[acc_297]

On the post-grad job hunt right now - I note that most employers will ask in a technical interview or whiteboard interview "how are you using LLMs?"

It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products. I've been responding with a sort of long winded answer about how 'there is clearly a learning curve for how this technology fits into any process and how I always always always double double double check yadayadayada'

I'm probably using the chat/ask functionality on a daily basis for quick debugging / new technology learning questions but I have yet to really use the fully agent or computer-use products because I've had more bad results than good the few times I've tried them (re-factoring a big repo of decades old fortran+C code for modern compiler/OS some things started to work but ultimately I abandoned that effort).

[hypfer]

> It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products.

Have you considered just answering truthfully?

Would you even want to work somewhere where you need to play a role and where they flip out when you say the wrong word you should've correctly guessed through mind reading? That sounds not like a job but a toxic relationship.

[emodendroket]

I assume it's because he is seeking to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment.

[massysett]

“I assume it's because he is seeking to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment.”

Fair enough, so if there were one “right” answer, that would be the one to give whether true or not.

But here there is no obvious right answer. If the employer is looking for a particular answer, the poster doesn’t know what it is. In that case, the best thing to say is simply the truth, particularly when the truth that the poster gives here is completely reasonable.

[inigyou]

The best thing to say when you don't know the answer probabilistically is to give the most likely correct answer.

[tmcdos]

Or just say that you do not know the answer - but have the capacity to find it.

[incognition]

Common sense not common

[what]

You can’t have common sense when you have no shared values.

[lwansbrough]

> But here there is no obvious right answer.

According to you. That's not the opinion of every prospective employer. Hedging is the right strategy.

[retired]

I typically seek employment for the free electricity, coffee, internet, water, microwave usage and coverage from rain. Some employers even offer showers!

The best benefit about working in a large office is that nobody checks the basement.

[selcuka]

> I typically seek employment

Your username does not check out.

[Cider9986]

Check their bio.

[pipes]

A truthful, nuanced, well reasoned answer will be well received by an employer with a culture you want to work in.

[coldtea]

>A truthful, nuanced, well reasoned answer will be well received by an employer with a culture you want to work in.

If you're into long shot betting AND your savings aren't running out while waiting to land a new job, that might be a good strategy

[TACD]

I don’t see why “truthful, nuanced, well reasoned” is the long-shot vs cagey and evasive.

[overfeed]

Have you seen the job market lately?

You call the response "cagey and evasive", but that is for an objectively a bad interview question, one wrung below "How many years experience do you have prompting Anthropic Opus? We are an Opus shop." People are not locked into their current way of using AI and it is trivial to match how one works with AI to match employers requirements. It's a question that deserves an idealized non-answer

[coldtea]

Obviously because the latter lands more jobs.

[singingfish]

as a rule the interviewee should be assessing for goodness of fit, as well as the interviewer. If my simplified nuanced answer to why I limit my usage of LLMs was poorly received, I wouldn't want to take a job somewhere likely to make me miserable.

[Loughla]

Correct. Me either.

Unless I'm looking after about 6 months and my savings isn't as healthy as it once was. Or one of my kids is sick. Or pretty much anything happens costing money.

Then I'll be miserable for a little while as I continue my job search.

Practicality, sometimes, is more important than ethics when other people rely on you.

[coldtea]

"Unless I was really excited for flipping burgers, the menu options, the new McKidney, non-working ice-cream machines, and the legacy of Ronald McDonald, I wouldn't want to take a job somewhere likely to make me miserable".

A lot of jobs don't work based on those criteria. In a bad job market, IT jobs don't either. Especially if it's your 20th application with no response.

[butlike]

If you're outright lying to yourself to land a job to make rent, fine, but for god's sake internalize it as a temporary stepping stone and immediately start looking for a better fit.

[arcanemachiner]

> an employer with a culture you want to work in

A modern luxury, unavailable to many.

