I've been arguing that "AI" has very little impact on meaningful technical interviews, that is ones that don't test for memorization of programming trivia: https://blog.sulami.xyz/posts/llm-interviews/
That link doesn't work for me.
AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
21–30 of 651 posts
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
the idea is sound. create a basic standardized test targeted at tech/engineering jobs. not actually SAT -- operated by a vendor like The College Board. There are plenty of standardized test operators
This largely misses what an interview is all about, save for entry level positions.
I don’t think that the suggestion is that the standarised test is the only filter. It is merely one out of many.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly are you suggesting here? A standardized test that applies to all your job applications? Or, a candidate having to drive to a test center for every company they apply to? Or something else?
Standardized plus the ability for companies to do their own test after they pass the standard one. So go get prescreened at test center then use that test to apply for jobs. Company either flys you in for in-person or sends you back to test center to do live remote interview in controlled environment.
It's been tried and failed: Sun Microsystems pushed certifications in the 90s. Pass the test on some technology, get the certification. Then they studied performance. The result? More certifications implied a worse employee. The reason was the top performing employees had no time to study for the exams, but the managers of the bottom performing employees were happy to send them off to training and testing. And then the certification fad came mostly to an end.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#24Stop remote tech interviews
Unless the job you're interviewing for is remote-only, this makes perfect sense. If you expect your candidates to be able to work in your office, they should be interviewed there.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I'm interviewing, I'm putting about 30% of the weight towards "would I enjoy working with this person on a daily basis?", but in the context of technical discussions. Standardized testing won't be able to replicate it.
you're not allowed to discriminate
Is that discrimination? Somebody can en an annoying prick regardless of their background.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#26Or you can just given them a way to bypass all of that, and ask them about any significant project that the candidate did build (which is relevant to the job description, open or closed source that is released) or even open source contributions towards widely used and significant projects. (Not hello world, or demo projects, or README changes.)
Both scenarios are easily verifiable (can check that you released the project or if you made that commit or not) and in the case of open-source, the interviewer can lookup at how you code-review with others, and how you respond and reason about the code review comments of others all in public to see if you actually understand the patches you or another person submitted.
A conversation can be started around it and eliminates 95% of frauds. If the candidate cannot answer this, then no choice but give a leetcode / hackerrank hard challenge and interview them again to explain their solution and why.
A net positive to everyone and all it takes to qualify is to build something that you can point to or contribute to a significant open source project. Unlike Hackerrank which has now become a negative sum race to the bottom quest with rampant cheating thanks to LLMs.
After that, a simple whiteboard challenge and that is it.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#27My last interview, for the job I'm currently employed in, asked for a take home assignment where I was allowed to use any tool I'd use regularly including AI. Similar process for a live coding interview iterating on the take home that followed. I personally used it to speed up wirting initial boilerplate and test suites.
I fail to see why this wouldn't be the obvious choice. Do we disallow linters or static analysis on interviews? This is a tool and checking for skill and good practices using it makes all sense.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#28I've been considering using a second webcam stream focused on my screen just to assure hiring managers that I don't have ChatGPT on my screen, or anywhere else. Kind of like chess players do it sometimes on online tournaments. I've been hearing people complain about cheating a lot.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#29I've been considering using a second webcam stream focused on my screen just to assure hiring managers that I don't have ChatGPT on my screen, or anywhere else. Kind of like chess players do it sometimes on online tournaments. I've been hearing people complain about cheating a lot.
Ask for an in-person interview instead of voluntarily encouraging more mass surveillance.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Standardized plus the ability for companies to do their own test after they pass the standard one. So go get prescreened at test center then use that test to apply for jobs. Company either flys you in for in-person or sends you back to test center to do live remote interview in controlled environment.
It's been tried and failed: Sun Microsystems pushed certifications in the 90s. Pass the test on some technology, get the certification. Then they studied performance. The result? More certifications implied a worse employee. The reason was the top performing employees had no time to study for the exams, but the managers of the bottom performing employees were happy to send them off to training and testing. And then t…
I always felt like the Sun and Cisco certs were more about creating people that would push their products on other companies.
Big Tech / Unicorn / Wannabe Unicorn prescreens are all basically standardized now anyway.