r/softwareengineer • u/DiscountApart4085 • 4d ago
AI Broke Software Engineering Interviews
So I am currently in the job market, looking for a position, and I found out how much AI coding ruined my chances in interviews.
In college I used to do competitive programming, I was pretty good at them. I was a lead backend on a Python project. I used breathe Software architecture, coding principles, SQL etc..
But now, after a year of executing what my current Manager imposed, which is to no longer code, no longer read the code, and no longer review it, I gained so much knowledge in AI coding, but lost so much in coding capabilities.
The result is that today, in the job market, I find myself struggling in the most basic technical interviews.
A few days ago I failed a very simple coding interview because I forgot that in Python you need to flush if you need to persist on disk directly.
And I have to do another interview with coding, SQL etc..
I totally understand that I should have found the time to keep coding a bit somehow, and that if I had more time to prepare it would have been alright, but still, it's tedious to try and remember everything in a few months (I only had a few days of preparations for these opportunities).
But still, I think that AI broke the interviews.
So I am curious, do you encounter anything alike?
And how do you manage to prepare for technical interviews these days in short periods?
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u/Creedless 4d ago
First time I am seeing someone say this. I wonder how common it is. Seems silly if they ask this line of questions but don't want you to write, read, or review code.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
No so basically the ones that don't want me to even review code is my current startup.
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u/TehDro32 4d ago
As an interviewer I've seen it and only starting this year. I've seen someone with 20 years of experience get stuck trying to write a decrementing for loop for 30 minutes. Even if though he seemed competent otherwise, I couldn't in my right mind hire someone who struggled to write a for loop. It wouldn't be fair to other developers. You need to keep your skills current. You need to be able to convince someone that you know what you're doing in an unlicensed profession such as software development.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
I am really not blaming the interviewers, I understand the reality of the market. I am senior, been a team lead, I hired before, and today if I were to higher, i would still wouldn't hire someone if they forgot the basics. That said, I think that it depends on the position, on their resume, on the work the achieved..
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u/TehDro32 4d ago
Exactly. Things are in a weird state right now. I encourage junior devs to either take "ai-free" days here and there to keep learning and all devs to work on problems at their level of difficulty by hand to keep improving. Let ai do the easy stuff you've done 100 times.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
That's a great ask! But sadly I don't see the industry moving that way, because that means the managers accepting delayed deliveries just for the sakes of leveling up their juniors, who today most managers see them as replaceable with a senior and infinite credits
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u/TehDro32 4d ago
Yeah, that really comes down to whether you work at a cool company with allowances like this.
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u/Ethanop1a 4d ago
That's an interesting example. I remember in college using for loops all the time. Then having to look up the syntax for a standard one after a few years out of college because it got used so little in my enterprise code. Lots of for in loops, but very few traditional for loops. This was even before AI.
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u/TehDro32 4d ago
Yeah and needing to look up syntax is perfectly fine. We allow candidates to do that but a lot still struggle with pretty basic problems now.
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u/UteForLife 4d ago
This is retarded, figure out how to see how they utilize ai and if that is how you want it done in your company. If you thinking knowing the syntax to write a loop is important in 2026 you don’t actually produce anything or you are a gatekeeper. Either way this is a stupid interview question in today’s world
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u/RicketyRekt69 4d ago
If you can’t write the code, how can you validate it from Claude? A decrementing for loop is basic shit that even an intern should know, that is not excusable.. AI or not. I wouldn’t have hired them either.
Some of the seniors where I work have atrophied so hard, any question asked to them goes straight to Claude. PR’s? Here’s copy/paste what Claude said. Asking advice? Here’s what claude said…. If someone is so reliant on AI that they can’t do basic shit as a dev, they’re useless as a senior.
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u/UteForLife 4d ago
You think you are better and smarter than Claude? I have news for you.
Understanding the architecture and why we want to the code to do things is way more valuable and important than knowing the syntax of a loop.
Ask if they know why, when and where a loop is needed but doing the actual coding is retarded.
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u/RicketyRekt69 4d ago
Yes I do. Frequently I am correcting it, rejecting its code generation, or even tossing out its proposed code architecture. Claude (especially on Opus) generates overengineered nonsense. Fable too. It STILL hallucinates constantly, and if you can’t write it yourself then how could you possibly validate it?
I see this in PRs constantly too btw.. they’re filled with useless garbage and if you ask why the response is always “oh, that was Claude. Idk why it did that.”
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u/UteForLife 4d ago
I would rather take a ai engineering that fully utilizes Claude and pushes things 10x what you can do and fix bugs that come rather than have someone that thinks their only worth is coding and because of that has to gatekeep and put others down for trying a different way
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u/RicketyRekt69 4d ago edited 4d ago
“Gate keep”…? Really? I use Claude every day…. I have no problem with people using AI to speed up development. What I have a problem with is people discouraging others from staying on top of coding skills. You can’t review what you don’t know, and you lose what you don’t practice.
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u/mcspuder 4d ago
"trying a different way"
What a weird thing to say, especially if what was produced was bad, low quality or just wrong. Just own that the output is shit, and since you produced it so are you; the world will be happier.
