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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

#381

Post by adwf »

throwaway290 wrote: post #372
adwf wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because an autistic person can be an amazing programmer? As could a blind person, a deaf person, etc... Simple accommodations can be made if needed and then there's no need to exclude people on old-fashioned prejudice.

Where did I mention being an amazing programmer? If that's the requirement then why not. The comment was replying specifically about environment where you gotta sit through hour long meetings and that is what I wrote about maybe there is a company where being an amazing programmer is enough. I worked with capable depressed programmer who never delivers and is too shy to delegate anything, capable psycho programmer wh…

> Where did I mention being an amazing programmer?

I mean... that's what the title and context of the discussion thread is all about?

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#382

Post by qkeast »

atoav wrote: post #218
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."

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.

I had an interview cut short early once because the interviewer said “I have to make sure we’re allowed to hire you.”

This was in Germany.

Ultimately, accommodations help but they don’t place me on even ground: they still single me out and make people consider whether I’m capable based on accessibility, not skill.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#383

Post by dpb001 »

ilamont wrote: post #340
whstl wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed every single candidate for development positions in a 300-400 company for the last three years and I saw some incredibly crazy stuff. - A candidate who wore glasses and I could faintly see the reflection of ChatGPT. - A candidate that would pause and look in a different specific direction and think for about 20, 30 seconds whenever I asked something a bit difficult. It was always the same direction, so…

> I interviewed someone for an internship who was getting directions from someone whispering to them. I managed to hear it when they forgot to mute the mic a couple times. What do you do when something like this happens in an interview? Do you ignore it, call out the interviewee, make a joke about it?

I would tell the interviewee that I want to continue the interview with the other person since their answers indicate they’d be a good fit for the position.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#384

Post by alabastervlog »

re-thc wrote: post #221
donnachangstein wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Classic bigotry. Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an hour, there is a 100% chance there is a better candidate suited for the role, even if his/her technical skills are less than yours. Jobs have soft skill requirements, and there is nothing bigoted about that.

> If you find you cannot function sitting in conference room with three other people for an hour, there is a 100% chance there is a better candidate suited for the role, even if his/her technical skills are less than yours. This assumes that was the job? What if the job never talks or sits in a room with anyone? > Hiring is all about finding the best candidate. Then what is leet code about?

> Then what is leet code about?

At FAANG and friends? Discouraging job hopping to slow wage growth.

Elsewhere? "FAANG does it and they're rich, so if we want to become rich we should also do it".

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#385

Post by qkeast »

shade wrote: post #208
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."

Yep, I'm in the exact same situation as you. The tools for in-person are getting better, but aren't frictionless to set up and sometimes require you to spend time futzing with getting your iPad or iPhone to actually see an external microphone. I don't know if Android is better about this or not, unfortunately. I would _hope_ that interviewers would extend people a bit of grace about this, but who knows. As an aside -…

I’d love to read this collection of reviews!

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#386

Post by never_inline »

jamesgasek wrote: post #361

"Preparing with AI" sounds like an issue here, and it's not. The issue is lying about your experiences, which people have done since the beginning of time. I "prepare with AI" by having it help give me hints when doing leetcode problems, which is very helpful. Interviewing is not a presentation, it's a conversation, and having a simulated other side can be helpful. This shouldn't be surreal at all. A candidate just w…

In India I know people using AI to craft resumes with half-lies and full-lies. They say they "use AI to match the keywords in job description".

Indian SDE market is an extreme case of Goodheart's law, but that's a topic for another day!

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#387

Post by koyote »

narnarpapadaddy wrote: post #176
Foofoobar12345 wrote: post #134

We get a few thousand fresh grads applying to us each year. It’s practically impossible to interview every one of them. At the same time, any sort of coding assignment we give is easily defeated by AI—so that’s not useful either and there are very few signals there. What we do instead is send out a test - something like a mental ability test - with hundreds of somewhat randomized questions. Many of these are highly v…

We still do a coding assignment, but a significant chunk of the technical interview is dedicated to a walkthrough of the code. Thus far, that’s been able to detect those who relied solely on AI. …If you used AI and can still explain to me why code works and what it does, even better. You have learned how to use new tools. (have not tried the randomized question approach to compare, but I’m curious to try it and see w…

We do it similarly and it's pretty easy to tell if someone knows their stuff, especially as the assignment is just a platform to dig deeper in the face to face interview.

However, the coding assignment was a really good filter and allowed us to dismiss the majority of candidates before committing to a labour-intensive face to face.

I haven't interviewed anyone since AI took off, but I am assuming that from now on the majority of candidates that would usually send us crap code will send us AI code instead; thereby wasting our time when they finally appear for the face to face.

Have you encountered that yet?

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#388

Post by NullPrefix »

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…

>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 logically consistent

How is it not logically consistent?

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#389

Post by never_inline »

dakiol wrote: post #236

The guy had to invent “cool” scenarios because companies think they are Google and working in backend doing normal things won’t get you hired. One could easily have prepared the whole interview with AI without failing to explain details (like what data was being paginated) just by lying a bit more. Not lying on your actual knowledge but on what your previous jobs were about. E.g., I have used k8s in pet projects but…

The message is: good lie is not too far from truth.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#390

Post by ryandrake »

sarchertech wrote: post #369
motorest wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sitting in a conference room under pressure after potentially flying out possibly hundreds of miles doesn't test your soft skills in actual day to day work. I've known many excellent engineers that buckle under that conditional. You're complaining about the hypothetical effectiveness of concrete hiring practices. You are not rejecting the value and importance of soft skills. Also, the ability to work under pressure…

Literally no other industry except for the performing arts interviews like this. No one else expects senior people to perform “work samples” under pressure, they just talk to them and dig into past work. All of the really damaging hires, I’ve seen in the last couple decades have been engineers with high negative productivity who were great at passing high pressure technical interviews. Also in a couple decades workin…

I’ve always wondered: is there a LeetCode equivalent for doctors? When a hospital interviews a surgeon, do they roll out a cadaver and ask them to remove the gall bladder in 15 minutes while the interviewer scrutinizes how they hold the scalpel?
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