[pibaker]

This thread is about new grads. Have you talked to anyone looking for junior positions lately? They don't get to choose employers anymore. Heck, many of them will not even get a chance to enter the field if the current junior hiring situation continues.

[AlwaysRock]

Plenty of good companies have awful recruiting and interviewing practices. The reverse is true as well.

[bossyTeacher]

Average ZIRP era HN advice. Not applicable anymore.

[throw1234567891]

But it doesn't make sense to do a job you'd hate. Just be honest, land the job where you're happy.

[grugagag]

> But it doesn't make sense to do a job you'd hate. Just be honest, land the job where you're happy.

In this economy it's really a luxury to nitpick about the job when there are bills to pay, mouths to feed, a roof over one's head is a must. The well of have a lot more options regarding this.

[account42]

As a software developer with a non-bloated lifestyle? Bullshit.

[krisoft]

> it doesn't make sense to do a job you'd hate

That assumes using/not using ai will make me hate the job. Which is not true at all for me. Would be perfectly happy either way. (Or rather to say my happyness would depend on other factors.) Obviously i wouldn’t want to be the only team member not using AI in a team using AI or vice versa.

[throw1234567891]

Answer like that, be honest.

[monocasa]

Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes into play.

[simmerup]

But no one will pay me to watch tv all day

[throw1234567891]

Oh but they will: https://gracenote.com/. These people sit and watch TV, note down every event taking place then sell the data. Search for Infostrada and how it came under Gracenote. That's where the info like "this is his first X since the game Y Z years ago" comes from.

[kmote00]

If you're good enough at it, I suppose someone would. (There are television critics after all.)

But I'm just curious: if someone were to give you a living wage to do nothing but watch TV all day for the rest of your life, how many years do you think might go by before you would start to ask yourself, Is this really what I want to spend my one, exquisite, irreplaceable life on?

[acc_297]

you assume correct

[furyofantares]

I think honesty is still probably correct - if you're struggling to figure out how to hedge.

I think you'd rather have good odds at some companies and 0% at others, rather than abysmal but non-zero odds at all companies.

And as an added bonus, you might get hired at a company where you're actually a good fit, rather than one you weasled your way into, and get to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment for a long time!

[simonw]

It's pretty easy as an interviewer to spot when a candidate is hedging on a question, and it's the kind of thing that might get discussed in the post-interview debrief.

"Wouldn't give a straight answer on question X" isn't an instant no-hire, but it's not a positive signal.

[ipaddr]

This doesn't make sense in practice. He hedged so not sure need to look at other factors vs he picked a side and he selected the opposite of what we wanted no-hire or he answered what we wanted small positive signal need to look at other factors.

[airstrike]

ironically, I'd understand people not giving a straight answer on this particular topic

[knollimar]

I just interviewed a guy and all three interviewers asked him functionally the same question. He hedged 3 times and we just wanted an honest answer...

[onraglanroad]

The guy wanted a job, didn't know what answer you wanted for the job, and you guys were being assholes.

If you can accept that then you've learnt something.

[Geezus_42]

And he probably just wants to pay his bills so he can continue to survive.

[emodendroket]

I mean, let's be real here. There is such a thing as too honest in an interview.

[LtWorf]

"The candidate is mature and doesn't engage in bikeshedding"

[hypfer]

I mean maybe that is because I live in a still mostly not failed state (Germany), but I can't imagine that these things would be _so bad_ that living in fear of saying the wrong thing would be something worth considering.

Plus, and leaving that aside, I have my doubts that even if you did that, that that company would stay alive for very long. Reality has the habit of eventually ripping this kind of unproductively delusional people (like e.g. a boss that flips if you don't say the right word with regards to the current hype) to shreds eventually.

[lukevp]

The US has no social safety net. Healthcare comes from your employer. Everything is centered around having a job. Opinions on AI diverge significantly and someone’s response to this question would be pivotal to me in a hiring role. The market is not great for job seekers. The hiring manager can wait for someone who aligns with their company’s perspective on this.