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u/UteForLife 4d ago
What are you talking about, try a different way was by using ai in my comment. Dude you need to learn reading comprehension
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u/kizufox 4d ago
so time complexities arent a thing? also yeah claude is good but being able to understand what's happening is critical if u are tasked to maintain that code. Ur name on the PR, ur responsibility. The devil is always in the details.
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u/UteForLife 4d ago
That is so last year
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u/kizufox 4d ago
pls tell me u havent worked on a big project before. if u have, yiikkkes
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u/UteForLife 4d ago
Please tell me you haven’t explored the wide world of ai engineering.
And yes I I have works for the largest genealogy company in the world
So what say you now?
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u/RicketyRekt69 4d ago
I suppose for someone who was always a mediocre developer Claude must be a godsend.
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u/disorder75 3d ago
E come fai a mantenere le competenze se al lavoro non vogliono che tocchi codice? Il coding è una palestra, non è conoscenza pura.
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u/TehDro32 3d ago
I'm not sure if your question is rhetorical. I recommend spending a bit of time coding by hand. If your org doesn't want you to do that, either do it anyway and don't tell them or find a better org (I realize this isn't always practical). Worst case, spend a bit of time outside of work staying current. That's the best advice I can give.
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u/disorder75 3d ago
Non è retorica è quello che sta accadendo alla maggior parte degli swe. Il coding è una palestra, la massa di swe è forzata a usare IA, fare design e poi auto coding via spec driven development. Allenarsi di nascosto o extra time a casa lo possono fare quelli a vita sociale zero, il resto delle persone hanno una vita. Sfido chiunque a non programmare in rust per 6 mesi e poi tentare un colloquio con sessioni di coding. Ma qui il tema è un altro, il coding è morto e la comunità non vuole ammetterlo. Fare colloqui basati sul coding non ha più senso, lo avrebbe solo se il posto di lavoro non richiede uso di IA, cosa impossibile. Non si può pretendere che un pilota di auto da corsa sappia andare ancora a cavallo ma solo nei colloqui, poi nel quotidiano continua a guidare l'auto.
O i colloqui cambiano strategia o a breve ci sarà parecchio, ma veramente parecchio malcontento generalizzato.
PS. Mi ha autotradotto,spero si capisca.
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u/TehDro32 3d ago
We're definitely in a strange transition period. I don't know how to assess a developer's skills using AI. I'd be interested to learn how others in the industry are doing this.
As for coding being dead, I honestly don't think we're there yet. I still see agents writing terrible code very often. It's over-engineered, it writes useless code (complicated methods that always return the same value), writes code that adds rules that the author didn't intend, splits logic in strange ways that's difficult to understand, etc. This will lead to bugs and maintainability problems in the near future. While this is fine for small apps, it's not good enough for large applications used by millions of users.
With this in mind, we still need people who understand the code they're generating before merging.
I'm not saying it's right or fair to expect developers to maintain their skills off hours, but it might be necessary for those at companies who don't support learning.
A bit of a tangent: this reminds me of something some construction workers say: if you just use your body at work, it'll break in the long run. Workers that stay healthy are those who work out regularly in their free time.
Overall, I think we agree on what the problems are.
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
It’s made up fake fantasy bullshit. This is what vibe coding swe doomers make up. They think it’s actually happening but it’s not…. It’s fake. It’s made up.
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u/GeorgeTheGeorge 4d ago
I left a long time position at a big corporate place to join a startup that is moving faster with AI adoption, both in their products and in their development. I interviewed with over a dozen places and this one was the only one that actually built AI into the interview process. Rather than a standard coding test with a silly "please don't use AI for this", they instead told me they realized that of course I'm going to use AI, but they want to see the session logs, they want to know about my workflow.
That factored heavily into my decision to join them. They were getting creative, they were trying to figure out how things should work now. A lot of companies and SWEs are just stuck in the way things used to be.
So yeah, it broke how we used to do engineering interviews, but we also don't build software the same ready anymore. We need to find new, I dare say, better, ways to do things.
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u/Embarrassed-Media-62 4d ago
Never forget to flush
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u/zirouk 4d ago
The irony is that the company would have given you a Claude code subscription on day 1 and you’d never have the problem you encountered in the interview.
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u/Hollow1838 4d ago
Truth is even without IA you probably already had low chances to encounter the problem by copying code from some tutorials or stack overflow.
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u/Flat-Entry-8735 4d ago
It is quite similar to a scenario where your job revolves entirely around CRUD operations; then, upon quitting and interviewing elsewhere, you are questioned, 'Have you only done CRUD for all those years?' When you hold less leverage, you must comply with the employers' requirements. Conversely, during the software boom era, as long as you were eager to learn and possessed logical thinking, they would readily accept you
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
I think that it's a bit different than CRUD operations examples; as then, you would still be able to go through the interviews, you still are coding you don't forget the basics, as there will always be endpoints that you need to write that are more complexe, require more optimizations, more business logic, async things etc..
Then yes of course, in the rest of the interviews, if you were limited to just that one task, recruiters that want more experience won't be eager to higher you.In our situation, it's the reverse. As you may have built the most sophisticated systems, built up entire architectures, been up to date with every latest model there is, and have has a very advanced career, yet just because there is a coding step, that almost none needs or uses in the day to day software engineering life, you can still be eliminated because you forgot how to do a DFS, or how to write SQL from the top of your mind.
