AI Broke Interviews
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AI Broke Interviews
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Re: AI Broke Interviews
#2While I agree LLMs have forever changed the interviewing game, I also strongly disagree with deeming slop code as "perfect" and "optimal".
There's a lot of shitty code made my LLMs, even today. So maybe we should lean in, and get people to critique generated code with the interviewer. Besides, being able to talk through, review, and discuss code is more important than the initial creation.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#3I do in-person whiteboard interviews.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#4I do in-person whiteboard interviews.
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Re: AI Broke Interviews
#5I am teaching a coding class, and we had to switch to in person interview/viva assessment about the code written by students, to deal with AI written code. It works, but it requires a lot of extra effort on our side. I don't know if it is sustainable...
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#6[deleted]
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#7I don’t understand how offline interviewing is needed to catch ai use, not counting take homes.
Surely just asking the candidate to lean a bit back on the web interview and then having a regular talk without him reaching for the keyboard is enough? I guess they can have some in between layer hearing the conversation and posting tips but even then it would be obvious someone’s reading from a sheet.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#8> Interviewing has always been a big can of worms in the software industry. For years, big tech has gone with the LeetCode style questions mixed with a few behavioural and system design rounds. Before that, it was brainteasers.
Before Google, AFAIK, it was ad hoc, among good programmers. I only ever saw people talking with people about what they'd worked on, and about the company.
(And I heard that Microsoft sometimes did massive-ego interviews early on, but fortunately most smart people didn't mimic that.)
Keep in mind, though, that was was before programming was a big-money career. So you had people who were really enthusiastic, and people for whom it was just a decent office job. People who wanted to make lots of money went into medicine, law, or financial.
As soon as the big-money careers were on for software, and word got out about how Google (founded by people with no prior industry experience) interviewed... we got undergrads prepping for interviews. Which was a new thing, and my impression is that the only people who would need to prep for interviews either weren't good, or were some kind of scammer. But then eventually those students, who had no awareness of anything else, thought that that this was normal, and now so many companies just blindly do it.
If we could just make some other profession be easier big money, maybe only people who are genuinely enthusiastic would be interviewing. And we could interview like adults, instead of like teenagers pledging a frat.
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#9Maybe it’s time to ask deeper questions, ask how to reduce complexity while preserving meaning. Doing real pair programming with shared remote code and simulate as much as possible a real day-to-day environment. Not all companies search for the same kind of developers. Some don’t really care about the person as long as the tech skills are there. Some don’t look for the brightest in favor of a better cultural match with the team.
Genuine remote interviews aren’t easy but it also depends on the interviewer’s skills.
We’ve been touted for year that AI will replace developers, would Elon replace the engineers working on the software of it’s rockets with AI ? It depends what’s at stake. I bet their interviews are quite specific and researched thoroughly.
We can find better ways to create a real connexion in the interviews and still make sure the tech skills are sound without leet code.
We also need developers who master the use of AI and have real skills of thinking before and designing and deep review code skills
Re: AI Broke Interviews
#10I am teaching a coding class, and we had to switch to in person interview/viva assessment about the code written by students, to deal with AI written code. It works, but it requires a lot of extra effort on our side. I don't know if it is sustainable...
Why wouldn't something like this work?
1. Get students to work on a more complex than usual project (in relation to their previous peers). Let them use whatever they want and let them know that AI is fine.
2. Make them come in for a physical exam where they have questions about they why of decisions they had to take during the project.
And that's it? I believe that if you can a) produce a fully working project meeting all functional requirements, and b) argue about its design with expertise, you pass. Do it with AI or not.
Are we interested in supporting people who can design something and create it or just have students who must follow the whims of professors who are unhappy that their studies looked different?