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Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

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Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#421

Post by mathgeek »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #303
jaredklewis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Others have already commented on this, but do you work in tech? IME getting interviewed by directors and even VPs in t-shirts is the norm. I’ve worn jeans to work my whole career. If anything, I think people in tech have a strong prejudice against people in suits (ie “obviously this person isn’t a real software engineer, they’re wearing a suit.”) Anyway, probably not g…

I was once turned down by Microsoft (in the 1990s), because I wore a suit to the interview. They made a point of mentioning it.

Too real. I once got turned down by the Apple Store for a retail position because I wore a collared shirt to the interview (after being told in advance not to wear anything formal). Interviewer let me know I came off as too formally dressed to get their vibe. The discrimination/bias was real.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#422

Post by yks »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #415
michaelt wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tech got rid of the suits, but kept the desire to judge people at interviews based on their clothes? Great. Fantastic job everyone /S

Reverse snobbery is like slave morality. It transmutes a high standard into a perverse mirror image consisting of intolerant, intentional, celebrated mediocrity. At least requiring a suit requires something aesthetically better and more worthy of human dignity. Reverse snobbery demands you dress worse and beneath it.

Please explain from the first principles, why a suit is "aesthetically better" and more dignified than a t-shirt/jeans combo.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#423

Post by jillesvangurp »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #336
jillesvangurp wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most countries, you have trial periods where you can terminate without too much hassle. Here in Germany, that's usually six months and I know of people in pretty senior positions that got screwed over and terminated towards the end of that period. The problem with hiring in IT is that it's a bit of a broken system. On one hand you have companies that are overly picky and are alienating good candidates with their c…

>a string of meh employers What's a meh employer?

A company pretending to be some fancy place that everyone wants to work that just isn't that great. The whole A's hire A's and B's hire C's but are pretending to be A's kind of thing. Let's just say that not every company is like Google in the early days (free 3 star restaurant food, clean t-shirts, slides in the office, and all the rest). Even Google is not like that anymore.

There's a lot of that going on where companies just don't realize that they aren't just filtering bad candidates out but scaring the best ones away because they approach them wrong. Hiring is as much a sales job as it is a filtering job. After you filter out the bad candidates, how do you make sure you don't lose the good candidates? How do you get them into your hiring funnel to begin with? The assumption that these candidates are going to drop on their knees and beg you to please employ them is just extremely misguided in many cases.

Whenever you hear companies complain that they can't find good people, that's what's going on. Mostly it boils down to the company not being that great and candidates flocking to more interesting opportunities.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#424

Post by narnarpapadaddy »

koyote wrote: post #387
narnarpapadaddy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still do a coding assignment, but a significant chunk of the technical interview is dedicated to a walkthrough of the code. Thus far, that’s been able to detect those who relied solely on AI. …If you used AI and can still explain to me why code works and what it does, even better. You have learned how to use new tools. (have not tried the randomized question approach to compare, but I’m curious to try it and see w…

We do it similarly and it's pretty easy to tell if someone knows their stuff, especially as the assignment is just a platform to dig deeper in the face to face interview. However, the coding assignment was a really good filter and allowed us to dismiss the majority of candidates before committing to a labour-intensive face to face. I haven't interviewed anyone since AI took off, but I am assuming that from now on the…

Yes, but we had that problem before when somebody would farm out coding assignments to a friend. I couldn’t say yet how it’s impacted the coding assignment’s effectiveness as a filter yet. We still do get crap code just sometimes it’s obviously AI generated.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#425

Post by crabbone »

sethammons wrote: post #376
crabbone wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm... no? The highest ranking person I ever shook hands with was the GP Morgan head of futures department. He came to talk to the whole company to prep for acquisition. So, it wasn't a super official "ceremony", but it was in front of some fifty men, including senior management of the said company. He was wearing a polo shirt, jeans and a pair of sneakers. I don't know if this is how he'd show up to his office in th…

What is wrong with the advice? You are saying nobody was wearing a suit. I said dress a step up (for the interview). Sr. Management in graphic tees? Wear a polo shirt. Or sport your best conversation-starter graphic tee. And if the CEO wears a tee-shirt and all the rest are in some other category of dress, base your interview attire based on everyone else.