And I am not dramatizing my special case, as my set of skills are still needed despite that in certain environment like early stage startups. But any ambition I have of getting into bigger companies or scale ups is baasically dead unless I chose to prepare for months before applying.
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u/EvTorqueLore 2d ago
I’ve been coding for 20 yrs before Ai. Worked for the biggest companies and amazing products, nasa Lockheed, Amazon, Rockwell, Sony , apple. I can build anything, use any language, consult. But I don’t think I would be able to pass an interview today. That’s just how it is at some point you will get burnt out from all the knowledge and changes. If you want a job you have to study for that particular job and the company. That’s how it’s always been. The irony though is some of the best programmers I’ve hired hardly remembered how to answer technical questions and some of the worst ones pass with flying colors.
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u/Ok_Bite_67 2d ago
As a person with pretty severe adhd I love the constantly changing scene. This era of extremely rapid change is one where I personally thrive. Just absorb everything a little bit at a time, if you learn something small everyday, it feels less overwhelming and it adds up quickly. I think too many people try to learn massive chunks of things all at once and information overload is especially easy with AI.
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u/mrkacperso 1d ago
Severe diagnosed ADHD? Or self diagnosed one as anyone now claim to be cool?
I can tell you those 2 circles hardly overlap.Actual ADHD is far different from someone running around with 1000s ideas in their head - this is just overstimulation
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u/Ok_Bite_67 1d ago
Official diagnosis, by both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. Spent 6 months being a lab rat to get diagnosed.
Also adhd often leads to overstimulation and people with adhd often thrive in chaotic situations.
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u/No_Departure_1878 4d ago
I have been working with python for 5 years and I have never needed to know that you need to use `os.fsync(f.fileno())` to save to disk instead of to the OS. If you are getting these questions, I think the problem is the interview itself.
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u/PSloVR 4d ago
We're currently in an awkward period where interviews are testing on all the wrong things. They were never perfect but now they are just totally irrelevant. I would try and get a sense of what sort of problems you will be asked in the interview and then maybe drill those topics using AI as a study helper.
And honestly if a company is interviewing in a way that you not knowing syntax or library peculiars becomes a deal breaker then they are doing it wrong.
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u/mcspuder 4d ago edited 4d ago
>A few days ago I failed a very simple coding interview because I forgot that in Python you need to flush if you need to persist on disk directly.
tbh thats a fairly easy thing to miss, I doubt they'd ping you for it?
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
It was a fairly easy task, where syntax was not important, but the function had to make sure that the changes are written to the file when the function returns. The interviewer asked me if I knew what happened when I Open a file and write to it in Python, what still needs to be done, I blanked away, until he said the term flush() and then i was like yeah sh*t how did I forget how that works.
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u/pan0ramic 4d ago
That’s a ridiculous thing to ask. That’s just one way of writing - some ways don’t require a flush, and even then: what would this question be testing? Not a skill, or barely syntax even. Just barely arbitrary operations.
Hope you get it anyway
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
Already rejected in that position, would have been a really cool place to work at but anyway, it's part of the game.
Thanks :)
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u/senseven 4d ago
One of our departments deals with tricky topics in media tech. The language is c++, with sprinkles of rust. The job requires deep understanding of the use cases. We do a more relaxed 30 minute interview with coding examples so we see if the person is willing to do the work required. Getting a someone who memorised the best C++ bubble sort but has no intention to really understand the code base leads to dissonance. I don't care that s/he has decent ratings on leet code, testing people under pressure is in many places a useless metric.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
I have been in an interview that I really enjoyed recently. I coded with the manager on a whiteboard, in Python pseudo code, an easy problem, incremental, to judge my understand, questioning, reasoning and communication.
Then he just showed me a code review, and we discussed it, to see exactly that, how am I able to read code, to understand changes and challenges.
It went well and I moved on.
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u/tcpukl 4d ago
AI broke you. Not the interview.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
Not really, AI stepped me in so many ways, forgetting vanilla coding gave me the space to explore and learn so many new skills, being product oriented, knowing how to ship fast, working on different infras and architectures, staying up to date etc..
My take remains that AI broke the interviews, because testing coding skills became irrelevant for most positions, because we don't need that anymore for most positions.
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u/anakindo720 4d ago
Bro, I get you, and I don't think it's your fault. Don't listen to what the others are saying. Memorising syntax makes no sense these days. They should be testing how well we understand the code and how we work with the tools, not whether we can remember it word for word. Even before AI it didn't make much sense, you could just Google it. I get that it's a way to filter people out, but things need to change. Apparently HackerRank is moving to AI in their assessments too, so I think it'll have to change at some point. A lot of grads don't write much code from scratch anymore anyway. I think they should check how you use the tools and whether you understand what you're generating.
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u/mutexsprinkles 4d ago
Honestly at this point all this gotcha detail shit is even more pointless than it used to be, and it's always been pretty pointless. Any LLM review agent will pick this up the moment you ask it to review the patch. Which you should do because it's really, really good at flagging suspiciousness.
Hiring an engineer to be a worser, slower, less detail-oriented LLM is pretty pointless.
