I think the days of on-site interviews with whiteboard tests may be drawing to a close faster than you suspect

Huh, I’m 100% going to interview this way the next time I have to hire an engineer. I can’t think of a better way to get a sense of how a candidate reasons about things, and of their values - do they have a sense of responsibility, conscientiousness, team fit.

All other things that could be LLM-mediated have no more signal.

	▲	andsoitis 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> I can’t think of a better way to get a sense of how a candidate reasons about things Some ideas to help you: ask the candidate something underspecified and watch what they do first. Do they ask clarifying questions, make their assumptions explicit? After they answer ask what would change their mind, where does that break down? Pick a topic they know and ask them to explain it to a smart non-engineer. Make them estimate something they can’t look up (forces them to decompose, bound, and calibrate). Once they’ve proposed a solution to a question, change the constraints to see if they can adapt or whether they’re stuck. What you want to evaluate is dynamic reasoning, adaptability.

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z0r 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is this implying that you don't believe people will hire programmers anymore?

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m00dy 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I also think we will never go back to good old days.

	▲	dylan604 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It'll put the "everything old becomes new again" idea to the test.

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jhayward 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, there is a long tradition of "testing" developer candidates by asking them to exhibit skills in tasks that they never, ever, do in their work. Like whiteboard coding.

It doesn't have a great success record.

I personally would rather they exhibited expert skills in using tools, and expressing their design insight as a part of that skillset.