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Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

fortune.com

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Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#851

Post by liveoneggs »

atoav wrote: post #714
econnors wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Can you clarify what you mean by interface?" is the right answer

As someone who interviewed people for technical roles, I'd see that as a bad sign and answer: "Just tell me what you can think about." This isn't school where teachers give you trick questions and you fail if you misunderstand it. If you are applying as a software developer and you can't talk at length about various forms of interfaces you are probably not very experienced. UI, API, ABI are all interfaces..

> This isn't school where teachers give you trick questions and you fail if you misunderstand it

Please explain leetcode live sessions, random brain teasers (how many pinball balls blah blah blah), weird off-the-wall questions (you were just in a plane crash/you wake up as a cockroach), AI trivia screeners, and the rest?

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#852

Post by account42 »

akudha wrote: post #422
Balgair wrote: post #89

I did one of these once. Once . I felt so bad afterwards that I swore them off forever. It's not like the 'interview' was terrible or anything. I knew it was AI from the start. It was just that when I got done with it, I realized that I had talked at a computer for ~45 minutes. And, yet again, I was going to be ghosted by the company (I was), and that I was never going to get those 45 minutes back. That was time I co…

I'd hate being interviewed by a bot. Talking to these stupid automated answering machines is bad enough. That said, the other side of the equation is also bad, for employers. I was asked to conduct some interviews recently. I asked the most basic of questions (like absolutely basic stuff, "what is an interface?" level basic). The number of people who said "I don't know" is far less than the number of people who tried…

> Talking to these stupid automated answering machines is bad enough.

I refuse to do that to. Usually you can just curse or talk gibberish until the system gives up and you get redirected to a human.

If that doesn't work, just find another communication method that does - send an email to a C-level address if you can find/guess one.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#853

Post by the__alchemist »

Nathanba wrote: post #780
the__alchemist wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some I've thought about more lately. It's taboo to use the word "lie" and accuse people of lying... I am attempting to use it in my vocabulary more and more, when appropriate. Which is surprisingly often.

I've been wondering for a while why society only has one word for all the different forms of lying. Lying by omission, lying intentionally, lying because you dont know, lying to save yourself, lying without thinking, lying for self benefit there are more... These should all get their own words so that we can always pinpoint exactly which version we think the other person did instead of having to shout "you lied!!111"…

I completely agree! Perhaps in lieu of words for these related but different concepts, we could use these full descriptions, as you wrote.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#854

Post by bluecalm »

Supernaut wrote: post #635
bluecalm wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a guy who made a popular Java game in his spare time and sold it to Microsoft for 2 billion? What in that process required forgoing empathy and ethics? That's just one example. There are plenty of rich people who got there fairly and created a lot of value along the way.

I take it you're referring to the same guy who, after taking his money, wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and that privilege is a "made up metric"? That guy?

Yes. Things you mentioned are unrelated to how he made his money.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#855

Post by bluecalm »

ryoshoe wrote: post #616
bluecalm wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a guy who made a popular Java game in his spare time and sold it to Microsoft for 2 billion? What in that process required forgoing empathy and ethics? That's just one example. There are plenty of rich people who got there fairly and created a lot of value along the way.

The "pretty much" disclaimer in their comment covers this case. But it doesn't dispute their idea that most billionaires reached that level of wealth by exploiting others

It depends how you define "exploit". How is Jensen Huang "exploiting" others? He started a GPU company, hires a lot of people, pays some of them very well, pays others not that well. I don't think you can say he is "exploiting" them though. He made lives of hundreds of thousands of people much better. If anything I think he should be celebrated and I am very happy he is a billionaire.

How is Roger Federer exploiting others? He played a competitive game, won a lot of tournaments, accepted a lot of sponsorship money. He is now a billionaire. Did he need to give up ethics and morals to get there? What kind of blame is that really?

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#856

Post by strken »

siva7 wrote: post #839
strken wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a union and I still criticise unions for this. You can't make it harder to fire people unfairly without also making it harder to fire them when they're actively harming the business and/or their co-workers.