[atomicnumber3]

No, if anything, I would say a very unfortunate trait of existence right now is that reality does NOT tend to punish corporations for being completely idiotic, at least not very fast at all.

Look at musk's companies. They will basically never (on any near timescale...) produce GAAP profitability and yet their IPO is in the trillions. To the point that S&P refusing to suspend their GAAP profitability requirements means the index will basically never see this company in it (which I'm quite pleased about).

The power of already-accumulated capital is simply more powerful than things like "don't be completely pants-on-head stupid about a recent fad" "don't seig-heil in front of the world stage" "there's no point in having people come to an office just to spend all day on zoom" etc etc etc.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, and companies can remain irrational longer than you can go without contributing to your 401k.

[ben_w]

> Reality has the habit of eventually ripping this kind of unproductively delusional people (like e.g. a boss that flips if you don't say the right word with regards to the current hype) to shreds eventually

"Eventually" yes, but while this phrase may have been about the stock market, it also applies to management: "the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent".

One concept I only learned a few years ago was the difference between "mistake theory" and "conflict theory". Rational decision-making is the former, political decision-making, including office politics, is the latter. It's important to know which of these kinds of battle you're fighting, or you'll make the wrong type of move.

Also, FWIW, I live in Germany and my unemployment insurance has run out because the job market is just that bad right now; I'm fortunate that I have enough passive income to support myself, but even then if my partner's unemployment insurance ever runs out I can't support both of us.

[emodendroket]

Yes, I'm sure in Germany nobody ever muffs an interview by offending the interviewer.

[retired]

How is Germany relevant in this?

[hypfer]

Acknowledging that my perception might be skewed because there are still a ton of social safety nets in place.

The same might not be true everywhere.

[retired]

Last time I was in Germany I saw elderly people going through garbage bins in the park I sat at. I think you overestimate the safety net in Germany. In my European country the elderly sit at cafes drinking coffee, not going through bins.

Update:

Every street corner has a yellow garbage bin for recycling. That is where your plastic bottles go. Seems like a better system than having elderly going through bins.

[thatjoeoverthr]

Last time I was in Germany I saw what appeared to be homeless children

[bravetraveler]

I'd assume they're seeking longevity to that employment. You, or others, might be able to maintain a facade; I can't recommend it for long.

[reg_dunlop]

It's possible to work for an employer, and not have to compromise your values and or professional integrity.

The attitude suggested by your response suggests you haven't lived that reality yet.

Either way, I'd rather be rejected by an employer for speaking my truth, than lie to be somewhere I'd rather not be.

[pesus]

This a very condescending and privileged comment. The job market is much different when you're just starting out, and it's especially brutal these days for new grads.

[satisfice]

Maybe it’s condescending, but it’s valid. I have made sacrifices throughout my career to maintain maximum integrity, and the least I can do is be proud of it, since I don’t have riches or possessions to be proud of.

Yeah I rage quit my job 27 years ago and have been a struggling honest consultant ever since. Clients who want actual solutions to their problems come to me. Does that sound arrogant? Well I also have no savings and don’t own a house.

I don’t regret most of my choices, but I am aware that if somebody paid me enough money I would walk away from my principles. It would have to be a LOT of money.

[pipes]

The "you don't know what it's like for me" argument swings both ways.

[d_silin]

It is not. I made that choice in the past and will do it again.

"Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes"

[dspillett]

>* I made that choice in the past*

You were replying to “The job market is much different when you're just starting out”. The past is not now, and you are not just starting out, so your comparison of their position and yours is invalid IMO.

> and will do it again.

Good for you for sticking to your guns, I'm about to do the same with a company that has all but said “dig into AI or get left behind”¹, but those starting out as freshly minted grads likely do not have the luxuries that we might have² and the jobs market is freakishly competitive for them right now³ in a way that I don't think it ever has been before.

--------

[1] time will tell if I leave of my own volition before getting kicked!