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u/GlobalCurry 4d ago
I think companies are just slow to update the interview process to match new standards. Almost no one is going to be writing code on the job probably by the end of next year. Stuff like leetcode was dubious at best for software interviews to begin with even before AI (competitive style programming does not reflect real work with very few exceptions).
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u/DearVeggies 3d ago
I love that I'm out of hiring, because I don't know who's crazier:
The employer - who wants you to perform an academic masturbation puzzle, they want to hire rally drivers by testing their go-kart skills. Yes, we hire "like Google". No, we don't have the number of candidates and none of the perks at Google, but godamn they're gonna larp and you pay for it.
The CS autists - "if you don't eat shit, how can you tell the food was good? You have to keep eating shit to show your skills" - probably typed with cheetos fingers from Arch Linux.
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u/BElf1990 3d ago
As someone that is currently hiring. I had to fight tooth and nail to get rid of coding tests. Why am I giving this guy a test to write code when we give him AI tools and even if we didn't, he would use his own anyway?
I've also heard stories about companies that are leaning very hard on AI at all stages (writing code, tests, reviews) that still do coding tests. You're building a workflow where engineers rarely review code, let alone write it. Ignoring for a moment, if that's a good idea or not, what relevant skill set that gets applied are you verifying with these tests? Absolutely none.
Now, I just do whiteboard exercises and I test to see how you problem solve because I've had enough of vide coders and people who rely on AI output and don't bother engaging with the problem beyond that.
Obviously, a lot of what I say is anecdotal, but I think the progress rate of integrating AI is not reflected in the hiring process just yet.
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u/dixon_sider 4d ago
This post is not real. You don't just forget how to solve problems.
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u/Ok-Brain-8183 4d ago
These tests don’t test problem-solving. They test if you did that question in your prep and how much you grind leetcodes.
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u/sebastianxce 4d ago
Oh yes your right coders are supposed to memorize everything forever. You know once you gain muscle it never goes away? You only have to work out once and you keep your perfect body forever
You don't just loose muscle if you stop working out right ?
Yes you do. You don't keep your perfect body if you stop working out. Brian is a muscle too. Why would you think it's permanent???
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u/dixon_sider 4d ago
I'm not talking about muscle. The brain is all fat. Fat doesn't go away unless you take the blue pill.
Joking aside, you don't need to recall syntax and memorize algorithms in a coding interview. You need to demonstrate you are capable of solving a problem buy discussing your thought process. No one cares if you forget to flush. They care if you can't explain why you made the choices you made.
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u/_chickenWings69 4d ago
I think the most important criteria in almost all coding interviews is that if the code doesn’t run, you’ll be rejected. This is the whole point of “coding” interviews. While I also agree that mistakes are bound to happen in technical interviews, the criteria says otherwise
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u/dixon_sider 4d ago
I never had code that ran in a coding interview. I am 5/5 in my career for job offers after a coding interview. Why would they possibly care if it runs? That's the least of their concern. Coding interviews are done on a whiteboard or in a generic text editor like gedit. Syntax is irrelevant.
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u/Hotfro 4d ago
So I have seen people running code with unit tests to see if the code executes multiple times. I’ve seen this happen at many top companies + unicorn startups. Not saying you would want to work at those, but I am saying it exists. I also do not like this way of interviewing and don’t apply it in the hundreds of interviews I’ve given out.
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u/GeorgeTheGeorge 4d ago
I've done dozens of coding interviews on both sides and the code rarely runs the first time. Most of those went through you the next stage.
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u/pp-collision 4d ago
Knowing that you need to flush a write for the bytes to reach the disk is such basic basic OS understanding, and knowing that python buffers everything by default is basic basic python knowledge. OP is an impostor. If they asked him if flushing was enough to actually reach the physical disk, then he would have to demonstrate a bit more advanced OS understanding, but it should still be easy for a senior to nail.
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u/Glint_Bladesong 4d ago
AI didn't break anything. How did it break the interview?? If you find yourself struggling in the most basic technical interviews that isn't because AI broke the interview, it's because forgot how to code without it.
A lumberjack who stops using an axe and only uses chainsaws doesn't go about saying the chainsaw broke the interview because the interview wanted to see his axe skills.
You got rusty letting AI do your thinking for you. That's not the AI fault.
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u/Significant_Sun_5225 4d ago
This is a terrible analogy. A lumberjack would never use an axe. Even if it were their last resort I bet they’d first fix the chainsaw rather than use the axe.
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u/Longjumping_Feed3270 4d ago
True, and that's why I think it's actually a good analogy, just not in the way [u/Glint_Bladesong](u/Glint_Bladesong) intended.
I'm also not going back to manual coding. If Claude goes down, I'll switch to Codex. If both are down, I'll wait until either is up again. It's 2026 and I'm not gonna write my code by hand like a caveman.0
u/cordia543 4d ago
You're completely missing the point. It's not about how modern lumberjacks work. It's about losing a skill trough disuse and then interviewing for a place requiring that skill.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
I respect your comment. and I agree, of course I take part of the blame. Because even if I fought hard with my manager about the direction, even though I was worried about this exact situation, I knew what I needed to do but was not able to find the space in my personal life to keep coding on my own.
The work environment was rather toxic and tiring as is, with everything else I had going in my life it was impossible to just get home and open a laptop on my free time.
