Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI Broke Interviews

yusufaytas.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 132 posts

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#101

Post by cudgy »

pdpi wrote: post #40
mtneglZ wrote: post #31

I still think how many golf balls fit in a 747 is a good interview question. No one needs to give me a number but someone could really wow me but outlining a real plan to estimate this, tell me how you would subcontract estimating the size of the golf ball and the plane. It's not about a right or wrong answer but explaining to me how you think. I do software and hardware interviews and always did them in person so we…

Some of the best hires I’ve ever made would’ve tanked that sort of interview question. Being able to efficiently work through those puzzles is probably decent positive signal, but failure tells me next to nothing, and a question that can fail to give me signal is a question that wastes valuable time — both mine and theirs. A format I was fond of when I was interviewing more was asking candidates to pick a topic — any…

So you gave up on the best programmer you ever interviewed, because they weren’t able to perform a single secondary task satisfactorily?

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#102

Post by Balgair »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #94

I agree with the article. Sadly, I have seen candidates cheating, and have hired those I suspected were cheating in hindsight. It is a horrific drag on the team to have the wrong engineer in a seat. If we can’t sus out who is cheating and who is legitimate, then the only answer is that we as a field have to move towards “hire fast, fire fast.” Right now, we generally fire slow. But we can’t have the wrong engineer in…

3 weeks!? Man, I'm still figuring out where a decent sandwich joint is by my work at 3 weeks. There is no way that I could be up to speed on a code base in that short of a time.

Look, I know what you're getting at, and I know that you can feel that a hire isn't good in less than a month. But buddy, you got to give them at least a few months here.

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#103

Post by stavros »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #86
danpalmer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prepping for interviews has been a big deal forever in most other industries though. It's considered normal to read extensively about a company, understand their business, sales strategies, finances, things like that, for any sort of business role. I think tech is and was an exception here.

I’m glad civil engineers can’t vibe build a dam.

I'm not glad people here can't avoid injecting casual AI-hate soundbites everywhere. Is there any particular objection you have, or just "AI bad"?

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#104

Post by stavros »

cudgy wrote: post #96
bluGill wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results did filter out a few people who could not think. i reciently interviewed someone who was a senior engineer on the space shuttle, but managed a call center after that. Can this person still write code is a question we couldn't figure out and so had to pass. (We can't prove it but think we ended up with someone who outsourced the work to elsewhere - but at least that person could code if needed as proved by…

Ageism

The person was 23.

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#105

Post by Esophagus4 »

Balgair wrote: post #102
Esophagus4 wrote: post #94

I agree with the article. Sadly, I have seen candidates cheating, and have hired those I suspected were cheating in hindsight. It is a horrific drag on the team to have the wrong engineer in a seat. If we can’t sus out who is cheating and who is legitimate, then the only answer is that we as a field have to move towards “hire fast, fire fast.” Right now, we generally fire slow. But we can’t have the wrong engineer in…

3 weeks!? Man, I'm still figuring out where a decent sandwich joint is by my work at 3 weeks. There is no way that I could be up to speed on a code base in that short of a time. Look, I know what you're getting at, and I know that you can feel that a hire isn't good in less than a month. But buddy, you got to give them at least a few months here.

A few months with the wrong hire is detrimental to the team.

Your stars will get annoyed that you have someone not pulling their weight, your team will have to clean up the mess of bugs and incomplete stories, and the mentors will spend more of their time supporting an engineer that will not come up to productivity no matter how hard they try.

If it’s really a bad hire, you can’t be afraid to move quickly. If it’s not going to work out, I’d rather it not work out in a month than not work out in six months.

A mentor of mine once said, “You will never regret firing somebody, but you will regret not firing somebody.”

Part of being a manager means having a bias for action and being able to back your decisions once you’ve made them.

Admittedly, you’re not just shooting from the hip and firing at random. But by the time you get to the point where you have to thinking about getting rid of an engineer, it’s probably past the point of no return and you need to move.

