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AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

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Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#361

Post by ambicapter »

floating-io wrote: post #237
ghaff wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they also promote people based on impact and, with rare exceptions, if you're holed up in a corner someplace you're probably not having a huge amount of impact.

Reality is that the ones quietly holed up in the corner are usually doing all the unsexy maintenance-type work that the extroverts don't want to do (because it's not sexy). Nobody cares about that work... until it doesn't get done. And so, nobody doing it gets promoted.

Communicating the importance of your work is a professional skill.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#362

Post by bargainbin »

timr wrote: post #103
Rhapso wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, very bad fit. Surprised they made an offer. Folks getting mad about whiteboard interviews is a meme at this point. It misses the point. We CANT test you effectively on your programming skillbase. So we test on a more relevant job skill, like can you have a real conversation (with a whiteboard to help) about how to solve the problem. It isn't that your interviewer knew all the languages, but that the language di…

> We CANT test you effectively on your programming skillbase. So we test on a more relevant job skill, like can you have a real conversation (with a whiteboard to help) about how to solve the problem. Except, that's not what happens. In basically every coding interview in my life, it's been a gauntlet: code this leetcode medium/hard problem while singing and tapdancing backwards. Screw up in any way -- or worse (and…

When I joined my current team I found they had changed the technical test after I had interviewed but before I joined. A couple of friends also applied and got rejected because of this new test.

When I finally got in the door and joined the hiring effort I was appalled to find they’d implemented a leetcode-esque series of challenges with criteria such as “if the candidate doesn’t immediately identify and then use a stack then fail interview”. There were 7 more like this with increasingly harsh criteria.

I would not have passed.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#363

Post by kagakuninja »

JCM9 wrote: post #10

So there’s AI that’s really good at doing the skills we’re hiring for. We want you to not use AI so we can hire you for a job that we’re saying we’re going to replace with AI. Sounds like a great plan.

No. Using AI requires a depth of knowledge to spot the mistakes in the generated. code, and to know how to fit all the snippets of code in to something that works.

We need to know that the developer actually has skills and isn't just secretly copying the answer off of a hidden screen. We are interviewing now, and some cantidates are obviously cheating. Our interview process is not leet code based, and reasonably chill, but we will probably have to completely rethink the process.

Since we are hiring contractors, in theory we can let them go after a couple months if they suck, but we haven't tested out how this will work in practice.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#364

Post by lifeisstillgood »

karaterobot wrote: post #184

The best interview process I've ever been a part of involved pair programming with the person for a couple hours, after doing the tech screening having a phone call with a member of the team. You never failed to know within a few minutes whether the person could do the job, and be a good coworker. This process worked so well, it created the best team, most productive team I've worked on in 20+ years in the industry,…

This is the exact time to use phrase “A people hire other A people, B people hire C people”

Additionally it’s rarely the hiring that makes a great team - it’s the long term commitment and investment in training.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#365

Post by dowager_dan99 »

karaterobot wrote: post #184

The best interview process I've ever been a part of involved pair programming with the person for a couple hours, after doing the tech screening having a phone call with a member of the team. You never failed to know within a few minutes whether the person could do the job, and be a good coworker. This process worked so well, it created the best team, most productive team I've worked on in 20+ years in the industry,…

Very few people doing this sort of interview (they tend to be our best, most empathetic developers) are likely to cut a multi-hour planned process short after a few minutes. It will eat at least an hour of their (very expensive & valuable) time.

Also how am I supposed to filter the 100's of AI-completed assessments? Who gets this opportunity?

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#366

Post by jimbokun »

dbrumbaugh wrote: post #261
adregan wrote: post #242

What I've been thinking about leetcode medium/hard as a 30-45 minute tech interview (as there are a few minutes of pleasantry and 10 minutes reserved for questions), is that you are only really likely to reveal 2 camps of people—taking in good faith that they are not "cheating". One who is approaching the problem from first principles and the other who knows the solution already. Take maximum subarray problem, which…

>Take maximum subarray problem, which can be optimally solved with Kadane's algorithm. If you don't know that, you are looking at the problem as Professor Kadane once did. I can't say for sure, but I suspect it took him longer than 30-45 minutes to come up with his solution, and I also imagine he didn't spend the whole time blabbering about his thought process. This is something that drives me nuts in academia when i…

Yes that's a tricky one.

When I'm interviewing a candidate, I'm often asking myself if this question is just something I happen to know therefor expect the candidate to know too, or if it's crucial to doing the job?

Sometimes it may not be fair to expect a random developer to be familiar with a specific concept. But at the same time it might be critical to the kind of work we're doing.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#367

Post by kagakuninja »

wkat4242 wrote: post #263

What a BS article. As they say, just do the interview in person. Problem solved. Not sure about the US but 99% of jobs here in Spain are hybrid or onsite ("presencial"), not fully remote. They're acting like all jobs are remote and it's impossible to do an interview in person. Also, does it really matter? If a person is good at using AI and manages to be good at creating code with that, is it really so much worse tha…

Our US mega corp is having us hire all remote contractors, in person is completely out of the question.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#368

Post by abenga »

jimbokun wrote: post #340
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #333

Maybe we don't need employers. Maybe we need a bunch of 1-person companies. I don't think AI is yet the force multiplier that makes that feasible for the masses, but who knows what things will look like in a few years.

That is the end point of AI in the economy, until we are removed from the economy entirely. Everyone on the planet is a one person startup, using AI and robotics to do all the actual work.

What's the point of humans (other than the ai and robotics ip owners) in this scenario?

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#369

Post by ghaff »

ambicapter wrote: post #361
floating-io wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is that the ones quietly holed up in the corner are usually doing all the unsexy maintenance-type work that the extroverts don't want to do (because it's not sexy). Nobody cares about that work... until it doesn't get done. And so, nobody doing it gets promoted.

Communicating the importance of your work is a professional skill.

And if it actually isn't very important, you should probably find something else to do or move on in some other way.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#370

Post by dowager_dan99 »

The best interview process I've ever had was going to work with former coworkers, aka no real process. A couple of quick calls with new people who deferred strongly to the person who knew me, my work, and my values. Nothing else has the signal value.

Of course the problem is this can't scale or be outsourced to HR, but is this a bug or a feature?

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