I was not planning on this move right now, but I am forced to leave. The managers are greedy, they want to cut costs, and believe they can do everything in a fully agentic way, but anyway, that is not the subject.
I still think that AI broke interviews because, in the job market, a lot of interviews I am seeing no longer go through coding at all. They would go through writing something entirely with Claude Code, they would go through just pseudo code, etc.. But I still believe that even that, is broken.
We are at a place where even the Big companies are requiring less and less code reading, where it's the direction the whole industry is going towards, but interviews are still somewhere in between.
And for the chainsaw example, it's a very different example in my opinion. The comparable example is, Imagine if, before AI era, every software engineer had still to go through an Assembly Coding interview, even if no one uses it anymore. (Which I am sure it was the case in the early days of higher level languages)
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u/UnderstandingNew2810 4d ago edited 4d ago
Actually that analogy is pretty spot on. As a lumber yard if someone brings an axe to the job they are going to get fired. But bring a chainsaw and know exactly how to use it. Perfect. In fact I would want to see the chainsaw skills before even inviting them to complete a job. I wouldn’t care to see if they can use an axe because we re all using chain saws.
I would also be able to tell skills from physique. Top heavy ax man, I wouldn’t care for . But belly fat center heavy chain saw dude would be spot on for the job.
On thing I would argue is if someone has ax skills I wouldn’t correlate it to chain saw skills. Prolly too slow and a danger in the job. But some one with chain saw skills is exactly what I’m looking for agnostic of ax skills. They could have ax skills but I could care less if they have them
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u/Hotfro 4d ago
It’s not even about that. The thing is during interviews you have a lot of time pressure. So if you are rusty with syntax it does impact how fast you can come to a solution, which does impact your performance on the interview. This rewards people who study more before which isn’t ideal.
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u/Fragrant_Gur_9635 3d ago
Do you not see how stupid it is that you’d want to see skills from a lumberjack that he will never use on the job? Ivy leaguers lack common sense, I swear to God
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u/SolidThrust 4d ago
I know what you are trying to say, but is it really his fault for being forced to use AI all day long?
Should it be part of his job to work / learn after work, what he should be doing at work?
Maybe it's still not his own fault or the fault of the AI, but the fault of the greedy manager - but who wants to blame him again for trying to cut costs / increase velocity, while being uninformed about the technical side of view?
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u/magick_bandit 4d ago
If AI was writing all his code, why didn’t he have time to play around in an IDE while waiting for it?
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u/SolidThrust 4d ago
Maybe babysitting as many agents parallel as possible due to impossible deadlines - would be my guess
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
Well yeah exactly, 4 to 8 agents running all the time, context switching all day long, and micro managing manager on top of that :)
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u/SolidThrust 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yea well it seems we can only hope the system to start crumble and the hype to end.
Afterwards a wasteland which requires massive skills and workforce awaits us to clean this mess up. Which would imply possibly massive payment - thats only my take based on my knowledge.
So either you will need to take some extra time to build up / keep your skills for a possible later payout.
Or leave this mess and search something else.
I don't see other options and try to stick to option 1.
Like I said just my personal take - but based on everything I currently know, I don't see the current state to work out in the promised way. Try to endure another year.
Or is your company now making 10 times the money, by producing 10 times the code? Like Torvalds said "Everyone who thinks that the amount of produced code is a valid metric is to dumb to work in this industry"
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
Since it’s a made up fantasy tale it doesn’t much matter. OP isn’t painting the picture of reality.
ZERO companies are using automated code. Developers use AI/LLms to speed up things that actual real developers need sped up.
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u/Discodowns 3d ago
Not even close to true. This is the real state of things now in loads of companies
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u/Ok_Bite_67 2d ago
Not true at my company, my team has about 70 people and probably 80% of them dont use AI (except for maybe simple question asking or debugging)
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u/mancunian101 4d ago
It’s not his fault for being forced to use AI all the time, but it’s his fault for not finding away to keep on top of the basics for times exactly like this.
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u/SolidThrust 4d ago
Can you tell him what he should be doing or would you be in the same spot if your manager would remove your keyboard and forces you to talk to Claude?
What would be your approach to stay fit in the basics after not coding for at least a full year?
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u/mancunian101 4d ago
I code in my spare time, and always do it manually.
I don’t know if it’s enough to stay interview ready, but it’s better than doing nothing.
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u/SolidThrust 4d ago
I do that too and tbh. I would also say that this kind of motivation makes a difference at work.
But to be honest, this would imply that everyone should use his / her own free time, which is essential for mental recovery, to continue working after work.
Looking at China for example - I am not sure if this brings happiness and joy to life and it's questionable that this lifestyle becomes mandatory now.
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u/mancunian101 4d ago
True, I’m also doing a degree in my spare time which forces me to code and do it without AI
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u/SolidThrust 4d ago
Fun fact same here :D did this already for my bachelor of science and now rinse and repeat master of science.
But ngl. after the Masters Degree I would like to start living again.
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u/mancunian101 4d ago
Yeah, it’s a part time one so it’s been a drag for the last few years.
Just started my AI & ML module, and start the final project in January.
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u/Uczonywpismie 4d ago
Not everybody has spare time to code. You shouldn't be forced to "learn after work".
