Interviewing Engineers in the AI Era: Lessons from a Year of Rebuilding

mchinen•38 minutes ago

I've been considering different ways to measure code understanding and fluency. I'm still using traditional 'easy' problems on a coding pad to probe this, but I'm finding a new generation candidates that don't prepare for this, and may be able to have a full career with just a higher level of code understanding. But they might not ever develop the ride-a-bike with one hand level of fluency unless they grind pointless leetcodes.

So I'm increasingly uncertain about what and how to test. My default for now is still to rely on ability to write basic code fluently, but I'm open to changing this perspective.

I really want to know how this existing repo AI-assisted live coding test works, with example problems.

It seems the standard data structure puzzle type thing won't be feasible if you are using an LLM.

Also the latency for these agentic coding/prompts seems like it would make the interview a bit awkward.

Anyone been conducting or taking interviews with this kind of thing with thoughts to share?

mbil•11 minutes ago

I’ve been conducting AI Coding interviews at my job. Candidate will screen share and use AI-assisted coding environment and tools of their choice.

I ask them to implement xyz thing. What I’m looking for is how they interact with the AI agent. Do they ask the agent to plan first? Do they review the plan? Etc. It’s pretty typical stuff that you might expect an experienced engineer to do if they effectively use such tools daily.

There are a series of follow-up questions about how to productionize the toy system, which gives some additional signal about how well they understand what they’re making. I sprinkle these in when there’s dead air waiting for the bot to think.

I think we’ll need to evolve and refine this problem and process as the models continue to improve.

keybored•42 minutes ago

Writing for investors in the AI Era

- We have embraced everything about the AI Era at our company

- Arbitrary topic about how that changes something

shdh•about 1 hour ago

We gave away the most fun part of being a SWE to the clankers

Interviewing Engineers in the AI Era: Lessons from a Year of Rebuilding

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