Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#521

Post by boscillator » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 4:47 PM UTC

Foofoobar12345 wrote: post #134

We get a few thousand fresh grads applying to us each year. It’s practically impossible to interview every one of them. At the same time, any sort of coding assignment we give is easily defeated by AI—so that’s not useful either and there are very few signals there. What we do instead is send out a test - something like a mental ability test - with hundreds of somewhat randomized questions. Many of these are highly v…

I'm still mad at IBM for giving me one of those tests for an internship after 4 years. It required a lot of fast mental arithmetic, which is, medically speaking, not my strong suit. I thought the job was programming computers, not being the computer, but the test suggests otherwise.

I probably should have figured out how to request an ADA accommodation... oh well.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#522

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

rafaelmn wrote: post #489

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there are no open positions on my experience and I have to pivot to another completely different tech stack that I studied in my spare time? What then? Should I be unemployed? We're still taking about SW engineering here, not medicine or rocket science.

What do you think happens when you lie through the interview ? I recently had this in my team - we were hiring fast and hired someone we shouldn't have - fired after two weeks. So your best case is receiving 6 weeks income after getting lucky and scamming someone through an interview ?

[deleted]

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#523

Post by thruway516 » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

pramsey wrote: post #498

eikenberry wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right about hiring not being that much different but your prognostications are way off IMO. > - people are probably going to have to fly out for interviews, again. Fly where? Many companies don't have offices anymore. > - awkward and/or neurodivergent people are going to have to learn social skills again. Ahh... the age old, "just do better" position for neurodivergent people. Classic bigotry. > - And yeah, y…

> Suits were out in tech 30 years ago when I first interviewed. They have only gone more out of style. Fashion doesn't work the way you think it works. Or maybe it works exactly the way they think? Suits are so out, that wearing one is a strong signal of "different thinking" in a way that being casual once was. A colleague of mind would wear a three-piece on "casual Friday", and always showed up to the nines for inte…

You're merely reinforcing their point. Its so out of fashion it would be considered a bold or even edgy choice just as dressing casually once would.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#524

Post by filoleg » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

yks wrote: post #449

rafterydj wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, what we call a suit is a highly varied outfit of clothes that are designed to look good on a male silhouette. Deriving from that, yes, the suit is aesthetically better- to disagree is to discount both the entire field of custom tailoring and also the rest of wider society surrounding tech. Most people off the street would agree that a suit is more dignified, and it's not without reason. Wearing a suit indica…

Most of the popular outfits are "designed to look good" to a high degree, and then humans are quite bad at fitting the garments on average. Poorly fit suits that don't look good on a male silhouette are absolutely a thing, and I'd posit that an unkempt male wearing a poorly fitting cheap suit looks "lower status" than a fit and well groomed male wearing a stylish t-shirt/jeans combo. So all we have is the tradition t…

100% agreed. I’ve seen way more than enough people in poorly-fitting expensive suits to last me a lifetime, and it is just painful to watch.

The main benefit of a suit is that it can be easily tailored to fit a person perfectly, which isn’t the case with tshirts/hoodies/jeans/etc. I mean, you can tailor those, i guess, but that’s very uncommon.

For non-suits, the pro-tip is to just focus on finding ones that fit your shape the best (or changing your shape; unless you are one of the unlucky few who has a non-conforming shape, e.g very tall), and that’s their main downside.

Well fitting casual clothing > poorly fitting suits any time. Beyond that, it is situational.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#525

Post by viccis » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

a_t48 wrote: post #474

On the topic of interview prep - is it weird that I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it? I can’t be the only one, right? As best as I can tell it’s never really hurt me (okay, there was a Google interview I failed where grinding a few leetcodes might have helped…).

