[the_af]

They claim a way to interview is pair programming to solve a bug in a codebase unknown to the interviewee. They also claim to allow AI.

I get what they are aiming for, but I foresee trouble:

For one, this kind of interview is way harder to set up than simply asking the candidate to solve an algorithmic question (which is flawed but way simpler).

Also, it can be hard to fine tune so that it's not unfair to the candidate. Some bugs can only be solved after days of looking at the problem, so you have to iterate over this interview setup to find the right difficulty, unfairly ditching candidates in the process. And it becomes "a project"; a lot of companies cannot afford to spend much time on this.

Finally, if you're pairing how do you refrain from helping too much? You're not the one being interviewed, the candidate is! If you allow AI, how do you tweak the problem so that it's both self-contained and reasonably easy, while keeping it impervious to being one-shot by AI?

Of course, traditional interview techniques share some of these problems, but they are way easier to set up. That's what missing here, there's a cost/benefit analysis for interviewers too.

[iparaskev]

> this kind of interview is way harder to set up

This is a good point.

I will add a note in the post to highlight this.