[2] experience (both actual experience and experience “talking the talk”) to help getting the next gig, a mortgage paid off so making ends meet is easier, etc.

[3] It had been heading that way for a while, the recent explosion of GenAI+agnetics has made it worse.

[plandis]

You’ve actively made the choice to go hungry instead of hedging your answers during an interview?

I certainly feigned enthusiasm when I was in high school to get an after school job in order to help my family buy food.

[knollimar]

What if the way you use AI isn't particularly important to you? Are you willing to sacrifice employment for a principle you wouldn't draw as a line in the sand?

Sometimes it's okay to say "I don't know" and it's okay to say "I don't care" and it's okay to say "It doesn't matter much to me".

Every interview is corpospeak where you infer the intended meaning of words anyway.

[monkpit]

You should really examine your situation and beliefs if you think this isn’t a privileged position to be in.

[KittenInABox]

I think it depends. The people that I know that have made significant sacrifices to live along their morals are usually people who 1) are intensely bitter when others will not sacrifice as much as them; 2) are completely understanding of people who will not sacrifice as much as them or acknowledge that they simply have less to sacrifice than others. For example someone who is willing to live the "dirtbag" lifestyle out of their car to dedicate to their outdoorsman activity who is either bitter others have the relative financial security or feel immensely grateful they have consistently good enough health that allows them to be outdoors with so little resources.

For example I think the decision to stick to certain morals is very hard if someone has a disabled dependent, are disabled themselves, or require consistent access to healthcare. There are different lines for different people of course. Our ire shouldn't go towards individuals who make these decisions but the people in power who force others to be in a position where these decisions need to be made.

[tisdadd]

I believe that I must be truthful because of my faith, though I understand people feeling pressure otherwise. I have had to quit places that I found lying to part of the employees before.

It is very sad to me that people do feel that pressure, and how the current job market is.

On topic with the article, I would love to be able to trust AI with more, but have found that I have some useful moments with it, but more because of Internet search not being how it used to be for quality.

[ipaddr]

This isn't a value item for most people. Employer doesn't want ai used great handcoding or employer wants ai used great prompt coding.

My truth is I don't care either way . I get the sense that's the same for parent poster. They just want a job and to say the right thing to get past the hiring filter. Even if I did have a truth its not something I would put above being remote, pay and how a company develops software. I'd rather not have a truth and not have a daily standup.

[ninjalanternshk]

It’s also possible to not really hold that strong an opinion on things. Not everything is a pitched battle where doing what your employer wants means you’ve sacrificed your integrity.

[lazide]

Cite needed - FAANG certainly leaned hard into ‘lie to survive’.

[doctorpangloss]

From far away, it's hard to tell the difference between integrity and anti sociality. Even though I believe "software engineering integrity" exists, you can see how it's hard to tell that apart from "software engineers who stir dramas or are annoying to work with."

[emodendroket]

Everyone can decide where the line is for them, but I do feel like given the subject that's a bit of a hyperbolic repsonse.

[ccppurcell]

The job market being as it is, a lot of people simply don't have that luxury.

[tfehring]

It's still just a bad answer across the board. Having opinions and being able to articulate and defend them clearly is itself an extremely important hiring signal regardless of a company's stance on generative AI. An AI-forward company will be looking for an answer like "I haven't written code manually since 2025, I use ..., I stay on top of new tools without drowning in hype by ..." If that's not your answer, you probably aren't a good fit for those companies, but companies that would be a fit will still want a similar level of decisiveness. Much better to give an honest answer that will sound good to the right people than a wishy-washy answer that will sound bad to everyone.

[stevage]

Surviving in most companies requires a certain amount of wishywashiness.

[solatic]

> Have you considered just answering truthfully?

To give you just a little more context than other commenters -

You answer truthfully when you're interviewing from a position of power. Either you're already employed somewhere and you're taking your time exploring your options to see if maybe you can end up somewhere a little better, or you're an employer with applicants lined out the door and you want to winnow them down to the best match. In either case, you don't care too deeply if an individual interview sucks, you just move on.