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u/mancunian101 4d ago
No one is being forced to do anything.
What do you think will happen if you give up coding manually and let a token predictor do all your thinking?
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u/mcspuder 4d ago
Childlike mentality.
The world is competitive and hard, and if you don't push yourself then you'll get left behind.
Grow up.
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u/WilleyTheSlippery 4d ago
Coding is work like any other work. It's nothing special and being almost forced to use your limited spare time after work to keep up your working capabilities is absolutely bonkers mindset. I know the world sadly works like that, but it shouldn't. I don't see many other professions doing the same job in thei spare time for free.
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u/Hotfro 4d ago
Not everyone wants to do coding as a hobby when they are already spending so much time working for their company. They have other interests, family, and friends they want to spend time on. If you are great at your job there is 0 reason u have to spend extra time outside of work.
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u/mancunian101 4d ago
No one is being forced to do anything outside of work if they don’t want to.
But if your job isn’t giving you the opportunity to stay on top of the basics then what do they do? Crying on the internet won’t help.
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u/Hotfro 4d ago
So u think that coding interviews should just stay the same and not change to match the reality of the job we have now? Also what basics are you even talkjng about. Coding interviews usually test things that you dont even touch in day to day stuff, it’s always been like that. I’ll do w.e it takes personally to get a new job, but it makes no sense to me that coding interviews at many companies still don’t test what we do in our day to day job.
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u/mancunian101 4d ago
Did I say that?
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u/Hotfro 4d ago edited 4d ago
I mean if u concede to having to do additional stuff outside of work u are implying it. Ur also assuming that all of us complaining aren’t willing to put in the extra work. We bitching about it cus we think it’s bs and should be changed.
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u/OkAbbreviations7013 4d ago
Just use Claude code in the interview.
If they don’t like it, go work somewhere that does.
Not letting you use Claude code today, would be like not letting you use an ide 10 years ago.
The game changed, no one should be pretending it didn’t.
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u/Helix_Aurora 4d ago
Coding interviews were always dumb. There are so many things that make it an extremely weak signal.
Either people know how a computer works, or they don't, and this can be solved through very deliberate question asking.
I always just ask people to tell me about stuff that is on their resume that I also know about.
I just test how deeply they can speak to their own experience. I ask people the kinds of questions only they would know the answer to.
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u/Otherwise-Complex861 4d ago
These is what i was asked during my computer sci msc dissertation viva, i was so supprised the supervisors were not so much keen onthe codes but the implementation process and my know how
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u/hobble2323 4d ago
Coding in interviews is dumb. I have never found the best employees by asking them to code in an interview. Companies do stupid things a lot of times.
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u/foozebox 4d ago
Interviewing itself is behind the 8 ball and very few know how to balance coding, arch, use and awareness of AI, attention to detail, soft skills, etc. However you kind of need to know all of these things to be viable.
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u/False_Bear_8645 4d ago
Sometime i dont remember the exact syntax without google so I just writte comment of my thinking process.
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u/AstroPedastro 4d ago
I am a technical code interviewer and do code interviews using a small example of bad written code. One is a hands-on ticket were you need to mask an account number, the other one a logical code error and finally a discussion on the code, the structure, what can be done better. I encourage using AI, but also note how fast a candidate uses AI and for what problem. I am mostly interested in an analytical mindset, communication skills, and how well a person would fit in a team.
As a dev I also wonder what we should demand, how low the bar can/should be and if this is a profession that has any future. Maybe domain knowledge becomes more important, including how you do requirement analysis.
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u/ComfortableCan67 4d ago
This was a problem before AI as well. When I first started studying for technical interviews, I was incredibly overwhelmed. The reason is that is school and even work don't really prepare you for all the stupid little puzzles that they may ask you in interviews. The good news is they you can study and regain these skills, and maybe even try to target companies that ask more relevant questions to the job
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u/papigolf 3d ago
You should be interviewing for manager positions then. It’s a very normal career path
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u/PaulShellDev 3d ago
Grats, go apply for senior roles.
System design, not Leetcode. Still as relevant as ever.
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u/Own-Flight-9974 2d ago
I've always found the leetcode interview style a little silly, it's like IQ tests or personality tests, sure they can give you an indicator of success with positive correlation, but there are so many more facets to being a dev than you studied leetcode problems for 6 months. I'm much more interested in their problem solving ability, that they understand the fundamentals of web development, back architecture, API design, than whether they can remember how to recreate a leetcode solution under pressure, which realistically isn't even going to be relevant 90% of the time because you can just google stuff or of course, use AI.
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u/symbiatch 2d ago
How on earth do you get from “I don’t have skills” to blaming AI for breaking interviews? What is this mental gymnastics?
Or what did I miss here?
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u/Early_Shopping5742 2d ago
Ai not only changed how interviews are held but a lot of things in software engineering. People who are really smart and at the top are finding ways to automate things at such great scale. I feel whole field is growing through a major shift. I'm not sure how things will look in 5-10 years!?
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u/DiscountApart4085 2d ago
I can see that with certainty. The need for software engineers will shrink by at least 10 times. From one side we will no longer need teams of software engineers, entrepreneurs will be using agentic platforms to build everything that they want and need. For the more technical things, you will need way less to work on the more crucial and critical parts of software, of architecture and infrastructure.
