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Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

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Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#61

Post by hbsbsbsndk »

I've interviewed some candidates (more senior than TFA) and I agree with OP that it is a uniquely uncomfortable experience.

Candidates who rely on AI seem to just be totally turning their brains off. At least a candidate who was embellishing in the old days would try to BS if they were caught. They could try and fill in the blanks. These candidates give plausible-sounding answers and then truly just give up and say "ummm" when you reach the end of their preparation.

I've been interviewing for 10+ years across multiple startups and this was never a problem before. Even when candidates didn't have a lot of relevant experience we could have a conversation and they could demonstrate their knowledge and problem-solving skills. I've had some long, painful sessions with a candidate who was completely lost but they never just gave up completely.

Developers I've worked with and interviewed who rely on AI daily are just completely helpless without it. It's amazing how some senior+ engineers have just lost their ability to reason or talk about code.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#62

Post by esafak »

Aurornis wrote: post #58
no-dr-onboard wrote: post #45

I keep coming back to this phrase used in this post: "it was scary". Yeah, hiring is scary. Hiring is insanely expensive on all fronts. Firing people is difficult, it's expensive and legally exposing. Hiring the wrong person, allowing them access your systems and potentially exfiltrate your IP to them is a hazardous but necessary venture. The thing is, none of these things really changed with AI. People have been lyi…

> The thing is, none of these things really changed with AI I agree that lying was possible before AI, but something about AI has emboldened a lot more people to try to lie. Something about having the machine fabricate the lie for you seems to lessen the guilt of lying. There's also a growing sentiment online that using AI to cheat/lie is "fair" because they think companies are using AI to screen candidates. It's not…

It definitely did change with AI. Imposters are becoming harder to detect, at a cost to the company.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#63

Post by rdtsc »

esafak wrote: post #29
rdtsc wrote: post #14

> I ended by saying that the software community is smaller than it seems, and integrity and reputation goes a long way. Well who are they? How would the next member of the community know this is a fake candidate. I like the idea in general of finding a way to eliminate these time-wasters but how would that work? The candidate can adjust a bit and improve the AI "foo" to come up with online answers for them.

Report them to LinkedIn. edit: I'm talking about egregious cases where the name, location, picture, and work history are false, not the exaggerations you mention. The profiles have few connections since they do get flagged and recreated with a new false identity...

https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1338436/repor...

> If you feel that a profile may be fake or that it is inappropriate, you can report it. A profile may be fake if it appears empty or if it contains profanity, fake names, or impersonates public figures

They may use a real name and they may have worked some of those companies just lie about their technical level, experience, what part of the projects they worked on, etc. Those may not be covered by the reporting guidelines.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#64

Post by esafak »

Aurornis wrote: post #60
aaomidi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies just need to fork the upfront $13-1500 dollars for a set of plane tickets for their hiring team and rented conference rooms for a week. It's a whole lot cheaper than spending 50k because you hired the wrong person for half a year. There are very few companies I'd fly out for TBH. IMO Make firing easier, pay people a massive severance if you're firing them for a mistake you made in hiring, and initially st…

I thought "fire fast" was a viable strategy until I joined a company that did exactly that. They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing. One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that s…

You should be giving constant feedback; firing should not come as a surprise. And if someone is not delivering, the people who depend on that output will know. Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#65

Post by imhoguy »

jorgesborges wrote: post #40

Despite how bad the job market seems at the moment it's things like this make me feel confident for when I have to search again.

This and many other cases are literally burning remote interviewing and offshore candidates. Soon, you will be able to find anything only thru local on-site interview or strong references. I guess this is your point.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#67

Post by esafak »

markus_zhang wrote: post #42
neilv wrote: post #34

Incidentally, I really-really like that they asked questions based on the person's resume. That was typical before some students got handed a lot of dotcom boom money. (And then somehow most interviews throughout the industry became based on what a CS student with no experience thought professional software development was about. Then it became about everyone playing to the bad metrics and rituals that had been insti…

I got asked of those questions every time I got interviewed. Maybe it's just a FAANG thing that interviewers ignore the CV?

They read the CV but placing too much weight on it makes it difficult to compare candidates objectively.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#68

Post by Aurornis »

esafak wrote: post #64
Aurornis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought "fire fast" was a viable strategy until I joined a company that did exactly that. They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing. One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that s…

You should be giving constant feedback; firing should not come as a surprise. And if someone is not delivering, the people who depend on that output will know. Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment.

> firing should not come as a surprise.

The surprise was for the people around them, not the person being fired.

> Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment.

In the real world, they don't.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#69

Post by neilv »

Aurornis wrote: post #60
aaomidi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies just need to fork the upfront $13-1500 dollars for a set of plane tickets for their hiring team and rented conference rooms for a week. It's a whole lot cheaper than spending 50k because you hired the wrong person for half a year. There are very few companies I'd fly out for TBH. IMO Make firing easier, pay people a massive severance if you're firing them for a mistake you made in hiring, and initially st…

I thought "fire fast" was a viable strategy until I joined a company that did exactly that. They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing. One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that s…

Excellent points. Building on that, if the people who are bothered by that leave or withdraw, won't the workplace come to be dominated by people who aren't bothered by that?

If so, a question is why they aren't bothered by that. Is the culture then cold-hearted? Mercenary? Sociopathic? Oblivious?

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#70

Post by Aurornis »

neilv wrote: post #69
Aurornis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought "fire fast" was a viable strategy until I joined a company that did exactly that. They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing. One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that s…

Excellent points. Building on that, if the people who are bothered by that leave or withdraw, won't the workplace come to be dominated by people who aren't bothered by that? If so, a question is why they aren't bothered by that. Is the culture then cold-hearted? Mercenary? Sociopathic? Oblivious?

People who stayed long enough adjusted, but it didn't mean they were cold-hearted. They just realized that there was more to the story that they saw.

The real challenge was when recent hires would see it and get spooked. One person would get fired and then two people around them would panic and start looking for other jobs. Several people panicked and jumped right back into their previous jobs.

It was also tough when we'd hire someone and they'd discover their predecessor lasted for 2-3 months.

There were also problems with the hire fast part: Often teams would "hire fast" and then lose 3-4 months because they had to deal with someone who lied through the interview, had to be fired, and then another hiring cycle restarted.

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