Truth is always the first casualty of war. And when someone is out of work and fighting for their ~life~ livelihood, or a founder is trying to convince the first customer or the first engineer to take a risk on them so that they can get their baby off the ground, the truth dies real quickly.

[account42]

Sometimes the only reason you don't have power is because you have internalized the idea that you don't.

[solatic]

That's true, but it's about as helpful as a self-help book. Therapists, coaches, mentors are all helpful in that case.

[zerobees]

> Have you considered just answering truthfully? ... That sounds not like a job but a toxic relationship.

It's a job, not a relationship. It's best not to confuse the two.

In any workplace, you will occasionally have to do things you find boring or objectionable. And if you're hoping to find a corporation that is a "perfect match", it will only hurt more when they unceremoniously fire you because the quarterly revenue growth is 1% off or because you cracked an off-color joke.

[quintushoratius]

> It's a job, not a relationship. It's best not to confuse the two.

A relationship is defined as two parties that interact.

It's not friends, it's not romantic, and it's definitely not family, but a job _is_ a relationship.

That said, GP is absolutely correct that you can fall into toxic relationships with your employer. Especially in the US where, realistically, we're forced to rely on our employer for too many things (e.g. healthcare coverage), employers can and do take advantage of the situation.

[zerobees]

You're being pedantic. By your standard, I also have a relationship with the DMV, and to avoid a "toxic relationship" (parent's language), I should be honest with them about all the times I rolled past a stop sign.

[_carbyau_]

I didn't get that read.

I agree with their "two parties interacting is a relationship". Hell, I have a "relationship" at the checkout as they scan my groceries. But it's not deep or long lasting, so as you'd expect either party makes near zero effort.

Secondly, they never said that every relationship requires perfect honesty in all things. I'm not volunteering to my checkout person that I will eat that party bag size chips in one sitting. They don't need to know and it's highly likely they don't care. I'll be gone out of their life in a minute.

However, your entire relationship with your employer is roughly based on "benefits for work". It is a recurring interaction, probably over a significant length of time. So it seems reasonable to be honest about how you work to avoid making the relationship toxic from the start.

But then I also agree with "Do whatever it takes to survive." and if toxic relationships mean you keep breathing, well it sucks but there it is.

I am fortunate to not be in that "survival" position so honesty works for me.

[csomar]

Define objectionable? Not ethical is not illegal but maybe if you are okay with it, do it for yourself. Illegal is just dumb, you are still responsible. So at least, if you are doing, make sure you are appropriately compensated.

[zerobees]

The parent was talking about giving a diplomatic answer about your attitude / use of AI. I'm not talking about Enron here.

[hdhdhsjsbdh]

> Would you even want to work somewhere where you need to play a role and where they flip out when you say the wrong word you should've correctly guessed through mind reading?

This just sounds like a standard tech interview. Mind reading to find and perform the secret “signal”. Nobody flips out if you don’t find it, they just move on to one of the other 1,000 candidates for the role.

[maxbond]

I don't think having trouble knowing how to tailor your message to your audience because of limited information implies it isn't truthful. Answers to jobb interview questions are usually very manicured and rehearsed but I don't think they're generally lies.

[blitzar]

> Have you considered just answering truthfully?

I remember the graduate recruitment days - If you told the truth you were the only candidate they saw all day that wasn't the captain of the football team, top of the class and voted most likely to succeed - aka the worst candidate they saw all day.

[queenkjuul]

> Have you considered just answering truthfully?

It's 2026, you gotta sell your soul just to get a phone screening

[Forgeties79]

> Have you considered just answering truthfully?

We all filter and “nudge” the truth during interviews. We all cater our responses to the person in front of us. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Your interviewers sure aren’t.

[mitthrowaway2]

Even a truthful answer can require a lot of long-winded disclaimers because an interview is a new relationship without shared context. You have to state the obvious because nothing can be taken for granted.