And on the other side, the market itself, has a limit of how much software we need, how much money there is to be invested into buying software solutions as well.
It's very uncertain of how will that take shape, but it will look nothing like we had two years ago, nor what we have today.
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u/Ok_Bite_67 2d ago
Tbh I use AI pretty frequently, but I can still code myself if/when I need to. Make sure that you are heavily involved in the process, dont just vibe code. Treat working with AI like you are working with a human coworker and discuss what is changing and why. Then discuss how the changes are going to be made. Even if you arent directly coding being involved will help keep things fresh. I am a part of leading my companies AI direction and I also recommend 1 day a week where people do everything by hand, no AI involved. Its painful after having the "easy button" but it will help you retain your skills.
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u/zulrang 1d ago
Anyone that still does leetcode-type interviews is not a place I would ever want to work for.
These were outdated noise with no signal prior to AI.
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u/ZealousidealWeb9930 1d ago
i discovered sum of consecutive numbers problem on one of these interviews, found out later theres an optimized solution because powers of 2 cant be summed with consecutive numbers
i would have never found out that during the 1 hour interview, heck i wouldnt even in a life of programming lol, not sure why they think someone knowing that makes them better for the job
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u/Own-Major3234 4d ago
WTF expects you to demonstrate ability to code at this point. Makes no sense. I’ve been in the industry as Software Engineer and manager for 30 years and do everything entirely via agents since about a year ago. Would expect anyone working for me or with me to do otherwise… completely obsolete mentality to have Coding interviews. Like expecting you to pass a feather and ink writing test when your job is to type it on a computer…
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u/cordia543 4d ago
If you can't write, you cant read either. You're just deluding yourself. I've got half your experience and I wouldn't hire you with that attitude.
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u/Tiny_Ad_7720 4d ago
What do you look for now days? I would want someone who can read the code, understand it, and understand when the AI is going off the rails?
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u/dreaminphp 4d ago
That’s exactly what to look for.
A lot of companies have pivoted to just system design interviews without actual coding but even that is still leaving a lot on the table.
The best thing, imo, would be to ask someone to implement a feature with an agent, submit a PR with it, then explain it and explain how it could be improved. And the inverse of have them review a PR generated by an agent.
That way you can see how they interact with it but also how they think themselves.
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u/False_Bear_8645 4d ago
Everyone use agent but you should still be able to read code or else anybody can replace you.
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u/Agitated_Ad_5989 1d ago
> Would expect anyone working for me or with me to do otherwise
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u/AnotherNamelessFella 4d ago
Bad analogy.
Good one would be do you expect someone to know how to drive an aeroplane on their own when there is autopilot in this age
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u/nrmitchi 4d ago
There is an entire certification and licensing process so that every airline explicitly does not have to somehow come up with their own tests.
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u/0x077777 4d ago
Step up your game
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
They already convinced themselves that they can’t. There’s no point. They should just give up.
Dumb fuck losers who never worked in tech anyway. You can tell by the dumb shit they say.
They don’t realize how dumb it is.
These threads are always chock full of people claiming to have been in tech for 20+ years then tell you that code review is a waste of time.
Those two sentences aren’t congruent. But only people actually have experience see it.
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
Fake. Made up. Bullshit. Lmfao.
The only dipshits who believe this are other dipshits with zero actual dec or even just business work experience.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
Now I am curious, what parts shocked you so much that made you this certain my whole existence is fake?
Genuinely, what is making you this much in denial about the actual state of the industry to be this categorical?
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
I work in it and consult companies on AI use and implementation. I tell them how to make money with it not lose money.
Not reviewing code costs money. You’re fucking stupid if you think any company is letting a single character of code out the door without being able to slice someone’s head off when it doesn’t work.
There’s no accountability in AI code. Orgs don’t use it. Period.
Zero companies are using it like you say. It’s fake. It’s so fake but you don’t understand why it’s ridiculous… because you have no actual experience.
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u/sebastianxce 4d ago
You're claiming zero companies use AI?? Wtf??? Do your research dude. Google, Microsoft, Meta all are using AI generated code. Many many other companies I've applied to literally have it in their job description they want people with AI experience they don't code by hand.
This entire fucking comment section is filled with people who have absolutely no idea what the f they are talking about. Fucking insane
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 3d ago edited 3d ago
So you don’t know how to read. Because I never said anything about “not using AI”.
And you’re sadly sadly mistaken if you think any company is looking for someone who can “use AI” but has no professional development experience. None. Zero. You’re an idiot
And yes, they do code by hand. Using AI as a tool to assist with producing code is in practice. The model NEVER dictates the final output. Humans review it, always, humans test it, always. Because those companies actually know how AI works. You don’t seem to.
Learn.
To.
Read.1
u/ANTIVNTIANTI 3d ago
Thank god, I still have a bit of imposter syndrome that just will not fucking die, lol, but this is good to know, the implications..
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u/TableNo8939 4d ago
Non scrivo più codice da febbraio almeno
Penso che sarei in difficoltà a scrivere solo 'hello world' sul terminale
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u/ProfesorKindness 4d ago
I'm quite surprised you still get coding questions on interviews. But if you fail them, that's your fault. You should be atleast keeping, if not developing, the coding practices.
