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AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

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Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#611

Post by wyclif »

firstplacelast wrote: post #478
marcosdumay wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP is still passing through hundreds of people, dozens of them capable, until he reaches somebody that convinces him of their competence. You were passed down because you weren't convincing enough. Or maybe he is getting resumes from a channel that has been victim of machine-gun filling, and there indeed thousands of incompetent people posting resumes into every channel and just half a dozen real applicants. TBF,…

Big companies and small need to agree on some standards and create qualifying exams that they will actually accept as proof of competence. Degrees somehow don't prove anything, experience doesn't, blah blah blah. It's exhausting to have to prove to interviewers that I'm not mentally disabled at every turn and it's a waste of time for everyone. Create certifications that actually count for something and aren't just a…

Licensure. You're talking about licensure, not certifications. Other industries do it. Why doesn't software engineering?

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#612

Post by codr7 »

macintux wrote: post #582
codr7 wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think outsourcing hiring is the worst idea ever, and completely lose confidence in companies that do.

They’re outsourcing technical interviews, not the same thing as hiring. (Update: technically I would guess they're only outsourcing the first few rounds. Presumably their customers will conduct further interviews.)

What if the best candidates have already been filtered out by then?

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#613

Post by ghaff »

codr7 wrote: post #581
ghaff wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provisional hires (which often exist in theory but they're pretty much a formality in general) don't work for the most part. Lot of overhead for the company. And in many cases you're asking for the candidate to quit a job and possibly relocate on the possibility they'll get a new position assuming that they click in a short time interval.

Who said anything about relocation? That has to be a tiny percentage of hires.

Relocation used to be pretty common for professional jobs. Don't know about today when there's more remote work. And maybe companies aren't as willing to pay for in general.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#614

Post by ipunchghosts »

codr7 wrote: post #302
ipunchghosts wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you! Been programming since I was 10 and have 20YoE. Many of my prototypes have grown into full fledged products, I have 40+ published papers, and I am regularly sought out for advice and help by those who know me. Everyone i have been, I am always told I am a good catch. However, I won't do leet coding. I want to hear about why I should come work for u. What about my works makes u think I could help ubm wi…

Part of the problem is there just aren't a lot of people out there who can correctly judge that level of experience, and looking up the spectrum tends to simply look weird.

I agree. Do you have any thoughts on how to mitigate this? After all, its in your best advantage and the companies to hire someone with talents because of the value they can bring.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#615

Post by philomath_mn »

apwell23 wrote: post #213
ghaff wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect many people who don't have strong networks for whatever reason resent that. To which you could probably tack on not having gone to the "right" schools or having a public portfolio.

also hard on introverts who already get punished in workplaces that promote ppl based on proximity and visiblity.

Self advocacy is part of the job.

And just because you’re an introvert doesn’t mean you are incapable of building soft skills. Talking to people is absolutely exhausting for me, but I force myself to do it and practice at it because I know it is important for my career.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#616

Post by adregan »

alsobrsp wrote: post #113

I mostly skipped the technical questions in the last few interviews I have conducted. I have a conversation, ask them about their career, about job changes, about hobbies, what they do after work. If you know the subject, skilled people talk a certain way, whether it is IT, construction, sailing. I do rely on HR having, hopefully, done their job and validated the work history. I do have one technical question that st…

I have an ice breaker type question which is “what’s something (tool, tech, whatever) you are interested/excited about and wish people knew more about?” Selfishly, interviewing is kind of boring, so I’m always looking to learn something new.

Sadly, out of 100s of people, I’ve probably only gotten an interesting response a handful of times. Mostly people say some well known tech from the job description.

I never held that against anyone, but the people who had an interest in something were more fun to work with.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#617

Post by anacrolix »

thank fuck. they are terrible. being interviewed by CTOs just out of university, with no experience for a senior in everything role. they ask you to do some lame assignment, a pet problem not once looking at 20 years of GitHub repos and open source contributions.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#618

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

ramon156 wrote: post #64
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #62

Earlier 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 started writing code when I was 12 and started doing it professionally at 22. I'm now in my mid-30s and outside of work, I haven't written anything more than one-off scripts for my homelab in close to a decade. I'm already spending upwards of 50 hours with code each week and I need to do something else at night and on the weekends to release my brain from it. I also didn't go to school for CS, and even if I did... it was over a decade ago. So I have ~25 years of experience writing code but could not show you a single line of it. And even if I could, how would you know I was the one to write it?

This is an extremely flawed interview process in my opinion and the last time I encountered it led to an awkward scenario that led to me walking out. Personally, when I conduct interviews, it's a mix of things. We talk about your past work, I quiz you a bit on some topics you'd encounter in your day-to-day here, and then we'll spend an hour doing some combination of a code review of a working-but-flawed demo project I created, a 30-40 minute coding exercise, and/or a problem-solving scenario where I give you a problem and then we talk through how, as a pair, how we could solve it.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#619

Post by macintux »

codr7 wrote: post #612
macintux wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re outsourcing technical interviews, not the same thing as hiring. (Update: technically I would guess they're only outsourcing the first few rounds. Presumably their customers will conduct further interviews.)

What if the best candidates have already been filtered out by then?

Create a scalable, practical interview process where the result is reliably the best candidate, and you'll take over the world.

At this point in my career I no longer even believe that "best candidate" is a meaningful description except perhaps for highly specialized roles. We're all stumbling blindly in the dark.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#620

Post by adastra22 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #610
adastra22 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you can understand that the hiring needs and reputational risk of a tech startup and Pepsi are different?

Can you cite Pepsi suffering any reputational risk based on the practice?

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