I assume it's because he is seeking to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment.
Fair enough, so if there were one “right” answer, that would be the one to give whether true or not.
But here there is no obvious right answer. If the employer is looking for a particular answer, the poster doesn’t know what it is. In that case, the best thing to say is simply the truth, particularly when the truth that the poster gives here is completely reasonable.
According to you. That's not the opinion of every prospective employer. Hedging is the right strategy.
The best benefit about working in a large office is that nobody checks the basement.
Your username does not check out.
A modern luxury, unavailable to many.
If you're into long shot betting AND your savings aren't running out while waiting to land a new job, that might be a good strategy
You call the response "cagey and evasive", but that is for an objectively a bad interview question, one wrung below "How many years experience do you have prompting Anthropic Opus? We are an Opus shop." People are not locked into their current way of using AI and it is trivial to match how one works with AI to match employers requirements. It's a question that deserves an idealized non-answer
I'm curious to know why you think asking about AI usage is a good interview question.
Unless I'm looking after about 6 months and my savings isn't as healthy as it once was. Or one of my kids is sick. Or pretty much anything happens costing money.
Then I'll be miserable for a little while as I continue my job search.
Practicality, sometimes, is more important than ethics when other people rely on you.
A lot of jobs don't work based on those criteria. In a bad job market, IT jobs don't either. Especially if it's your 20th application with no response.
But I'm just curious: if someone were to give you a living wage to do nothing but watch TV all day for the rest of your life, how many years do you think might go by before you would start to ask yourself, Is this really what I want to spend my one, exquisite, irreplaceable life on?
In this economy it's really a luxury to nitpick about the job when there are bills to pay, mouths to feed, a roof over one's head is a must. The well of have a lot more options regarding this.
That assumes using/not using ai will make me hate the job. Which is not true at all for me. Would be perfectly happy either way. (Or rather to say my happyness would depend on other factors.) Obviously i wouldn’t want to be the only team member not using AI in a team using AI or vice versa.
I think you'd rather have good odds at some companies and 0% at others, rather than abysmal but non-zero odds at all companies.
And as an added bonus, you might get hired at a company where you're actually a good fit, rather than one you weasled your way into, and get to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment for a long time!
"Wouldn't give a straight answer on question X" isn't an instant no-hire, but it's not a positive signal.
If you can accept that then you've learnt something.
Where was this coming from?
It was an internal candidate so it would be awkward to tell him to his face he was floundering.
He was an internal candidate, we were interviewing him to see if we could trust him with more responsibility (more X specifically), since the new role shouldn't cover up X when it happens. The role involved doing X for himself AND for other people.
Similar to the form of "tell me about your biggest weakness" and you responding with "I have no weakness".
I've been on the recieving end of clueless folk trying to make me feel small when I've just been looking for a job, so I might be a bit sensitive about it! Sorry for any offense given. Thankfully I'm beyond that craziness now and can just do what I want for work.
Plus, and leaving that aside, I have my doubts that even if you did that, that that company would stay alive for very long. Reality has the habit of eventually ripping this kind of unproductively delusional people (like e.g. a boss that flips if you don't say the right word with regards to the current hype) to shreds eventually.
The same might not be true everywhere.
Update:
Every street corner has a yellow garbage bin for recycling. That is where your plastic bottles go. Seems like a better system than having elderly going through bins.
"My trash, a flash of joy.
For the poor people.
Enabling me, the blissful sheeple,
to consume on with abandon.
Everybody won."
It's… like… not that simple.
No, I'm not stupid or lying.
And yes, it's true. It's just that this housing is not in Berlin.
That said, an idea has come to mind: UK and Italy have had schemes where a home can be purchased for £1/€1 under the condition the new owner repairs them (the repairs would cost 20-150k). Given some of the really bad stock I've seen in some searches, this may be a good idea for Germany too.
And yes, you can find even cheaper apartments.