Or wait 1-2 years and nobody will interview about coding guidelines anymore.
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u/DeprivedLad 4d ago
Doubt you will ever land any meaningful software jobs with that. If you don't know the basics, you can't use AI to create a great product. It only works well if you know what you want to see. The flush question in particular was a strange one though.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
I disagree on this, today, and even more in the future, we heading to place where you don't need to know how what dp or graph traversal to be able to be build a great product.
Knowing higher level architecture, product design, optimizations, etc.. yes, but lower level programming, it's less and less needed. (Unless you are at a financial institution, or something with critical code that simply can't be trust to ai no matter what)
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
You disagree because you’re not actually a developer and have never been paid to be one.
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u/Charming-Cucumber523 3d ago
Am I missing something? I thought op was a paid developer.
“””
I was a lead backend on a Python project. I used breathe Software architecture, coding principles, SQL etc..But now, after a year of executing what my current Manager imposed, which is to no longer code, no longer read the code, and no longer review it, I gained so much knowledge in AI coding, but lost so much in coding capabilities.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
I agree on the 1-2 years, we are heading towards that 100%, as it's already the case for so many companies and startups
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
No it isn’t
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u/sebastianxce 4d ago
Dude yes it is, you even applying or in the field ? Your insane. Tons of companies I've seen are looking for coders who understand and use AI. It's not the same at all. Everyone is giving this guy negative feedback but you are all probably not in our positions and are quick to judge with little to no knowledge or understanding of the situation that is happening in the world and for engineers everywhere. Stop acting like it's not happening because it is.
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago edited 3d ago
Using AI is not the same as enforcing a no code review policy. Nice try… but…. False equivalency. If you were “in the field”, you would have been able to spot that not so subtle nuance, champ.
And yes. I’m “in the field”, lmfao. I get paid to tell companies HOW to use AI to make money with it and avoid doing something negligent with it.
But… you’re right. You probably have a lot more exposure to it than I do. Lmfao.
*** yeah, nice ninja edit on your comment too. You reworded it to not sound like such an idiot. You still sound like an idiot.
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4d ago
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
Companies pay me to tell them how to use AI. No one is using it like OP is creaming in his jeans fantasizing about.
You’re obviously clueless too. Go back to your mcJob.
lol. “What these things do” lmfao. They impress ignorant plebs.
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u/mcspuder 4d ago
"mcJob" is the most beautiful burn I've heard in a long time and I intend to use it thoroughly now.
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u/bearK_on 4d ago
Well… I’m curious, because this sounds like either a very specific use case (e.g. writing to a file in a loop and explicitly flushing the buffer inside a context manager) or a misunderstanding of how context managers work in Python. The latter would be a pretty fundamental concept, wouldn’t it?
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u/paperclip_han 4d ago
Not sure if anyone’s used paypeek.ai yet but it shows salary estimates for any LinkedIn profiles as you browse. Kind of eye-opening. 🫣
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u/WonderButtBrace9000 4d ago
> But now, after a year of executing what my current Manager imposed, which is to no longer code, no longer read the code, and no longer review it
That’s what fucked you up, not AI.
You don’t review? Dumbest shit I hear ever day. AI accelerates generation, putting review in the spotlight. Any department that just has to AI code and push is being moronic and anyone working there should spend every free second staying sharp and interviewing.
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u/Present_Passion_1126 4d ago
A lot of companies are pivoting their technical interviews to see how you work with an agent.
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 4d ago
No they aren’t lol
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u/Present_Passion_1126 3d ago
https://www.hackerrank.com/writing/why-were-sorry
The biggest software engineering interview platform literally announced they’re switching to Ai style interviews
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u/BigBreadCaesar 4d ago
So, just in one year you lost everything you learned? In one year, what steps were taken to make sure your skills didn't decline outside of work if you knew your work environment was crap, which is VERY common?
But to answer your question, no, never have, can't ever imagine it'd be me, tbh.
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u/Hollow1838 4d ago
I think you just didn't prepare enough, having done competitive programming in the past could definitely help but going on a website to find the most asked interview questions just before the interview makes more sense.
Sure, if people use cheat sheets, the technical interview becomes questionable but it was already questionable to begin with as why should you know something you would have either learned during the task, never used or never touched thanks to tools like an AI coding assistant.
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u/MixtureSpecialist627 4d ago
I think this is bullshit, if they want us to code with AI then remove the idiotic dsa part from interviews. Ask about prevous experience and system design, this isn't the 90s.
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u/DiscountApart4085 4d ago
Oh yes, I totally agree. I was not prepared enough but I was limited by the time. For this company, it’s a stealth start-up so it was impossible to know what they ask about.
That’s it even with preparation I would be able to get back to lead code style questions but the reflexes that come from just working and writing code myself day-to-day those things you cannot prepare them without actually doing those
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u/Ibrahim_alagbare 4d ago
For me, I think AI changed how we do our jobs and how to solve problems, but It didn't change the interviewing process and that is so bad, as currently the interviewing process doesn't match the actual work done on the job and that's put a heavy load on job seekers.
I would love to see other companies update their recruiting process to match their current work requirements not the old work metrics.