Something I don't see mentioned here but is implicitly assumed is that the candidate wants the job. Given the lottery of passing leet coding interviews, interviews are a place to practice interviewing. Some candidates may not want the job but simply want to try different things during the interview and see what happens with the goal of practice for an interview for a role they really care about.
Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
201–210 of 731 posts
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think in part, the difference in what I mean about certification (perhaps licensure is better word here) is an industry body - accepted and respected generally by the businesses within our industry - that will demonstrate some form of competence
I am not sure we can come to agree on what competence is.
I think if we try hard enough we can get there.
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think in part, the difference in what I mean about certification (perhaps licensure is better word here) is an industry body - accepted and respected generally by the businesses within our industry - that will demonstrate some form of competence
I would love to see a trade union-style group, where you are sponsored to join by an existing member and expected to do some work along side existing members before being certified as journey-level and recommended to employers. It would require that group to agree on what being a "good" developer meant, but there could be more than one and if you don't agree with this one you could form your own. Maybe one requires p…
I'd rather it be like passing the bar, accounting exams (CPA etc) or actuarial exams. They test very relevant deep knowledge and act as a proof of fundamentals - and software engineer does have technical fundamentals that could just as well be tested for in a meaningful way.
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Soon, you will be able to find anything only thru local on-site interview or strong references. Anyone paying attention has started planning accordingly for this over the last couple years. The remote work revolution has resolutely failed, and it's clear in retrospect it never had a chance.
This is very much not true: there are extremely-well-compensated roles still available in remote companies. It does require knowing how to collaborate remotely and being an already-skilled developer, but just because the bar is higher (and many people seem uninterested in meeting it) doesn't mean it has "failed".
>there are extremely-well-compensated roles still available in remote companies.
There always have been. Companies have made remote exceptions for decades.
What we lost was the chance to normalize it for everyone. The bosses put that delusion to bed real quick.
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#205I 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…
> And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit.
At my previous employer, I had to convince several people in my team that wearing a suit was NOT a reason to reject a candidate out of hand. It's really difficult to gauge the expected dress code at a company beforehand, but it's not good advice to just blindly dress up.
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would never spend time doing a take home test. The best paying companies never require it, so why would I jump through hoops for nothing but middling compensation on the other side?
The best-paying companies jerk you around for months with hours and hours of in-person quizzes and expect you to memorize a bunch of trivia you will never use day-to-day so they can use their MIT intern interviews for everyone. Take-homes are a much more reasonable expectation than memorizing how to implement quick-sort on a white board.
Given a choice between studying for admittedly meaningless leetCode style interviews and making $250k+ as a mid level developer at a BigTech or adjacent company and working really hard and slowly doing the corp dev grind for years to become a senior doing enterprise dev making $160K, why wouldn’t anyone who is young and unencumbered with kids not try to do the former instead of dismissing those types of interviews?
The $160K-$180k is about the median for a senior dev in most non tech companies in most cities not on the west coast. You can verify this on salary.com.
Yes I know most of the 2.8 million devs in the US are on the enterprise dev side and that’s where you will end up. But why not shoot for the moon?
For context, I am 50. Spent all of my career until 2020 on the “enterprise dev” side of compensation until a pivot and a position at BigTech in the consulting division fell into my lap (full time direct hire with cash + RSUs like any other employee).
But I tell every new grad to do whatever it takes to get on to the public tech company gravy train if possible.
That being said, at 50, I would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever go back to BigTech again. I’m good with where I am working for a smaller company.
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#207AI is a problem, so is lying, but this is a non issue already solved by the ancient tradition of in person interviews.
I assume the folks at kapwing are monitoring the responses, so if you're really open to ideas then i offer the following for your consideration:
The best interview I've had to date has been a live debugging challenge. Given an hour, a printed sheet of requirements, and a mini git repo of mostly working code, try to identify and solve as many bugs as possible, with minimum requirements and bonus goals for the ambitious.
This challenge checks all the boxes of a reliable and fair assessment. It cant be faked by bullshittery or memorized leetcode problems. Its in person so cheating and AI is out of the equation, but more importantly it allows for conversation, asking questions, sharing ideas, and demonstrating, rather than explaining, their problem solving process. Finally its a test that actually resembles what we do on a daily basis, rather than the typical abstract puzzles and trivia that look more like a bizarre IQ test.
Stumbling upon this format was such a revelation to me and I'm stunned it hasn't been more widely adopted. You'll meet many more "Sams" as your company grows - many will fool you, some already have. But a well designed test doesn't lie. Its up to you and your company to have the discipline to turn down cheap and easy interviewing tactics to do things the right way.
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Requiring people to be able to interact with other people is not "bigotry".
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 saw your post on Apple Live Captions, and completely agree with you. I've been slowly adding to a collection of reviews of various captioning tools, and was _very_ critical of some of the choices Apple made there.
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair for the ones who don’t put in any effort, but I don’t buy this generalization for the folks who are real people in the middle between “completely unqualified” and “telling the truth about their experience”.
Any effective screening strategy is going to catch the liars who do it only a little with some probability. Not least because being willing to be dishonest during an interview is a strong signal the candidate will be dishonest while they are employed as well, and companies want very much to not hire those people.
Fair, but that’s different from everyone who uses AI ending up with the same keywords and content on their application (see GPP)
Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Companies just need to fork the upfront $13-1500 dollars for a set of plane tickets for their hiring team and rented conference rooms for a week. It's a whole lot cheaper than spending 50k because you hired the wrong person for half a year. There are very few companies I'd fly out for TBH. IMO Make firing easier, pay people a massive severance if you're firing them for a mistake you made in hiring, and initially st…
If you won’t fly out for an interview you’re probably not that interested and the company probably shouldn’t be either. Pre-COVID this was absolutely the normal way interviews were conducted.
Yeah. I’m not interested in a company that values my time so little that they demand that from me.
You’re absolutely right this would filter out candidates like me.