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I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

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Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#131

Post by WarmWash »

kazinator wrote: post #77

> But as we’ve covered again and again, a bias-free AI system is an impossible-to-achieve standard, since models are trained on large swaths of the internet, which contain sexism, racism, and other biases. LLM trained on texts from before 1913 (Source: https://github.com/DGoettlich/history-llms ): Q. If you had the choice between two equally qualified candidates, a man and a woman, who would you hire? A. I should pre…

The problem with erasing biases is that you cannot look at any statistics. The internet and training set can be free of any form of -ism, and the models would still be expected to have biases. In fact it's something desirable, because statistical inferences are a valuable tool.

The AI won't care if some people get upset because it consistently recommends you get Mexican food instead of Italian when you're visiting south Texas. The weak link is humans not recognizing that that doesn't mean there cannot be good Italian food in south Texas. A logical hurdle I don't see AI having any problem with.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#132

Post by Manuel_D »

JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

For a first-round interview, it was not uncommon to have a leet-code style automated assignment as early as the mid 2010s. I recall more than a few highly regarded employers that did this in 2014.

Is an AI interview meaningfully different than one of these automated interview systems? A lot of people are assuming that there'd be a human interview absent this AI interview, but it could very easily just be another automated interview - just a less sophisticated one. A company using an AI interview where I'd normally see a Leet-code assignment (e.g a first round coding interview) would not strike me as a bad thing.

Of course if they wanted to the the entire interview loops with AI I'd stay away.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#133

Post by hunterpayne »

sebringj wrote: post #110

so was I then I got the job... i think it's innovative because bots are just filling these out anyway, being mad at a tech company for building tech, that's like calling the kettle well a kettle.

So by that thinking if I write some software, because I do that professionally, whatever bad outcome that software has then I am not responsible for it?

What if I make software that gives all the technical details for how to make a nuclear/chemical/bio weapon and I make that available in every language, I'm in the clear for the consequences? Seriously???

The software companies started this process. They were the ones who made each questionable decision along the way. Doesn't matter how they make their money, they are responsible for the consequences of those decisions.

PS Maybe check your grammar next time you post.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#134

Post by diacritical »

hunterpayne wrote: post #86
bbkane wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers are also inundated by applications so they're applying higher bars to meet as a sort of back pressure. I hate it from the candidates' perspective, but it's not illogical from the employer perspective. No, I don't know how to fix it.

And why would this be the case? Maybe the solution is to ban AI from the hiring process. This seems like companies being hoisted by their own petard. This is because they are the ones who drove the hiring market to be this way. They are the ones who started using AI in the hiring process. They are the ones who decided to make applying so much work driving applicants to use AI to survive. Also, if you are having troub…

I wouldn't pay anything to a company I'm applying to, but I would gladly send a small amount of money to a charity and show them the relevant bank or cryptocurrency proof if they explain why they need the micropayment. They could present me with a list of 10 or 10000 charities, I'd pick 1 and put "micropayment for applying to company X" in the comment of the payment.

That way I know I'm not giving money to some huge corporation and they know I think applying to their job should at least cost me Y amounts of currency.

And if they waste more than an hour of my time with the hiring process, they could similarly pay a charity some money per hour.

That was neither me nor the company will feel cheated and in the end, no matter how the hiring turns out, a charity will have benefited.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#135

Post by tharkun__ »

YesBox wrote: post #88
nitwit005 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the issue isn't seeming inhuman, but cost. Employers often seem happy to impose rediculous time costs on the people they're hiring: take home tests, long series of interviews, etc. What held that back is they also paid a price. Full automation leaves them free to impose infinite cost with no guarantee of anything.

Applicants are using AI too. I've heard from people who hire/post jobs that they gets hundreds to low thousands of applications, and maybe 5% of them have any relevant experience. The problem is the breakdown of trust is costing all of us.

Using AI for what and is it bad or good?

At this point, we think using AI and being able to use AI effectively is a skill in and of itself. When you're hired, you'll have access to AI. You'd be expected to be able to use said AI effectively.