I usually have to grind some leetcode problems because interviewers love to ask the in-place linear time array questions that absolutely don't resemble any work I do on a regular basis.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#526

Post by charlie0 » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 4:54 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #60

aaomidi wrote: post #56

Earlier 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…

I thought "fire fast" was a viable strategy until I joined a company that did exactly that. They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing. One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that s…

This seems like a case of not managing expectations. The following should be clear: 1. We fire fast. 2. We don't want to fire people and will do our best to help you succeed. 3. Here are the bars you need to clear in order to stay with us. (They should be reasonable.) 4. We will provide frequent feedback to let you know where you are.

Not sure about everyone else, but to me it's often obvious who wasn't going to make the cut within the first 1-2 months of their employment.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#527

Post by itishappy » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

mariusor wrote: post #344

porridgeraisin wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with asking people to prove they're disabled? There definitely exist people that lie about being disabled too. Many places have a persons with disability certificate given by the government, so "proving", just means entering the ID of that certificate in a form.

> What's wrong with asking people to prove they're disabled It's dehumanizing, it's lacking empathy, and it usually ends up having people trivialise the problem a person might suffer from. As long as the disability doesn't prevent a person from executing their contractual obligations, gatekeeping a position behind "you need to be able to function in society" is an indecent request to people that have difficulties doi…

> As long as the disability doesn't prevent a person from executing their contractual obligations [...]

That's exactly the context. In the US, if you're being asked to prove a disability, it's part of a request for accommodations.

> And from personal experience, once you're in the second half of your life, looking for an autism diagnosis and then using that to fight the gauntlet of bureaucracy required to get a government approved "stigma certificate" is a chore that really eats into one's provision of spoons.

I'm in my 30s, but that's been my experience as well. Unfortunately, from personal experience as well, finding a new job after being fired with cause due to failing to obtain ADA protections really eats into one's spoons too.

> How do you propose I demonstrate to you that being in an office severely impairs my ability to reason about problems and write code? Is heart rate enough? Are higher bugs per feature enough? Is being an asshole to people enough?

Why guess? A diagnosis per the DSM by a qualified professional is how you demonstrate impairment. It's also how you guarantee accommodations. As a bonus, it often come with suggestions tailored to your specific disability.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#528

Post by aforwardslash » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

droopyEyelids wrote: post #515

iamleppert wrote: post #476

It's really easy to catch these scammers. Ask for a non-trivial code or work sample, something they have written. Actually take the time to read through the code and understand at least a part of it. In an interview, ask them some questions about it. People who actually wrote the code or did the thing can talk at length about about what they did, the history behind it, trade offs, have colorful stories about it, etc.…

Very easy but time-consuming

If one cant take 30mins to vet a candidate code sample, one should not be hiring. Or working in anything that requires proper reasoning - its akin to not writing tests or do code reviews because "they take time".

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#529

Post by baq » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 5:02 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #519

baq wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not expectation of sameness, it's that they will be working with 'normal' people and need to meet some standard to not be a net negative for any team they're in.

I think there's a tacit expectation to fit into a mold and that mold is heavily skewed towards extroverted neurotypical traits.

Neurotypical means something, after all. Extroverted, I wouldn't say.

Basic game theory, really. Business are not charities. Hiring a neurodiverse person is riskier than a neurotypical one.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#530

Post by theamk » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 5:03 PM UTC

dakiol wrote: post #253

frogulis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think this view is probably apt in other situations -- and to be clear, I don't know much about the company -- all of the specific techniques mentioned on the candidate's CV and in the article are fairly "garden-variety". The pagination example seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for both sides to want to talk about, and which becomes relevant at a level of scale much smaller than Google.

imho I think the pagination example alone wouldn’t get you hired even if told correctly. In over a decade of experience my “coolest experience” related to pagination is about not using LIMIT and OFFSET because it’s not performant… but that’s 101 knowledge and doesn’t sell.

The pagination was chosen because it was prominently featured in the candidate's resume, and was something that interviewer was familiar with - it's not about "cool experience", but rather conversation starter.

When performing interview, asking about things mentioned on the resume is a pretty good conversation starter. No one wants random trivia, resume entries, especially from the most recent jobs, are absolutely fair game. And if they turn out too simple, we can always dig further based later.