Having recently been an interviewer for a programming position, we saw a ton of people cheating using LLMs. It was pretty obvious. What were they thinking, that they could fool us, get the job, and …. then fail because they don’t know how to do what they’re hired to do? It was an insulting waste of everyone’s time.
To be fair, most real time coding interviews are complete bullshit anyway. If you want to see code samples ask for a portfolio, or give longer term coding homework. “Do three leetcode puzzles in 45 minutes or less” is about as useful as asking a candidate to shit in front of you.
I agree. Though those take-home assignments are easily faked too. We do a sort of pair-programming interview where we present a real task/feature we did in the past, and talk it through while they use a scaffolding we provide in CoderPad. It’s far from a flawless method; people sometimes get nervous and shut down, but most people don’t. I treat it as something we can do together (though they’re writing the code) and root for them to solve it. If I need to, I try to nudge them in the right direction to see how they react to that.
The thing is, I’d rather spend the time discussing the code and algorithms and design choices with someone who has had time to actually think through a problem. The reality is that I don’t care if you generate boilerplate code with the AI as long as you can explain it. I am mostly hiring for DSP roles so there’s plenty of theory to talk about above and beyond the code to ferret out the phonies.
My beef with live coding interviews is that you end up with the exact opposite experience. You get a nervous, scatterbrained engineer who is locked into panic code generation mode and there’s just no time to have a deeper discussion.
That is the takeaway when you look at some of those Peter Principle’d sorts that don’t get fired because the owner knows them.
The applicants recognize that competent work doesn’t guarantee a job half as much as being a yes-man to an insecure executive. They believe they just have to get in the door.
Having recently been an interviewer for a programming position, we saw a ton of people cheating using LLMs. It was pretty obvious. What were they thinking, that they could fool us, get the job, and …. then fail because they don’t know how to do what they’re hired to do? It was an insulting waste of everyone’s time.
To be fair, most real time coding interviews are complete bullshit anyway. If you want to see code samples ask for a portfolio, or give longer term coding homework. “Do three leetcode puzzles in 45 minutes or less” is about as useful as asking a candidate to shit in front of you.
I agree. Though those take-home assignments are easily faked too. We do a sort of pair-programming interview where we present a real task/feature we did in the past, and talk it through while they use a scaffolding we provide in CoderPad. It’s far from a flawless method; people sometimes get nervous and shut down, but most people don’t. I treat it as something we can do together (though they’re writing the code) and root for them to solve it. If I need to, I try to nudge them in the right direction to see how they react to that.
The thing is, I’d rather spend the time discussing the code and algorithms and design choices with someone who has had time to actually think through a problem. The reality is that I don’t care if you generate boilerplate code with the AI as long as you can explain it. I am mostly hiring for DSP roles so there’s plenty of theory to talk about above and beyond the code to ferret out the phonies.
My beef with live coding interviews is that you end up with the exact opposite experience. You get a nervous, scatterbrained engineer who is locked into panic code generation mode and there’s just no time to have a deeper discussion.
That is the takeaway when you look at some of those Peter Principle’d sorts that don’t get fired because the owner knows them.
The applicants recognize that competent work doesn’t guarantee a job half as much as being a yes-man to an insecure executive. They believe they just have to get in the door.
It takes a few paychecks before you fire them. And during that time they’re interviewing other places.
You don’t need a steady job if you have three simultaneous rotating ones.
That seems like so much more work than just learning shit and working for real.
I’m guessing they planned to continue using AI at work