Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently by the second. Don't blink too often.
I’m running a high precision outfit over here ya know
Only Type A run through walls folk
AI Broke Interviews
111–120 of 132 posts
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And we could interview like adults, instead of like teenagers pledging a frat. I think you're viewing the "good old days" of interviewing through the lens of nostalgia. Old school interviewing from decades ago or even more recently was significantly more similar to pledging to a frat than modern interviews. > people who are genuinely enthusiastic This seems absurdly difficult to measure well and gameable in its own…
Absolutely. The amount of times I’ve seen a “do you want to have a beer with them?” test in lieu of a simple programming exam is horrifying. (And it showed in the level of talent they hired.) Fortunately, most of those have been left by the wayside, roadkill of history. Because that is really the alternative if we don’t have rigorous, systematic technical interviews: cognitive bias and gut-feel decisions. Both of whi…
False choice.
The reality of these "rigorous, systematic technical interviews" is that we have a ton of companies doing nonsense theatre that isn't actually about "fundamentals", is also easily biased (as even some purported Google interviewers have admitted on HN), and have almost nothing to do with how effective a software engineer will be (as even Google's own stats show).
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 no…
[dead]
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#114Earlier 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?
First, the average quality of candidates we were getting was pretty good. She stood out, and definitely gave a memorable performance on the technical level, but it wasn't some colossal blow to our org that we didn't make the hire.
Second, she wasn't interviewing for a "money goes in, code comes out" code monkey-type role. Whoever took that role was expected to communicate with a bunch of people.
Third, the ask was "explain this to a layperson", her performance was "a senior technical person can barely keep up". It wasn't a matter of not performing satisfactorily, it was a matter of completely failing. I really liked her as a candidate, I wanted to make the hire happen, and I'm cautious about interview nerves messing with people, so I really tried to steer the conversation in a direction she could succeed, but she just wouldn't follow.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#115I 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.
Not once did I say that happen because the vibes are off. You’re seeing what you want to in my comment.
If you’re really off the pace and we made a bad hire, moving slowly hurts everyone.
And moving quickly lets us hire the candidates who really deserve the position, not those who game the process.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. The amount of times I’ve seen a “do you want to have a beer with them?” test in lieu of a simple programming exam is horrifying. (And it showed in the level of talent they hired.) Fortunately, most of those have been left by the wayside, roadkill of history. Because that is really the alternative if we don’t have rigorous, systematic technical interviews: cognitive bias and gut-feel decisions. Both of whi…
False choice. The reality of these "rigorous, systematic technical interviews" is that we have a ton of companies doing nonsense theatre that isn't actually about "fundamentals", is also easily biased (as even some purported Google interviewers have admitted on HN), and have almost nothing to do with how effective a software engineer will be (as even Google's own stats show).
There is no alternative.
So you may not think they’re predictive of success, but you should see how much less predictive everything else is.
Hiring is always a risk. It will never be a perfect science.
That’s why it’s important to have a quick off-ramp for those who aren’t working out.
Edit: BTW, where did you see Google saying their interview process doesn’t work? Other than some a few anonymous devs venting on HN, the company still uses coding interviews as critical to their process. You will always find a few complainers, but the fact that one of the world’s top software shops still uses it says what needs to be said.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a rubric I’m checking off for interviews. And in person it’s more straightforward to assess a candidate than questioning if they are using any aids over video… whats your point?
He made the point clearly, stop dodging the question...
Wasn’t trying to dodge, I misunderstood the premise.
If this was in person, then no I likely wouldn’t fail them. However, In all my in person interviews I’ve conducted, I’ve never seen that even from the best candidates, that’s why I also find it odd over video.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#118Companies being forced to overhaul their interview processes is certainly an unexpected side-effect of the insurgence of LLMs. On the other hand, encouraging employees to adopt "AI" in their workflows, while at the same time banning "AI" on interviews, seems a bit hypocritical - at least from my perspective. One might argue that this is about dishonesty, and yes, I agree. However, AI-centric companies apparently incl…
>> seems a bit hypocritical
Companies always are.
It's okay for companies to use AI in recruitment process but not for the candidates.
It's okay to lay off people to cut costs but not okay to say you are looking for a new job to get higher salary.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ageism
We have interviewed and hired plenty of people even older (age is not something ever known/discussed and illegal to factor in - but it isn't hard to make a good guess anyway) senior engineer could be a project manager who never wrote code. i remember this because it is one of the faw 'no' I have had where it wasn't proved the person would be bad at the job. Normally the no hire signal is because the person would obvi…
Why, after interviewing them, were you unable to figure out if this person can still code?
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 no…
“You will never regret firing somebody, but you will regret not firing somebody.”
Dumb over generalized piece of advice.