Ask HN: Typical tech job interview in late 2025?

tech interviewsAI in software developmentLLMs

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luponius

2 months ago

1 reply

Had interviews last year insisting the use of llms and others tolerating it. Our head wants to introduce codex in ohr workflows now so pretending you're not using them or joining a team that swears off them better have a very good reason I suppose?

dakiol

2 months ago

Yeah exactly. I'm using codex, btw. So I feel weird to pretend I'm not using LLMs and I write all code just by using my brain. But on the other side, there's no much point on explaining one-self on how LLMs are used to do a task... like, it would look very ridiculous to share my screen and ask 90% of the solution to the LLM while the interviewer just looks at LLM output... that's like analyzing how one uses Google to search for stuff (and I swear that 100% of the engineers out there use Google to search for stuff related to coding, but I haven't heard of any tech interview that includes a session to asses your Google skills, right?)

So, if we are not pretending, and companies want people who can use LLMs, well, I think it's rather clear: No more live coding interviews, no more live system design interviews. You can just send take-home assignments because people WILL use LLMs to solve them. You just analyze the best solution offline and take the best.

If any the only "live" interview needed is: are-you-a-real-person-and-not-an-asshole?

rekabis

about 2 months ago

Every corporation I have interfaced with over the last few months has demonstrated massively epic levels of FOMO over AI.

And yet, when I ask them how they are tracking AI’s effectiveness, especially with regard to degrading skill sets, lowered creativity/effectiveness in solutions to complex/edge problems, slowed dev velocity, and increasing levels of needless code complexity (with associated ballooning of LoC) and gratuitous hallucinations breeding bugs like meal worm farms, all I get are crickets. Or worse, deer-in-the-headlight looks. They’re all wildly unaware of the downsides that are slowly being confirmed by science.

Frankly, I feel that I am lucky that I’ve chosen a sabbatical to deal with my parent’s EoL issues. The chance that this will extend into the popping of the AI bubble appears to be non-trivial. By the time I start looking in earnest again, AI might not be a critical employment benchmark anymore.

Or one of my projects will become profitable and I won’t have to deal with all that bullshite.

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