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

I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 496 posts

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

#341

Post by fc417fc802 »

komali2 wrote: post #171
hansvm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I was hiring I gave out a take-home test, and I thought it was the opposite of an imposition on candidates' time. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts: - It was designed to be fast to complete (20min max -- not a huge imposition if being hired is likely, obviously very expensive if you're taking one for every job posting). - I only gave them out after a resume screen. If you had a 0% chance then I didn'…

> but part of the point was to allow candidates to gauge their own abilities and not waste their time interviewing without a chance of being hired. In my experience this is the wrong game theory. Unemployed people can make job hunting their full time job, so a 20 minute take home doesn't select for "who delivers the highest quality solution in the least amount of time," it selects for "who is the richest applicant wh…

> After all they might be engaging in imposter syndrome, right?

GP specifically stated that this was the point of the takehome though. If the person handing it out specifically warns you that struggling with it means you aren't a good fit then if you struggle with it that's not imposter syndrome - you aren't a good fit! Not dropping out at that point is just refusing to acknowledge reality and insisting on wasting everyone's time.

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

#342

Post by Esophagus4 »

manfre wrote: post #304
hansvm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I was hiring I gave out a take-home test, and I thought it was the opposite of an imposition on candidates' time. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts: - It was designed to be fast to complete (20min max -- not a huge imposition if being hired is likely, obviously very expensive if you're taking one for every job posting). - I only gave them out after a resume screen. If you had a 0% chance then I didn'…

Any take home test trivial enough to complete in under 20 minutes could be completed by an AI. The only signal you get from a take home test is whether or not they can submit answers. It doesn't let you know if the candidate is capable of passing the test unassisted. Take home tests were never a worthwhile signal. Pre-AI, people would search for solutions or have another person complete it.

Major interview platforms all can identify AI usage, and record the interview for humans to review later.

Employers can, with a somewhat high (?) degree of certainty, weed out candidates using AI.

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

#343

Post by Esophagus4 »

hansvm wrote: post #146
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.

The last time I was hiring I gave out a take-home test, and I thought it was the opposite of an imposition on candidates' time. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts: - It was designed to be fast to complete (20min max -- not a huge imposition if being hired is likely, obviously very expensive if you're taking one for every job posting). - I only gave them out after a resume screen. If you had a 0% chance then I didn'…

I generally don’t do take home tests unless it’s really a job I would love to have.

If you’re some random startup or no name company, I don’t bother. I already have a good job.

If you’re a top name hot company offering $600k+ total comp, I’m going to spend the hour shooting my shot. Even if it’s lower likelihood.

For random company XYZ, I expect humans to sink as much of their time into the process as I do.

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

#344

Post by Otterly99 »

ossa-ma wrote: post #55
xlii wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geez. Good one. Was in something similar lately. 10 weeks wasted and a shittiest feedback ever. These companies should be legally required to pay candidates for gauntlets they put them through.

The lack of feedback is the worst part and is increasingly more common. Zero respect for the candidates time investment and propagates a terrible culture.

Some jobs that I interviewed replied with an automated email saying that, if I wanted, I could ask for feedback. I always did and none of them replied... This somehow feels even more insulting.

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

#345

Post by fc417fc802 »

dotancohen wrote: post #191
fragmede wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's compromise. What do you think of 3?

I just recently read about something that requires - hard requirement - 3 spaces for indentation. Most likely read it here on HN. Makes me sick to even think about.

If I ever NIH a YAML-alike I fully intend to require the mixing of tabs and spaces when indenting.

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

#347

Post by Esophagus4 »

komali2 wrote: post #171
hansvm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I was hiring I gave out a take-home test, and I thought it was the opposite of an imposition on candidates' time. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts: - It was designed to be fast to complete (20min max -- not a huge imposition if being hired is likely, obviously very expensive if you're taking one for every job posting). - I only gave them out after a resume screen. If you had a 0% chance then I didn'…

> but part of the point was to allow candidates to gauge their own abilities and not waste their time interviewing without a chance of being hired. In my experience this is the wrong game theory. Unemployed people can make job hunting their full time job, so a 20 minute take home doesn't select for "who delivers the highest quality solution in the least amount of time," it selects for "who is the richest applicant wh…

This will kind of happen anyway right?

People who have really good jobs aren’t applying for jobs below them, so your applicant pool will always be people who are in an equal or worse position than your job.

No one at, Anthropic, for example, is applying to a job at Geico.

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

#348

Post by fc417fc802 »

rafaelmn wrote: post #333
plagiarist wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this. I hate this planet. So many problems would go away if people could actually afford to make choices.

The only reason you can "afford" anything is because other people do shit they would rather not, but do so for the money. If people could actually "afford to make choices" you'd find out pretty soon how dependent you are on others doing the dirty work for you to maintain your living standard. Like sure things aren't perfect, not everyone is compensated proportionally to their contributions, no perfect markets and you…

Your logic here amounts to "some people have it bad therefore everyone needs to have it bad". There are many situations where the world would generally be better if a relevant group of people had the option to choose to go elsewhere. When you are part of such a group and don't have that choice it is perfectly reasonable to be frustrated by the state of things.

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

#349

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

ipsento606 wrote: post #324
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…

LLMs are biased. Human interviewers are biased. Are LLMs more or less biased than human interviewers, on average? I have no idea.

Humans have a much greater diversity in bias because we have all lived our own unique lives. LLMs are incredibly limited, by contrast. Even if you were somehow to simulate bias by exposing subsets of LLMs to subsets of human knowledge corpuses, you would need billions of subsets to simulate the diversity of human bias.

Wisdom of the crowd also implies that diversity of human bias is a good thing, in aggregate.

To more closely address your point: if all companies use the same LLM they’ll all have the same hiring bias. But if Company Foo has Hiring Manager Bob that’s biased against me, I can shoot my shot with Company Bar with Hiring Manager Alice who might not be.

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

#350

Post by yakkomajuri »

This is not new, but it's certainly getting worse and will get even worse. Some large companies used to do bot interviews for low-level positions even pre-AI where the bot would ask a recorded question and you'd have a certain amount of time to answer.

It reminds me of a funny story. I did a Business Management degree at university and during my first year was already freelancing as a dev. But basically everyone around me wanted to work in either consultancy or investment banking (this was in London) so the path was to get accepted for a "spring week" during your first year, internship the second, and then get an offer to work there at the end of your third year.

With all everyone could talk about being applying for spring weeks, I gave in and decided I was going to prove to myself and others that I could do this if I wanted to but I just wanted to be a dev. Applied to JPMorgan and got through to this first bot interview stage. I thought I was knocking it out of the park and then the last question was "Why do you want to work at JP Morgan?". The answer time was something like 30s. I froze for what felt like 15 then blurted out some BS.

That told me all I needed to know. I never again thought about working in this industry and soon after was hired as a developer full-time while taking my studies lightly.

Post reply on HN