Mmm... because I'd prefer the approach of Donald Knuth: wear dashiki to special events (like interviews)? I don't mean I endorse West-African style literally. Just either wear something that says something about you, if you are into that, or be neutral and approachable. No need to plus one anyone.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#426

Post by alexdowad »

sethammons wrote: post #300
highwaylights wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a few red flags here on the hiring side too. I’ve given a lot of interviews, candidates will always try to come up with the best story as an answer to your question because “I can’t think of an example” is not an acceptable answer. It’s a demand you’re placing on them. Also having experience puffed up on a resume happens around 100% of the time. The point of the interview is to figure out how much real releva…

> having experience puffed up on a resume happens around 100% of the time Maybe I am the rounding error. I have zero puffery, exaggerations, embellishments, stolen credit, or lies on my resume.

I'm together with sethammons in that "rounding error". I actually go further and explicitly list things which I'm not good at on my resumé.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#427

Post by wavemode »

roenxi wrote: post #289
tuvang wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First impressions do count but I think the above poster has a point, a suit can actually harm your chances in an environment where no one wears suits.

I'd want to see some actual hard evidence before I believed that. The usual way social cues work is they are devastatingly effective even if people claim they are not. Much like how most interviewers are honestly convinced that their approach is unbiased but in practice they tend to hire people who are like themselves. My expectation is that turning up in a suit would get better results. The effect is probably smalle…

> in practice they tend to hire people who are like themselves.

So then by your own admission, the best way to come dressed is the same way your interviewer tends to dress.

Which is essentially what most people in this thread are arguing for - dress to match the company's culture.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#428

Post by dpkirchner »

saxelsen wrote: post #170
crazygringo wrote: post #136

I'm not sure what this has to do with AI, except for being a buzzword to add to a title. People have been lying about their experience since time immemorial. You don't need an AI to do it, you can just ask a friend with experience to invent a few plausible projects you could have worked on, and solutions you might have found. Or just look at a bunch of resumes online and read a few blog posts of people describing the…

Yup. I personally wrote that I had experience in a programming language I didn't, back for an interview in 2010. I got called out on it too..! My wife has run a couple of marathons and her friend called her up to hear about her experience, because she was putting it on her resume for a job. She got it (probably not because of her running experience).

I had a recruiter do that to me when I was 19 or so. Said I had some amount of c++ experience. Somehow the interviewers picked up on the fact that I did not.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#429

Post by dpkirchner »

roguecoder wrote: post #142
mystraline wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people think it's perfectly normal to stretch the truth on a resume, and to lie in an interview. So marketing works in the company's favor, and not the candidates? Its a tough pill to swallow, but bending the truth and lying seems to be the way folks get jobs now. Perhaps not lying... But I've thought about the 1pt font white on white mega-tech-list attached to Workday resumes to get past THEIR ai-slop filters…

Lying isn't marketing. If you lie in marketing, people can sue you. It is one thing to frame your experiences in ways that are relevant to what the job is looking for: it is not only unethical to fabricate experiences, it is counter-productive. I will be checking references, and if their reports of the role you played on a project don't match yours I will not be hiring you. If you don't have references who can speak…

> Lying isn't marketing. If you lie in marketing, people can sue you.

That's why we had our guys down in marketing come up with a new term for it. Focus groups, legal review, the works! Now we call it "puffery".

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#430

Post by noirbot »

mathgeek wrote: post #421
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once turned down by Microsoft (in the 1990s), because I wore a suit to the interview. They made a point of mentioning it.

Too real. I once got turned down by the Apple Store for a retail position because I wore a collared shirt to the interview (after being told in advance not to wear anything formal). Interviewer let me know I came off as too formally dressed to get their vibe. The discrimination/bias was real.

I mean, if they said not to wear something formal, that doesn't really seem like bias as much as just not following instructions. If I showed up to an interview where they said to wear a suit and I was in jeans and a polo, I'd expect to get turned down too.
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