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Comment by brainwipe | Hacker News Reader

I've accidentally been using an AI-proof hiring technique for about 20 years: ask a junior developer to bring code with them and ask them to explain it verbally. You can then talk about what they would change, how they would change it, what they would do differently, if they've used patterns (on purpose or by accident) what the benefits/drawbacks are etc. If they're a senior dev, we give them - on the day - a small but humorously-nasty chunk of code and ask them to reason through it live.

Works really well and it mimics the what we find is the most important bit about coding.

I don't mind if they use AI to shortcut the boring stuff in the day-to-day, as long as they can think critically about the result.

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Yep. I've also been using an AI-proof interview for years. We have a normal conversation, they talk about their work, and I do a short round of well-tested technical questions (there's no trivia, let's just talk about some concepts you probably encounter fairly regularly given your areas of expertise).

You can tell who's trying to use AI live. They're clearly reading, and they don't understand the content of their answers, and they never say "I don't know." So if you ask a followup or even "are you sure" they start to panic. It's really obvious.

Maybe this is only a real problem for the teams that offloading their interviewing skills onto some leetcode nonsense...

This is a fine way. I’ll say that the difference between a senior and a principal is that the senior might snicker but the principal knows that there’s a chance the code was written by a founder.

And if the Principal is good, they should stand up and say exactly why the code is bad. If there's a reason to laugh because it is cliche bad, they should say so.

If someone gave me code with

if (x = 7) { ... } as part of a C eval.

Yeah, you'll get a sarcastic response back because I know it is testing code.

What I think people ignore is that personality matters. Especially at the higher levels. If you are a Principal SWE you have to be able to stand up to a CEO and say "No, sir. I think you are wrong. This is why." In a diplomatic way. Or sometimes. Less than diplomatic, depending on the CEO.

One manager that hired me was trying to figure me out. So he said (and I think he was honest at the time). "You got the job as long an you aren't an axe murderer."

To which I replied deadpan: "I hope I hid the axe well." (To be clear to all reading, I have never killed someone, nevermind with an axe! Hi FBI, NSA, CIA and pals!)

Got the job, and we got along great, I operated as his right hand.

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