Nowadays I am on the other part of the fence, I am the interviewer. We are not a FAANG, so we just use a SANE interview process. Single interview, we ask the candidate about his CV and what his expectations are, what are his competences and we ask him to show us some code he has written. That's all. The process is fast and extremely effective. You can discriminate week candidates in minutes.
AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
61–70 of 651 posts
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#62Nowadays I am on the other part of the fence, I am the interviewer. We are not a FAANG, so we just use a SANE interview process. Single interview, we ask the candidate about his CV and what his expectations are, what are his competences and we ask him to show us some code he has written. That's all. The process is fast and extremely effective. You can discriminate week candidates in minutes.
>we ask him to show us some code he has written
How do you expect them to get access to the property internal Git repo codebase and approval from their employer's lawyers to show it to third parties during the interview?
Sounds like you're only selecting Foss devs and nothing more.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
This would be a nice interview for candidates who have open source contributions, but many who have day jobs do not. Or their open source code is 5 years old and not representative of their current skill set.
There is no shame in taking time off after leaving a job to develop or contribute to an open source project or two. The world would be a better place for it.
Well the reason I don’t has nothing to do with shame and everything to do with time. I’m allocating my extra time to work, which (on a good day) makes my company money.
For a candidate who does have OS contributions, that’s great but most will not. And the more senior they are the less likely I would imagine.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#64Nowadays I am on the other part of the fence, I am the interviewer. We are not a FAANG, so we just use a SANE interview process. Single interview, we ask the candidate about his CV and what his expectations are, what are his competences and we ask him to show us some code he has written. That's all. The process is fast and extremely effective. You can discriminate week candidates in minutes.
>we ask him to show us some code he has written How do you expect them to get access to the property internal Git repo codebase and approval from their employer's lawyers to show it to third parties during the interview? Sounds like you're only selecting Foss devs and nothing more.
Most people have still written code for school or a hobby project. Maybe I'm missing empathy, but I cannot understand how some developers have no code to show.
If that's the case however, just let them make a small project over the weekend and then do another interview where you ask stuff about what they've made. It's not that deep
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
>we ask him to show us some code he has written How do you expect them to get access to the property internal Git repo codebase and approval from their employer's lawyers to show it to third parties during the interview? Sounds like you're only selecting Foss devs and nothing more.
Most people have still written code for school or a hobby project. Maybe I'm missing empathy, but I cannot understand how some developers have no code to show. If that's the case however, just let them make a small project over the weekend and then do another interview where you ask stuff about what they've made. It's not that deep
I don't code much outside of work. I have hobby projects from 10+ years ago, but they're not much more than landing pages copied from templates and wordpress installs. I mostly work in backend/data/platform engineering professionally.
If I were asked to make a small project over a weekend, I'd be likely to decline rather than doing a more standard interview, or I'd use AI to do it in a reasonable timeframe (which seems to defeat the purpose as it relates to this discussion)
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
>we ask him to show us some code he has written How do you expect them to get access to the property internal Git repo codebase and approval from their employer's lawyers to show it to third parties during the interview? Sounds like you're only selecting Foss devs and nothing more.
Most people have still written code for school or a hobby project. Maybe I'm missing empathy, but I cannot understand how some developers have no code to show. If that's the case however, just let them make a small project over the weekend and then do another interview where you ask stuff about what they've made. It's not that deep
Who are these "most people"? School was over 10 years ago for me when schoolwork was not posted on GitHub nor is it relevant to my current job anymore, and I don't do hobby coding since I have other hobbies and responsibilities.
WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations? What other professions expect you do more work after work as a hobby and show it? Do bus drivers film themselves driving busses after work as a hobby? Do surgeons cut up people in their spare time as a hobby?
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#67The problem isn't AI, the problem is companies don't know how to properly select between candidates, and they don't apply even the basics of Psychometrics. Do they do item analysis of their custom coding tests? Do they analyse the new hires' performances and relate them to their interview scores? I seriously doubt it.
Also, the best (albeit the most expensive) selection process is simply letting the new person to do the actual work for a few weeks.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people have still written code for school or a hobby project. Maybe I'm missing empathy, but I cannot understand how some developers have no code to show. If that's the case however, just let them make a small project over the weekend and then do another interview where you ask stuff about what they've made. It's not that deep
Who are these "most people"? School was over 10 years ago for me when schoolwork was not posted on GitHub nor is it relevant to my current job anymore, and I don't do hobby coding since I have other hobbies and responsibilities. WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations? What other professions expect you do more work after work as a hobby and show it? Do bus drivers film themselves driving busses after work as a…
The amount of time people spend grinding leetcode instead (if you believe what they say about it online) is just as much or more.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
you're not allowed to discriminate
Discriminate against... a personality that will negatively impact the team dynamics? It's not that easy, to be honest, as every team has its own requirements.
A stereotypical Asian interviewing a stereotypical German might find the German rude in some interactions. While another German interviewer would find it being frank.
Interviews based on personal feelings have hidden biases not even the interviewer is aware of.
Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
#70I've accidentally been using an AI-proof hiring technique for about 20 years: ask a junior developer to bring code with them and ask them to explain it verbally. You can then talk about what they would change, how they would change it, what they would do differently, if they've used patterns (on purpose or by accident) what the benefits/drawbacks are etc. If they're a senior dev, we give them - on the day - a small but humorously-nasty chunk of code and ask them to reason through it live.
Works really well and it mimics the what we find is the most important bit about coding.
I don't mind if they use AI to shortcut the boring stuff in the day-to-day, as long as they can think critically about the result.