Come on, the myth that it's hard to fire incompetent people is total bullcrap, perpetuated by executives to avoid dealing with unions. I live in one of the countries with the strongest union protections and traditions in the world. It's not hard here to fire someone if you want to fire them´, even if in union.

I live in Australia and it's an absolute pain in the arse to fire someone for performance issues, assuming they work at a medium or large business (e.g. of more than 20 people) and they've made it through their 3-month trial period. You have to PIP them and the process takes months.

I've known of two engineers whose managers told me they would have fired them, but higher management wouldn't let them initiate the PIP process. The one case where I worked at the company was pretty bad. We had to shuffle the individual off onto makework jobs where they couldn't do much harm.

I don't think it's fair to blame this entirely on unions when it's the result of big businesses being too scared to follow a process that was given to them by the government. Unions mostly fight real unfair dismissals and only play a minor role in creating a chilling effect. Still, in practice it's hard to fire someone.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#857

Post by limininsklyy »

ponector wrote: post #720
Jaygles wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, a very generic question like that deserves a very generic answer, with a follow-up asking if that is what they had in mind. "An interface is roughly how a system is designed to be interacted with. A web page can be an interface with your bank if they have online banking. An API can be an interface for a back-end service to provide to other back-end services. Did you have anything specific in mind?"

Usually the interviewer has particular definition in mind and you need to guess it to pass to the next stages.

Yup. I have been rejected once because I discussed a variety of options to harden a system instead of blurting out "VPN" as they wanted. They told me that after I discussed some trade offs in security for a little bit.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#858

Post by NoGravitas »

throwaway422432 wrote: post #811
mystraline wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese socialism is interesting and I think works quite well. Absolutely new stuff is basically unrestricted. Go build, have fun, make money. Intermediate stuff is partially state controlled, including cost, profits, pollution, and more. Essentials are effectively state owned, cost controlled, and 'very stable'. Also, the USSR was the first time it was tried. It succeeded some ways, but failed in others.

It seemingly works because China flipped away from communism to something more like corporatism/fascism.

No, not exactly. Under corporatism/fascism, the capitalists have control of the levers of the government. Under Socialism With Chinese Characteristics, that's basically the one thing the capitalists are never allowed to get. Money is blocked from translating into political power, which lets the government make long-term plans.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#859

Post by NoGravitas »

mcv wrote: post #615
imglorp wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (the US) had a very successful, carefully designed system that seems to have been an unstable configuration. It was neither hammer and sickle nor single megacorporation: it was balanced on a hill between both. The combination of (1) checks and balances, (2) separation of money, religion, corporation, and government, and (3) regulation in moderation worked pretty well for around 200 years. Monopolies and labor abus…

Why would it be unstable? Most of Europe still has it. The US chose to do away with it.

The fundamental contradiction between the working class and the owning class (over maximizing vs minimizing wages) continues to exist, which means that any system that tries to manage that contradiction can't be permanently stable. Social democracy is the best known and most successful strategy for managing class conflict, but in the US and UK it was only fairly stable while the USSR meaningfully threatened to overtake them economically, and collapsed completely when the USSR did. It has lasted longer in Europe, but has clearly also been in decline since the 90s, with various governments resorting to "austerity" or having it forced on them.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#860

Post by jalapenos »

benreesman wrote: post #547
os2warpman wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns are useless. Everyone who believes guns are some kind of savior or last-ditch protector is fucking stupid. There is a reason why, during westward expansion, the first thing towns did when they got two nickels to rub together to buy bricks to build a church was ban guns. There are so many real-world examples of guns being useless that it defies logic and belief that people cling to the myth. There are so few exam…

The United States Military is the most terrifying institution of force in the history of the human race (history of the universe as far as we know). It achieves a level of training, discipline, organization, morale, combat effectiveness and general formidavlbility that makes the median Marine among the best soldiers on the planet anywhere, all backed by a logistical apparatus unrivaled by any conceivable combination…

It didn't get its ass kicked in Afghanistan, it ran off with its tail between its legs, never having been clear why it had been there in the first place.
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