So, we still give you a FizzBuzz. You can use AI. Even if we told you not to use AI, we know almost everyone would use AI. But you have to understand the FizzBuzz and be able to explain it to us and make changes to it "live". The amount of people that get weeded out just by having to explain the code they "coded themselves" is staggering (even pre-AI, even on a take home where you had no "OMG I suck at live coding" pressure).

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#136

Post by jvickers »

JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

Philosophically I really like the idea in terms of how I'd like to work. If they are paying for a data processing node then they can have that. It won't stop me from being a human, and it could give me more time to get on with my life.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#137

Post by projektfu »

janalsncm wrote: post #89
roenxi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Resource allocation is entirely a social construct. Not being afford something is a 'pretend' state that only exists because everyone agrees to go along with it. That can't exactly be true, because scarcity is a physical limit. If there is exactly 1 apple, it is impossible for 2 people to eat it. That is no social construct. There is a large social element involved, but that in itself is done in such a way as to tr…

The amount of resources is not a social construct but how they are distributed is. The mean American has a net worth of $620k. The median American net worth is $192k. The global mean net worth is $95k. The median is $9k.

Putting out numbers, it's good to consider Equalland.

https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-eq...

Ancient discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2087267

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#138

Post by tharkun__ »

nitwit005 wrote: post #106
bluefirebrand wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outstanding. I've done quite a few interviews and as long as the interviewee maybe said something like "it would be better to use a shadow DOM" and could explain what a shadow DOM is, I would be pretty happy with that Expecting someone to build a full shadow DOM as part of their interview take home is excessive

Often times people ding you for doing anything different than they're used to, or what they see as "the standard". The worst is when they basically ask how you'd build their product. Some people can't handle a different answer, even as they're busy hiring you to improve things.

I do think we have to distinguish two things though.

It's not really bad to ask someone to do a design session with them and "build their product with them from scratch" isn't inherently bad. That's actually pretty neat if you ask me.

What's bad is if there's only a single answer and that's whatever they actually built themselves, which might be a pile of thrown together startup poo that was never cleaned up. But you have the same problem with all sorts of "needless trivia" type questions.

And then do you really want to work at a company, where you can't have a proper "pros and cons of different approaches" type of discussion? If you got hired, you'd have those kinds of discussions with them on an ongoing basis. Bad on the company for letting that person do the hiring but they got what they deserved so to speak.

Just to make an analogy:

If they simply ding you for using 4 spaces coz they use 8, that's bad.

If they ask you why you use 4 spaces, they use 8, give them pros and cons and are there any other approaches and what are the pros and cons of those? That's a good interview so to speak. As an interviewer I would give bonus points if the candidate says something like "I used 4 spaces because I thought that's what you guys were probably using coz everyone's moved away from 8 spaces but secretly I love usings tabs and setting tabwidth to what I want but in reality it really really doesn't matter as long as it's consistent across the codebase as humans can get used to almost everything and this one isn't worth fighting over. Linters and formatters exist for a reason".

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#139

Post by sarchertech »

Manuel_D wrote: post #132
JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

For a first-round interview, it was not uncommon to have a leet-code style automated assignment as early as the mid 2010s. I recall more than a few highly regarded employers that did this in 2014. Is an AI interview meaningfully different than one of these automated interview systems? A lot of people are assuming that there'd be a human interview absent this AI interview, but it could very easily just be another auto…

1. Plenty of people have problems with any screening that requires work on the candidate side but nothing on the employer side. In that regard both of these options are equally bad.

2. Automated code screens usually have an objective right answer. With an AI interview you have no idea what the how you did or how your answers could trigger an LLM to reject you.

And there’s the fact that you have to talk to it like it’s a human which many maybe most people find at least a bit dehumanizing.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#140

Post by Archit3ch »

tombert wrote: post #85
czscout wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wasted probably 40 hours of my life on Canonical's interview process and never even got to talk to a person. They wanted to know my high school GPA and ACT score.

They wanted to know my high school grades and ACT, and they also made me write a nine page essay about skills that have been impactful to me. Then they made me take some weird IQ test thing, and then they wanted me to take another one. I was genuinely starting to get kind of worried that they were going to make me talk about my astrology sign, so I eventually just emailed them saying that this is all stupid and I don…

Wow, classic Capricorn, no wonder they turned you down. /s
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