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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

#181

Post by donnachangstein »

eikenberry wrote: post #126
creato wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring people to be able to interact with other people is not "bigotry".

No, but ignoring their disabilities and saying to just learn to do better is not good enough. It is no different from telling a deaf person to learn to hear with their other sense, it doesn't make sense as their disability is what prevents it. People do need to be able to interact with other people, it just doesn't work like it does with non-neurodivergent people. It takes an effort on both sides. Quit putting it all…

[flagged]

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#182

Post by donnachangstein »

qkeast wrote: post #161
creato wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring people to be able to interact with other people is not "bigotry".

I'm deaf and rely on real-time captions for calls. In an in-person interview scenario, I'm at a huge disadvantage and not able to perform at my best. In a video call, I'm on equal ground. It's not as simple as "requiring people to be able to interact with other people."

Nearly every large company I've interviewed with would comply with a reasonable accommodation request for a legitimate disability e.g. providing a deaf person the interview questions on paper or even having an ASL interpreter present.

In fact many mention it up front on the screening call before any questions are asked.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#183

Post by roguecoder »

scarface_74 wrote: post #96
angra_mainyu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take home projects >>>>> live coding sessions, unless you're interviewing for some kind of twitch streamer position. Just have a 1 hour or 2 hour call with candidate where you guys go through the project.

I would never spend time doing a take home test. The best paying companies never require it, so why would I jump through hoops for nothing but middling compensation on the other side?

The best-paying companies jerk you around for months with hours and hours of in-person quizzes and expect you to memorize a bunch of trivia you will never use day-to-day so they can use their MIT intern interviews for everyone.

Take-homes are a much more reasonable expectation than memorizing how to implement quick-sort on a white board.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#184

Post by roguecoder »

thefourthchime wrote: post #9
theamk wrote: post #2

An interesting story! I've also had an AI cheater during phone screen, but they were pretty clumsy... A question of form "You mentioned you used TechX on your resume, tell me more what you did with it" was answered with a long-winded but generic description of TechX and zero information about their project or personal contribution. Another thing that I can take away from that is "take home project" is no longer a goo…

I think take home still has value, if it's of any size and they just vibe code it'll be full of long messy methods, unused variables, and lack of any thoughtful design.

They are, if anything, a more-accurate example now of the kind of code a candidate is going to produce on the job.

If we expect people to use AI, and it is available in most companies now, then being able to appropriately refactor, test, and sense-make of AI-generated code is even more important. The key is raising the bar on quality beyond mediocre, and not relying on those take homes to test skills they are no longer testing.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#185

Post by roguecoder »

qoez wrote: post #20

Weird that they wouldn't just use whisper to pipe the interview questions into AI to reply better. If you're gonna cheat at least do it well.

I've seen this and it is always super-obvious when they are reading instead of having a conversation. I wish candidates would just stop: some of them we might have otherwise have hired, but instead it becomes a waste of time for us and them.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#186

Post by roguecoder »

ramesh31 wrote: post #99
imhoguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Soon, you will be able to find anything only thru local on-site interview or strong references. Anyone paying attention has started planning accordingly for this over the last couple years. The remote work revolution has resolutely failed, and it's clear in retrospect it never had a chance.

This is very much not true: there are extremely-well-compensated roles still available in remote companies.

It does require knowing how to collaborate remotely and being an already-skilled developer, but just because the bar is higher (and many people seem uninterested in meeting it) doesn't mean it has "failed".

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#187

Post by niccl »

donnachangstein wrote: post #182
qkeast wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm deaf and rely on real-time captions for calls. In an in-person interview scenario, I'm at a huge disadvantage and not able to perform at my best. In a video call, I'm on equal ground. It's not as simple as "requiring people to be able to interact with other people."

Nearly every large company I've interviewed with would comply with a reasonable accommodation request for a legitimate disability e.g. providing a deaf person the interview questions on paper or even having an ASL interpreter present. In fact many mention it up front on the screening call before any questions are asked.

> Nearly every large company I've interviewed with would comply with a reasonable accommodation request for a legitimate disability

so neuro divergence isn't a legitimate disability?

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#188

Post by roguecoder »

saulpw wrote: post #47
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.

How do you make your "real" resume stand out among the thousands of fakes though?

You talk to real humans.

Plenty of candidates are willing to lie and as we see here AI has made lying much cheaper. There is nothing you can put on your resume that AI couldn't have put there for anyone. But AI can't yet fake a network.

Personally, I'll put in second-degree referrals to my company: if someone I have worked with has worked with the person and is willing to personally vouch for them, I'll put their resume in and ping the recruiter (yes, it's gotten so bad even internal referrals don't break through the slush pile without a specific ping.) But I get the recruiter's attention because I only recommend people I have reason to think are actually good.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#189

Post by roguecoder »

kazinator wrote: post #92

A kindergarten pick up app can be a CGI application written in shell scripts, keeping all data in text files, and running on a Pentium.

But we want to be modern!

That way we can spend massive piles of money on cloud compute, monitoring, documentation, not to mention the constant maintenance to mitigate the security issues in the multiple layers of libraries we depended on.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#190

Post by roguecoder »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #120

The company cheats by being a tightwad and by conducting an online interview (which have always been prone to cheating or embellishing, and companies perfectly know it) and the candidate cheats by using this opportunity. I can't stop repeating it, just invite the candidate to your office. That's it, that's how simple the problem is solved.

Wow.

Just in case anyone else in the audience is curious, this is what self-justification of egregiously bad behavior looks like.

If you can't be trusted to work remotely, absolutely stick to in-person roles. If you think your coworkers are any less deserving of your respect and candor because they aren't in the same room as you, you definitely aren't qualified to work remotely.

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