I do interviews for my company. We allow AI (and even encourage it). Use or lack of use of AI has zero correlation with candidate performance. In fact, I’d say

I do interviews for my company. We allow AI (and even encourage it). Use or lack of use of AI has zero correlation with candidate performance. In fact, I’d say there’s a slight negative trend against those who use AI. We have candidates build a _very_ simple fullstack app. Think something like a TODO app, but only like 2 core functions. This is basic CRUD 101 stuff. I’ve seen a boatload of candidates use AI only to flame out after the first round of prompting. They literally get stuck and can’t move forward. The good candidates clearly know their fundamentals. They’re making intentional decisions, telling the AI scoped actions to take, and reviewing pretty much everything the AI generates. They reject code they don’t like. They explain why code is good or bad. They debug easily and quickly. LLMs are very, very talented but context still matters. They can’t build proper understanding of the non-technical components. They can’t solve things in the simplest way possible. They can’t decide that to explain to the interviewer “if performance is a concern, I’d do X but it’s a time-bound interview so I’m going to Y. Happy to do X if you need”.