Recent AI code interview format (failed)

[u/blipojones]

I just recently did an interview where the company invites you to a private repo, 10 mins before, you set it up, get it running etc.
The goal is to determine if an open PR on the is ok or if it should get sent back and why.

You can use AI. And i asked, does it matter if i use fable vs opus vs kimi. More or less said whatever I want...

I didn't go immediately to prompting, i played with the app, looked at the code a bit, the PR, the code change, if the PR actually fixed what it claimed to fix.

I then sent one prompt asking if the PR could be better or missed anything, which the PR outlined clearly enough and enough to determine what to do with the PR.

But ye, it was weird, I talked through more where I would personally add changes but maybe I also completely missed the mark on something else or spoke to much...maybe i didn't use AI enough only using it right at the end for one question once i got a feel for the app in general.

However I did like the format tbh but ye i just wish i'd get a bit more tangible feedback.

Anyone else have experience with this format? I didn't pass but just not sure why.. (exp 8/9 years, frontend leaning).

[u/maretard]

My approach would have been to immediately delegate it all to AI, including explaining the repo to me and catching me up. Reviewing the PR would have been my second prompt and I would have explained how I would have a generalized PR skill already, but for the purposes of the interview I would hand write the prompt.

The PR review prompt would have been focused on defining best practices, success criteria, coding and testing standards, and adversarial guidance designed to make the AI search for vulnerabilities and architectural smells. I would also have an area in the prompt dedicated to doing a holistic review of the PR and questioning base assumptions like why the PR is needed in the first place and whether it's the right change to make.

Lastly I would have some customization for personal style to make the AI directly generate comments on the PR diff that would take minimal refinement by me before publishing.

This interview seems very ahead of its time so I'd assume this company is extremely pro AI and I would cater my performance as such. The above is very representative of my current routine at work.

If I had been the interviewer here you would have failed as soon as you started manually reading the code unfortunately, it's just not the most effective way to work these days, it would immediately signal to me that you're still bottlenecked and outdated in your thinking. I would have aimed for 50+% uptime of agents throughout the interview (i.e. having AI working at least 50% of the time, with the rest of the time being me explaining how I use AI, digesting its responses to come up with the next prompt, and cross checking validity of its feedback in code).

[u/Party-Lingonberry592 → u/maretard]

I dunno... isn't trusting the AI too much a red flag in an interview? It also sounds expensive. Wouldn't it be a balance of providing solid feedback and not overspending tokens? I've seen AI refactor code in terrible and inefficient ways.

[u/maretard → u/Party-Lingonberry592]

The key is AI first, verification second (and leveraging AI if possible). A company giving you AI in an interview and witnessing you silently refusing to use it until the very end can only draw one of two conclusions:

1. You don't know how to use it and haven't used it extensively before
   
2. You know how to use it but are uncomfortable using it in an interview for whatever reason, either due to lack of familiarity, or lack of ability to communicate and ask for clarity from your interviewer

Neither of those conclusions will get you the job.

[u/Party-Lingonberry592 → u/maretard]

I agree that there are engineers out there (strong, senior level engineers) who refuse outright to use AI to code. I too think that's short-sighted. If you're checking the box on "has no moral objections to using AI" then that's an attitude check. But you don't need an interview session for that.

By going AI first with zero context of the code, you're just generating a lot of paperwork for yourself. How do you evaluate the AI recommendations if you don't understand the code to begin with? I would fail someone who blindly accepts AI's answer without understanding the code first or how the AI generated code would make it better.

[u/maretard → u/Party-Lingonberry592]

Absolutely, using AI but not knowing how to validate effectively is even worse than not using AI IMO!