Look at musk's companies. They will basically never (on any near timescale...) produce GAAP profitability and yet their IPO is in the trillions. To the point that S&P refusing to suspend their GAAP profitability requirements means the index will basically never see this company in it (which I'm quite pleased about).
The power of already-accumulated capital is simply more powerful than things like "don't be completely pants-on-head stupid about a recent fad" "don't seig-heil in front of the world stage" "there's no point in having people come to an office just to spend all day on zoom" etc etc etc.
The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, and companies can remain irrational longer than you can go without contributing to your 401k.
"Eventually" yes, but while this phrase may have been about the stock market, it also applies to management: "the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent".
One concept I only learned a few years ago was the difference between "mistake theory" and "conflict theory". Rational decision-making is the former, political decision-making, including office politics, is the latter. It's important to know which of these kinds of battle you're fighting, or you'll make the wrong type of move.
Also, FWIW, I live in Germany and my unemployment insurance has run out because the job market is just that bad right now; I'm fortunate that I have enough passive income to support myself, but even then if my partner's unemployment insurance ever runs out I can't support both of us.
The attitude suggested by your response suggests you haven't lived that reality yet.
Either way, I'd rather be rejected by an employer for speaking my truth, than lie to be somewhere I'd rather not be.
"Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes"
For example I think the decision to stick to certain morals is very hard if someone has a disabled dependent, are disabled themselves, or require consistent access to healthcare. There are different lines for different people of course. Our ire shouldn't go towards individuals who make these decisions but the people in power who force others to be in a position where these decisions need to be made.
I don't want to preach martyrdom, but I am also offended by people choosing moral bankruptcy when faced with even the slightest hardships.
It is very sad to me that people do feel that pressure, and how the current job market is.
On topic with the article, I would love to be able to trust AI with more, but have found that I have some useful moments with it, but more because of Internet search not being how it used to be for quality.
So while I agree that privilege is certainly a factor, so is what I've just said.
A lot of people here live very cushy lives that cushion them from very pointy thoughts and questions. As someone who too has to live in this world, I'd rather they didn't.
This effectively does mean that I was not a moral actor at the time
Would you have stolen or murdered to avoid being homeless? Would that have been a morally blameless act?
I don’t think we’re talking about slaves are we?
I bootstrapped myself from poverty to Staff software engineer, past the age of 45.
Is that privileged? Or sheer will and force of effort?
I am not unique. I am an example.
Even though your position might be the result of effort on your part, you do have to acknowledge that you’re privileged to be in a position to expend that effort on what you want, instead of something else, like finding fresh water daily, or whatever. It’s not sheer will that you were born in a (even marginally) more favorable environment than others.
The term “privilege” here doesn’t just mean a trust fund nepo baby.
History has examples of extremely underprivileged people not compromising on the values even when facing death or torture.
A white lie during interview, a deadline you promised and knew you could not deliver? A product you ship that claims to do X, but it doesn't?
That's the logical conclusion you're forced to arrive at if you take these people seriously.
This is the mentality that says that if your company goes bust, you didn't work hard enough. Sometimes effort might be the problem..
No, not everyone can make it from nowhere to staff software engineer. That doesn't mean they're not trying hard enough.
Ie I increased my salary, doing same job, all 100% perm position, roughly 30x compared to my first fulltime software dev job after university. Who cares? It doesn't mean anything, just an afterthought. I am father of 2 small kids, and trying my best to be a good father and role model, often succeeding, sometimes failing. Its by far the hardest effort of my life, it takes relentless 20-25 years and I see otherwise brilliant folks failing at this hard left and right.
Also I wish folks in IT were a bit more humble and considered other engineering careers, with +- same effort taking to get a degree, and much worse career progress/compensation/freedom to choose one's path. Arrogance is much more rare there.
And you dont even get these nearly as often from people who work in lower paid positions. Or who are actually making moral tradeoffs that affects their income.