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#106

Post by lazyant »

mtneglZ wrote: post #31

I still think how many golf balls fit in a 747 is a good interview question. No one needs to give me a number but someone could really wow me but outlining a real plan to estimate this, tell me how you would subcontract estimating the size of the golf ball and the plane. It's not about a right or wrong answer but explaining to me how you think. I do software and hardware interviews and always did them in person so we…

I agree that estimation questions (not "brain teasers" as coming up with the clever solution) are good. Developers should be able to think in orders of magnitude.

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#107

Post by CableNinja »

cudgy wrote: post #96
bluGill wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results did filter out a few people who could not think. i reciently interviewed someone who was a senior engineer on the space shuttle, but managed a call center after that. Can this person still write code is a question we couldn't figure out and so had to pass. (We can't prove it but think we ended up with someone who outsourced the work to elsewhere - but at least that person could code if needed as proved by…

Ageism

Id hardly call this ageism. The person went from being part of engineering on a major space faring project to managing a callcenter. Thats like going back to zero on the career ladder, as far as engineering is concerned. I would have also been questioning whether or not their skills have collected dust, were still relevant, and most specifically why they went from engineering in aerospace to managing a callcenter, and why they want back into engineering again (probably hates callcenter).

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#108

Post by CableNinja »

cudgy wrote: post #101
pdpi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best hires I’ve ever made would’ve tanked that sort of interview question. Being able to efficiently work through those puzzles is probably decent positive signal, but failure tells me next to nothing, and a question that can fail to give me signal is a question that wastes valuable time — both mine and theirs. A format I was fond of when I was interviewing more was asking candidates to pick a topic — any…

So you gave up on the best programmer you ever interviewed, because they weren’t able to perform a single secondary task satisfactorily?

Being able to explain a thing to someone non-technical is an important social requirement. If you have to explain a problem or project to a C-level and you go off the rails with technical stuff, or get deep in the weeds of some part of it, without being asked, youre going to get deer stares and no one in the room is going to understand you. Similarly, if you as an engineer, go too technical when explaining things to an admin or jr, then you are also going to get deer stares and no one is going to understand you, or they will get frustrated.

You can be a """"rockstar"""" engineer and still not be a good fit because you cant sanely explain something to someone not at your technical level.

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#109

Post by CableNinja »

nradov wrote: post #68
storus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 3) could scale but then those exam takers not using AI would fail unless they are geniuses in many areas. 1) and 2) can't be done when you have 50-70% of your course consisting of online students (Stanford mixes on-campus with CGOE external students who take the exams off-campus), who are important for your revenue. Proctoring won't work either as one could have two computers, one for the exam, one for the cheat…

Well realistically exam takers not using AI will fail in any sort of real world technical / professional / managerial occupation anyway. They might as well get used to it. Not being able to use LLMs effectively today is like the equivalent of not knowing how to use Windows 20 years ago.

Call me when AI can manage to write a regex that i would write, to parse a complex string, rather than some ridiculous mishmashing of nonascii chars that you need to talk to an ancient shaman to decrypt; or when AI can actually recognize contextual hints enough to know what the fuck im talking about, and not produce a writeup of things no longer relevant; or when it stops hallucinating and giving made up answers just to give an answer (which is far worse than saying i dont know, from a human, or ai)

AI has some uses, but the list of things it cant do is longer than the list of things it can.

Re: AI Broke Interviews

#110

Post by harshalizee »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #94

I agree with the article. Sadly, I have seen candidates cheating, and have hired those I suspected were cheating in hindsight. It is a horrific drag on the team to have the wrong engineer in a seat. If we can’t sus out who is cheating and who is legitimate, then the only answer is that we as a field have to move towards “hire fast, fire fast.” Right now, we generally fire slow. But we can’t have the wrong engineer in…

Unless your firm is offering a solid paycheck and a 6 month severance package a la Netflix, no rational candidate is going to bet on a place that'll boot you in 3 weeks because they felt "the vibes are off". You'll be self selecting for only the most desperate candidates in the market trying to get a job.
Post reply on HN