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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

#561

Post by _bin_ »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #537
jamesgasek wrote: post #361

"Preparing with AI" sounds like an issue here, and it's not. The issue is lying about your experiences, which people have done since the beginning of time. I "prepare with AI" by having it help give me hints when doing leetcode problems, which is very helpful. Interviewing is not a presentation, it's a conversation, and having a simulated other side can be helpful. This shouldn't be surreal at all. A candidate just w…

>The issue is lying about your experiences Side note, as far as a job requirements goes the bigger issue is asking for impossibly diverse experience and asking for things that can be easily learnt. This promotes lying because the liars are the ones that are rewarded with an initial interview. I was talking to a fresh graduate with some volunteer experience who was having difficulty getting a job, and all I could hesi…

My compromise here is invisible words in the PDF. I pack it with every freaking keyword I can think of because I have absolutely no issues with lying to a robot and don't feel the need to a respect a hiring process where they can't be bothered to so much as read my resume. Funny enough I often get offers after that even when I don't have some specific technology.

That said, my personal ethics don't let me lie to an actual person.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#562

Post by autoexec »

zemo wrote: post #466
jamesgasek wrote: post #361

"Preparing with AI" sounds like an issue here, and it's not. The issue is lying about your experiences, which people have done since the beginning of time. I "prepare with AI" by having it help give me hints when doing leetcode problems, which is very helpful. Interviewing is not a presentation, it's a conversation, and having a simulated other side can be helpful. This shouldn't be surreal at all. A candidate just w…

> The issue is lying about your experiences I think the point is that LLMs makes it easier and cheaper to produce a large volume of convincing lies. The candidate likely would not have been able to produce convincing-enough lies to get through the resume screen without LLMs.

I'm not sure that it's a good thing if "ability to produce convincing lies" is something that a company requires in a job candidate. People getting into jobs who aren't exceptional liars when they couldn't have otherwise seems like win to me.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#564

Post by cutemonster »

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.

Yes me too, zero, and I'm pretty sure it's closer to zero than to 100% among others also, here where I live

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#565

Post by dahart »

yks wrote: post #422
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hehe explain aesthetics from first principles sounds like demanding the equation that proves Mona Lisa is a good painting.

I mean you can argue aesthetics, but it’s a fact that in the western world, a suit is considered by everyone, more or less, to be more formal than T-shirt and jeans, and more formal is widely considered to be more dignified than casual wear. The first principles that matter aren’t aesthetics, they are more likely customs and class (socioeconomic status).

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#566

Post by ikrenji »

gwbas1c wrote: post #112

Some people think it's perfectly normal to stretch the truth on a resume, and to lie in an interview. Other people think an interview is just a matter of finding the "magic words" to get the job. What I don't understand is, what did the candidate do with AI? Did they use the AI as a coach? Did they use it to suggest edits to the resume? --- I once interviewed a candidate who was given my questions in advance. (I shou…

let me get this straight ~ someone took the time to prepare for the interview and you basically penalized them for the preparation? people are truly ridiculous

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#567

Post by Kirby64 »

amrocha wrote: post #550
zelphirkalt wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing someone wearing a suit for a dev interview would make me think one of the following: (1) This person really really needs the job. Probably is in a bad negotiation position, due to this urgent need. (2) Are you here to impress people with looks, or with your skills? (3) They take looks way more serious than they should, maybe not focussing enough on the technical side of things. (4) Hopefully this is not an "En…

This feels like such a narrow view of the world. Not necessarily discriminatory, but on the path to get there. So what if a candidate wants to look good? How you feel about your looks affects your confidence, and you want to be confident in an interview. And like, if a candidate came in with a well groomed beard would you think “he probably spends too much time on his beard, he must be a bad programmer”? I bet you do…

> So what if a candidate wants to look good? How you feel about your looks affects your confidence, and you want to be confident in an interview.

Like it or not, if someone needs to wear a suit to feel confident that says something about them. It may just be a personality quirk of them unrelated to their skills, but it often is not. There’s no reason you need to wear a suit to feel confident.

> You get judged on your merits, not on anything else. This way of thinking is how you create an environment hostile to women and minorities.

How often does tech discriminate for “culture fit” reasons? Someone’s personality fit is often a huge point of contention, and wearing a suit is part of someone’s personality and choices.

I’m not advocating for it being an absolute state, but you certainly have to give some consideration to the fact that dressing up far more than is needed implies you don’t culturally understand. It’s as simple as that.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#568

Post by devmor »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #534
zemo wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is lying about your experiences I think the point is that LLMs makes it easier and cheaper to produce a large volume of convincing lies. The candidate likely would not have been able to produce convincing-enough lies to get through the resume screen without LLMs.

That's true. On the other hand I have tried ChatGPT to review programming concepts or language features and I have found it very convenient and more useful than Googling. For instance if you want to prepare for a C dev interview and would like to review what 'static' means and does (one of the super usual interview questions) you can just ask and immediately get a pretty much perfect explanation without noise. It's n…

How do you reconcile that opinion with the fact that LLMs trained on programming concepts generally give incorrect answers about 50% of the time?

Is it actually more useful than Googling, or is it just so convenient that you let it convince you that it was useful? Or, depressingly, is Google just becoming so useless that something wrong a solid half of the time is still better?

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#569

Post by speckx »

Ha! One of my clients who was interviewing about a dozen candidates had the same experience with most of them, they have a few left to interview.

All the candidates did really well on the online intake questions and the general meet and greet over video. However, once they arrived for the in-person part of the interview, and it got relatively technical, most did nowhere nearly as good as they did on the online. Only one or two admitted to using AI.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#570

Post by laichzeit0 »

hackable_sand wrote: post #440
laichzeit0 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't see the point of these "take home projects". Just ask them what's the most difficult technical thing they had to do before, and have them walk you through it, probe, ask questions. If you don't like the one they talked about, ask about another one, or another one. You can generally weed out the bullshitters, they talk alot about "we" and hardly ever use "I" meaning they didn't do anything.

I would say "we solved this issue" if all someone did was hand me a coffee while I was debugging. What compels you to play lingual games with peoples' livelihoods?

Well I find conversations with people in interviews to be less of a game than giving them “homework” to do, given that unless they’re totally green with no work experience, I’d assume they would actually have some stuff they’ve worked on and would like to talk about.

It’s completely bizarre to me that take home assignments have been normalized as part of an interview with professional working people.

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