMs on the coding test.

Just asked to add a small feature or make a small change after the present the initial code (without AI help). That makes it really easy to see who doesn’t understand the code they are presenting.

I don’t care how much AI you use if you understand the code that it writes and can build on top of it.

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

#546

Post by sage76 »

kamaal wrote: post #432
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…

>>Do either no take home test, or one that takes at most two hours. I do discuss the solution candidates came up with, so as long as they can demonstrate they know what they did there, I don't care too much how they did it. If I do this part, it's just to establish some base line competency. The biggest problem with the take home tests are not people who don't show up due to not being able to finish the assignment, B…

Most of the time, those take home tests cannot be done in 2 hours. I remember one where I wasn't even done with the basic setup in 2 hours, installing various software/libraries and debugging issues with them.

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

#547

Post by 946789987649 »

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.…

What do you do if a junior asks for help and it's easiest to code through with them?

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

#548

Post by 946789987649 »

shaneoh wrote: post #68
ryan-duve wrote: post #19

My startup got acquired last year so I haven't interviewed anyone in a while, but my technical interview has always been: - share your screen - download/open the coding challenge - you can use any website, Stack Overflow, whatever, to answer my questions as long as it's on the screenshare My goal is to determine if the candidate can be technically productive, so I allow any programming language, IDE, autocompleter, e…

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…

I've had a few people chuck the entire problem into ChatGPT, it was still very much useful in a few ways:

- You get to see how they then review the generated code, do they spot potential edge cases which the AI missed? - When I ask them to make a change not in the original spec, a lot of them completely shut down because they either didn't understand the code generated well enough, or they themselves didn't really know how to code.

And you still get to see people who _do_ know how to use AI well, which at this point is a must for its overall productivity benefits.

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

#549

Post by DrNosferatu »

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…

Really nice!

I wish more bosses were like you.

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

#550

Post by DrNosferatu »

roenxi wrote: post #536
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…

(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.

People were free to teach something in programming.
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