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I’ve been meaning to write essentially this article for a while now. I’m currently prepping for some upcoming interviews, which is involving quite a bit of dee

I’ve been meaning to write essentially this article for a while now. I’m currently prepping for some upcoming interviews, which is involving quite a bit of deep digging into some technical subjects. I’m enjoying it, but part of it feels… pointless. ChatGPT can answer better than I can about the things I’m learning. It is detracting quite a bit from my joy, which would not have been the case 5 years ago

sepositus 2y ago
More than ever modern interviews are pointless. I just finished an SRE technical interview where I had to efficiently solve a problem around maximizing profit in a theoretical market setting. I’m guessing it was just a reframed leet code question. Yet not moments earlier they were talking about their needs with increasing visibility, improving deployment times, etc. At some point this has to break, right? If the article indicates anything, it’s exactly those high level analytical skills they should be testing. I almost think allowing AI would be even better because it allows a conversation about what it got wrong, where it can be improved or is not applicable, etc.
- strict9 2y ago
  What you describe has echoes of allowing api lookups and such during an interview. Or if it's ide or repl only, or something like whiteboarding. You see the process and the questions they ask and evaluate how they distill the responses. The more you let the candidate use sources, the closer it is to day-to-day work. A somewhat similar equivalent to yesterday's copying and pasting a Stack Overflow or w3 schools solution is blindly copying and pasting a chat response from a quick and vague prompt. But someone who knows how to precisely prompt or use the correct set of templates is someone with more critical thinking skills that knows when to push back or modify the suggested solution. Knowing the small % of difference can make a big difference long term in code readability, reliability, and security. The other big alternative to all of this is strict debugging. A debugging test or chain of thought around quickly identifying and fixing the source of problems. This is a skill whose needs will probably increase over time.
  - sepositus 2y ago
    I suspect a large part of the problem is a lack of experienced engineers with the capacity to do interviews. As someone who often gets stuck with them, I can attest to how draining they can be, especially if you're doing them correctly. The problem is that it's _these_ engineers we need running the interview because they can pretty quickly pick out a fraudulent candidate from an exceptional one while giving both the option to use AI. I generally only need about 30 minutes to confidently assess whether someone is worth pushing further in the process. But while HR would love to make me a full-time interviewer, it rarely makes business sense. So we end up with unqualified people using what they were told are good signals for hiring talent.
- techpineapple 2y ago
  I wonder if software engineers should take something like a modified LSAT. I do think that testing the ability to do some basic coding logic problem does get at the ability to break apart and understand the kind of problems one faces when turning requirements into business logic. I may be the only person in the world that doesn't really see a problem with the way we interview folks, when done skillfully.
nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
Exactly. I'm far less motivated to learn technical topics now than I was even two years ago. I used to crack books/articles open pretty frequently largely for personal reasons but much of my motivation to do so has been removed by the presence of LLMs.
- braebo 2y ago
  This is the part that saddens me the most. Watching that spark of curiosity and intrigue dwindle from the hearts and minds of nerds like you and me. I noticed it start to happen to me back in November when I truly began to understand where we were headed. I think I occupy a sweet spot now with my current skill set - AI can’t solve the problems I work on - but it can really help empower my workflow in small doses. Nevertheless, it’s a moving target with lots of uncertainty, and the atrophy of my skill and passion is palpable even in the past 6 months.
  - nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
    Yeah you nailed it. Glad to hear I'm not alone. I used to pay for O'Reilly, I have a pile of software/programming/computer-related books, and meh I just don't care for it like I did. I'd page through stuff at night, and the last year especially have really de-motivated me.

sepositus 2y ago

More than ever modern interviews are pointless. I just finished an SRE technical interview where I had to efficiently solve a problem around maximizing profit in a theoretical market setting. I’m guessing it was just a reframed leet code question. Yet not moments earlier they were talking about their needs with increasing visibility, improving deployment times, etc. At some point this has to break, right? If the article indicates anything, it’s exactly those high level analytical skills they should be testing. I almost think allowing AI would be even better because it allows a conversation about what it got wrong, where it can be improved or is not applicable, etc.

strict9 2y ago
What you describe has echoes of allowing api lookups and such during an interview. Or if it's ide or repl only, or something like whiteboarding. You see the process and the questions they ask and evaluate how they distill the responses. The more you let the candidate use sources, the closer it is to day-to-day work. A somewhat similar equivalent to yesterday's copying and pasting a Stack Overflow or w3 schools solution is blindly copying and pasting a chat response from a quick and vague prompt. But someone who knows how to precisely prompt or use the correct set of templates is someone with more critical thinking skills that knows when to push back or modify the suggested solution. Knowing the small % of difference can make a big difference long term in code readability, reliability, and security. The other big alternative to all of this is strict debugging. A debugging test or chain of thought around quickly identifying and fixing the source of problems. This is a skill whose needs will probably increase over time.
- sepositus 2y ago
  I suspect a large part of the problem is a lack of experienced engineers with the capacity to do interviews. As someone who often gets stuck with them, I can attest to how draining they can be, especially if you're doing them correctly. The problem is that it's _these_ engineers we need running the interview because they can pretty quickly pick out a fraudulent candidate from an exceptional one while giving both the option to use AI. I generally only need about 30 minutes to confidently assess whether someone is worth pushing further in the process. But while HR would love to make me a full-time interviewer, it rarely makes business sense. So we end up with unqualified people using what they were told are good signals for hiring talent.
techpineapple 2y ago
I wonder if software engineers should take something like a modified LSAT. I do think that testing the ability to do some basic coding logic problem does get at the ability to break apart and understand the kind of problems one faces when turning requirements into business logic. I may be the only person in the world that doesn't really see a problem with the way we interview folks, when done skillfully.

nyarlathotep_ 2y ago

Exactly. I'm far less motivated to learn technical topics now than I was even two years ago. I used to crack books/articles open pretty frequently largely for personal reasons but much of my motivation to do so has been removed by the presence of LLMs.

braebo 2y ago
This is the part that saddens me the most. Watching that spark of curiosity and intrigue dwindle from the hearts and minds of nerds like you and me. I noticed it start to happen to me back in November when I truly began to understand where we were headed. I think I occupy a sweet spot now with my current skill set - AI can’t solve the problems I work on - but it can really help empower my workflow in small doses. Nevertheless, it’s a moving target with lots of uncertainty, and the atrophy of my skill and passion is palpable even in the past 6 months.
- nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
  Yeah you nailed it. Glad to hear I'm not alone. I used to pay for O'Reilly, I have a pile of software/programming/computer-related books, and meh I just don't care for it like I did. I'd page through stuff at night, and the last year especially have really de-motivated me.