I have seen engineers take paycut or risk it because of this or that moral conviction. Not wanting to lie to customer, refusing job for gambling company, working one day less per week so that he volunteers for biblical something.
Just telling management no or just communicating about your work with ai or lack of it are not even one of those.
I certainly feigned enthusiasm when I was in high school to get an after school job in order to help my family buy food.
Lack of adequate calories and nutrition negatively compound. You lose the ability to focus, you increase your medical risk.
I experienced that in my childhood. It’s terrible. I did very poorly academically when I did not have access to food. It’s astonishing to me how fast my academic performance improved after consistently having access to food.
Saying you would rather put yourself at risk instead of hedge your answer on a minor interview question in order to increase your chances of getting a job offer seems like an issue with prioritization.
Job interviews are a performance where you demonstrate you understand what professional expectations are and can abide by them. It's not dishonesty to not respond "I drink too much" when they ask "what's your biggest weakness?" just like it's not dishonesty to respond "can't complain" when someone asks "how are you today," even if you have a lot to complain about.
Once I interviewed someone and they described their tax fraud scheme to me. We didn't go with that candidate. Not per se because they committed tax fraud; because they demonstrated terrible judgment.
Software development is not that high-stakes of a job anyway. There is always another interview. I got another one soon enough, where the employee AI policy fully aligned with mine, so telling the truth was an easy, pleasant experience.
Imagine you are a pilot or doctor. Any kind of interview reply that doesn't fully align with your values now carries a real risk for human lives.
If that's what your values are, okay, I'm not going to tell you how to live, but it would be premised on a misunderstanding of what "hi, how are you today?" means.
I am not worried about what my pilot said in a job interview, I'm worried about what the check pilot thinks of their performance. Worrying about what they said in a job interview is like worrying about what they scored on the SAT. Once that hurdle is cleared, it instantly becomes irrelevant, because it was never measuring what we're actually interested in. It's a filter for people who are completely unqualified, it doesn't really measure a level of performance or alignment.
I would expect absolute sincerity from pilot or a doctor during the interview, including history of mental health and professional mistakes. Authority over lives of people must come with full transparency. If you are caught lying or misrepresenting your experience and skills, not only you would lose your job, you should be blacklisted from occupation as well.
In every skill, everyone benefits from honesty, both employers and employees. But I am aware this is a minority view.
I don't think we're going to bridge this gap but I also don't think that's really necessary. People have different values and it is what it is.
You were replying to “The job market is much different when you're just starting out”. The past is not now, and you are not just starting out, so your comparison of their position and yours is invalid IMO.
> and will do it again.
Good for you for sticking to your guns, I'm about to do the same with a company that has all but said “dig into AI or get left behind”¹, but those starting out as freshly minted grads likely do not have the luxuries that we might have² and the jobs market is freakishly competitive for them right now³ in a way that I don't think it ever has been before.
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[1] time will tell if I leave of my own volition before getting kicked!
[2] experience (both actual experience and experience “talking the talk”) to help getting the next gig, a mortgage paid off so making ends meet is easier, etc.
[3] It had been heading that way for a while, the recent explosion of GenAI+agnetics has made it worse.
Sometimes it's okay to say "I don't know" and it's okay to say "I don't care" and it's okay to say "It doesn't matter much to me".
Every interview is corpospeak where you infer the intended meaning of words anyway.
Yeah I rage quit my job 27 years ago and have been a struggling honest consultant ever since. Clients who want actual solutions to their problems come to me. Does that sound arrogant? Well I also have no savings and don’t own a house.
I don’t regret most of my choices, but I am aware that if somebody paid me enough money I would walk away from my principles. It would have to be a LOT of money.
My truth is I don't care either way . I get the sense that's the same for parent poster. They just want a job and to say the right thing to get past the hiring filter. Even if I did have a truth its not something I would put above being remote, pay and how a company develops software. I'd rather not have a truth and not have a daily standup.