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Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

kapwing.com

211–220 of 731 posts

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#211
post #69

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?

Maybe? But the idea of being on probation for a few months is basically how employment works in most countries of the world.

So I think what I’m suggesting does have precedence and from my research there’s not that big of an opposition to it.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#212

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…

> And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit No company worth working for would refuse to hire someone just because they didn't wear a suit to their interview Dress nicely, sure. Wear a collar? Yeah probably. A tie? Meh. Let's get rid of this old fashioned boomer nonsense from hiring please

My advice is to ask to hiring manager who invites you to come in about the dress code expectation / norms, and try to be on the higher end of the range they give, without going over.

I agree no one will explicitly decide one way or another based on how you dress. But making everyone in the room feel comfortable with each other will help the whole process.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#213
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There were 30% layoffs at a company I worked at and one of the 'survivors' was so traumatised by it that they took their own life. It's a known phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_guilt

Layoffs are generally random firing. Especially when we talk about % points.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#214
post #47

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?

I have a footnote at the end of my resume about my interests -- it's short, authentic, and more of a way to showcase my personality than my actual interests. It's always been a point of contact during the interview process. If an organization thinks that's stupid or a human isn't reading it in the first place it's not somewhere I want to work anyway.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#216
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure we can come to agree on what competence is.

I think if we try hard enough we can get there.

If we can divide the industry into many small subindustries, each with their own licensing, maybe. If we want to treat it as the one big industry like we do right now, no chance. We won't even be able to find agreement on surface level things, never mind the nitty gritty.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#218
post #161
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."

I am pretty sure my current employer could make an exception if you can show proof of your condition (which would benefit you either way in Germany). But we also like to see collegues in person, as this is what the interaction for many positions might look like anyways.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#219
"It didn't make sense that the Twilio API would not be able to handle sending 30 SMS messages at once - this seemed like a scaling issue that would be easily resolved through upgrading the plan"

Twilio indeed can't handle batching of SMS requests -- even to this day several years after I asked them to :)

To be specific, what I want is what sendgrid offers, copy + replacements, so I can send the copy I want to send, a list of recipients and a list of replacements for each recipient in a single request.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#220

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…

You are right about hiring not being that much different but your prognostications are way off IMO. > - people are probably going to have to fly out for interviews, again. Fly where? Many companies don't have offices anymore. > - awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again. Ahh... the age old, "just do better" position for neurodivergent people. Classic bigotry. > - And yeah, y…

> Fly where? Many companies don't have offices anymore

While i dont agree with the idea we'll be flying anywhere for interviews, havent most companies gone back on remote work. "hybrid" is a benefit now and being in the office is the expectation.

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