Ask HN: Would you hire a software engineer who doesn't use AI assistance? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you hire a software engineer who doesn't use AI assistance?

3 pointscloudking7 comments

You have interviewed 2 great software engineers. Both are qualified for the job, but one of them refuses to use any type of AI assistance for coding, would you hire that one?

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I would prefer the one who refuses to use AI. Chances are that that developer will be less intellectually lazy.

I have played around with chatgpt and coding (I even have the paid version), but I fail to see it used as anything else than a brainstorming tool (at least right now). It writes code, that is often wrong and even if right it has the quality of a very new junior developer.

But again, I also don't like IDEs (and use "unix is my IDE"), so it might just be personal preference...

> I would prefer the one who refuses to use AI. Chances are that that developer will be less intellectually lazy.

In my experience it's the other way around - the people who don't use AI assistance are much more likely to be the intellectually lazy type. They have either some ideological block, or they don't know how to use it effectively, or they're barely even aware of what's possible.

The people who do use AI assitance (at least the ones I've worked with) are pragmatic types who keep up with the latest developments in the field want to do the best possible job they can do in the most efficient way - and there's a visible difference in people's work performance. It would be really weird and counterproductive to disqualify someone from a job for this.

Same here. I would prefer someone who uses any / all tools at their disposal to accomplish the objectives. I also do recognize that there is a chance that someone blindly using generated code (the new version of copy/pasting from StackOverflow). The results of those will surface at some point or the other.

I would say it depends on what you put into the word "refuse". If the person was blindly refusing it, they are likely not good. But I do refuse it after careful consideration (100+ hours of actual experimentation)...

As said, as a brainstorming tool, I find it kinda valuable as a code-helping tool, not really..

The question isn't whether an applicant uses AI or not. Surely the question is whether the applicant is the best, most productive addition to the team, irrespective of whatever tools they use?

I would hire the responsible one, not the one that leans on random unaccountable strangers for help and then uses that help without understanding it.

This will probably be the one who doesn't use AI. But I know that even that guy will probably use AI if he gets really stuck. It's just the rational thing to do.

I'm starting with the premise that AI assistance makes people more productive - if you don't see this, you're either misinformed, several years out of date, or we have some deep idelogical disagreements that we aren't going to resolve in this thread.

Given that AI tools make you more productive, you can ask the candidate why they refuse to use it, and see if they give a satisfying answer.

If someone said that they have stackoverflow blocked and refuse to use it under any circumstances, that would be a bit of a red flag - the refusal to use AI assistance is in a similar category.

I would want to hire people who want to get things done in the most efficient way possible - refusing to use tools that make you better at your job is a sign that maybe you aren't that type of person.

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