Online coding assessments
Yeah, that’s the first problem here, don’t do that.
We do live coding and have them explain their thought process. Working code is nice, but we’re really testing communication and reasoning. Coding ability in a given language isn’t super important, that can be learned, provided you’re good at reasoning.
Comp Sci Fundamentals-
We blast comp sci questions as well, but we rephrase if they obviously don’t have a comp sci background. The point isn’t pass/fail though, but more to assess breadth of knowledge.
I don’t really care if you know what the L is in SOLID or the term for an iterative alternative to recursion, but I do want to know if you can come up with the search terms for a problem you have.
Architecture / Design
We ask everyone these questions, and only dig deeper if they give good answers. We’re looking to see what role you should have, which might not be the one you applied for. For example, we hired a frontend intern candidate as a full time jr backend due to how the interview process worked out. We also hired someone as mid tier that applied for senior.
AI
If you use AI to answer questions in an interview, you’re immediately disqualified. It’s pretty easy to tell if they’re reading from a script or actually answering honestly, and if it’s not, it’s easy to fire them in the first few weeks once they prove their incompetence.
If you can fool us during the interview process and produce good code, then I guess I don’t really care how you do it.
We do in-person interviews when practical, but online works too. You just need to be on your guard more for remote interviews.
skip0110@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I have to do many interviews.
I don’t care if the applicant uses AI, or any other tool available to them. I just care about whether they can explain, debug, and modify/extend code (which they wrote, or at least composed somehow and are presenting as their work).
I’ve definitely been suspicious of AI use, and also had some applicants admit to it. And I don’t count that against them any more than using a web resource.
But, there is a very high correlation between using AI and failing at the explain/debug/modify part.
rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I have a question, as someone who struggles with a little developer imposter syndrome. I don’t work as a dev, but I’ve coded from the ground up (using AI initially but basically only these days for syntax checks or to help accelerate writing something routine), including multiple websites (initially in React/Tailwind but lately in raw HTML/CSS), games (using python/godot), etc, for my own purposes primarily (as I have a completely different day job). Is that typical of a candidate you’d see in an interview? Are you having to screen candidates like that for whether they know what they’re talking about or are you referring to more junior people (assuming that what I’m profiling isn’t super junior)?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Not OP, but here’s my 2c as someone also part of the interview process.
I had an interviewe where the candidate asked if they could use AI, and I told them to use whatever they normally use in development. I’ll skip the details, but basically the AI generated wrong code, which they missed, and they corrected when we pointed it out. That happens. But then we had them refactor and the AI made the same mistake and they missed it again, which we pointed out, and they fixed. But that wasn’t the nail in the coffin. We then asked them how confident they were about the code (we saw other errors that we didn’t mention), and they said 100%. They didn’t get the job.
I don’t care what tools you use, I mostly care how you approach problems and whether you overstate your abilities. We’re in the business of producing working code on time, so we need devs who can at least notice when they need more time to check things. We were hoping they’d say they needed to write some tests to get a code review, not just ship it.
Our coding projects are designed such that a competent dev can complete them quickly (5-10 min for first round “weeder” task, 20-30 min for second round “engineering” task), and we allow double the time expected to cover for nerves. In fact, we might hire you even if you fail spectacularly, provided you can explain your approach (i.e. it’s just nerves).
skip0110@lemm.ee 19 hours ago
In my current role, I mostly hire “senior” roles. So the applicants (which are pre screened before I see them) typically have 5+ years experience. I ask about the code they’ve written, and then I ask some questions about how they would extend the code (to meet some new requirements). What I’m looking for is not so much a specific answer, but more so “can we think through this problem together.”
That said, I’ve been the interviewer for “junior” roles…and there isn’t as much correlation between ability and experience as you might think. So no reason to feel imposter syndrome. I’ve worked with extremely smart/talented developers without any formal training.
I think all the stuff you’re doing sets a really good foundation for a career in software, if that’s where you want to go. One thing I might suggest is making a few contributions to open source or team projects. It can be useful to learn about how to read code, and present code to others (or to fit your idea into an existing code base).