[harrall]

This isn’t an AI problem. You can’t ask anyone to “be truthful” on any subject because everyone sees through their own world perspective.

Two people might say “they love camping!!”

But does it mean…

- Going camping twice/year and partying by the river?

- Or going 20 times per year, sometimes on 4 week long trips?

Both types of people will, with complete honesty, tell you “they love camping” and only you, the asker of the question, can decode what that means. ayli can’t

[butlike]

To this point, there are many advantages to answering truthfully. The job might be tailored (a little) to your expertise. Maybe the heavy AI tickets will get de-prioritized from your queue if you say you have light experience. If you say you're all in on AI, you just might find yourself becoming an AI expert out of necessity. Not because that's what the company wanted out of filling the position initially, but because that's what they got. It's expensive to have an open seat. The interviewing door swings both ways. You're looking for a fit just as they're looking for a fit. Going in every day pretending to be "a fraud" (or however else you might start to internalize it) eventually starts to weigh on the body, soul, and mind.

[aduwah]

"Have you considered just answering truthfully?"

Said by no-one who has a decent paying job and has bills to pay

[surgical_fire]

> Have you considered just answering truthfully?

This is terrible advice.

Everybody lies on interviews. Especially the interviewer.

[pmontra]

Interviews work both ways: employers select employees, employees select employers.

Unfortunately often employees forget that part of the goals of an interview. An employer never forgets its goal.

Of course the asymmetry stems principally from who pais whom and secondarily from who can wait more to find a better fit. Sometimes that's the employee.

If one is not desperate to get a salary immediately, it helps thinking that the company applied for an interview and agreed to let the interviewer come and inspect their premises, their personnel and their processes. The right questions derive from that realization. By the way, that's what auditors do.

[AlwaysRock]

Ha. Interviewing is about answering questions in the way your interviewer wants them to be answered. It is a game of trying to "read minds" by figuring out the most common/best possible interview answer for any given question even if it doesnt reflect your own personal opinion.

People will say this is bad but then when they interview folks judge the interviewee if they dont answer questions how they expected the question to be answered.

[sumeno]

You are playing a role at every job. In 20+ years I've never had a job where there would be no negative consequences for speaking truth to power

[tychota]

On top of the other answer, the people interviewing you might be HR people ressource with limited tech knowledge and this lack of nuance.

They are here recruit "AI ready engineer" or other vague, bullshitty slogan.

You often need to pass this first barrier to discuss with real futur colleagues. Thus you have to give them what they want to hear.

Which is hard on AI considering how polarised the subject is.

[coldtea]

>Have you considered just answering truthfully?

It's a job interview, you're not supposed to do that, and they don't appreciate it when you do. Try something like:

  - Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
  - Working at a much better company than 
    this shithole

and see how it goes.

[jazz9k]

As if most people have a choice in the matter.

To be honest, I don't think I would want to work with or hire you, based on your response here.

[__mharrison__]

At this point, why wouldn't you ask on the phone screen what attitude towards AI is?

I would hedge towards AI usage if you didn't probe before and then justify why.

Ymmv, can also gauge whether you want to work for the company based on this

[ACCount37]

Would being truthful improve my chances of being hired?

[michaelsalim]

It's funny cause I just interviewed some people last month and I asked the same exact question. And the answer to your question is probably. The technology is so new that I expect people to have a variety of different opinions.

From the 3 people I interviewed, all of the answers are very similar which is along the lines of: Kinda, but we need to be careful of using it, privacy, hallucination, etc.

All very safe answers and doesn't say anything new to me. If they had been more specific about why and their experiences with it, I'd probably favor them more due to their experience with it. It'd also signal to me that they form their own opinion rather than simply following the crowd.

[foxglacier]

It sounds like you're an AI-happy employer though. What if their truthful answer was that they never tried to use LLMs and refuse to because they waste water or because of an overconfident view of their own skills, or they don't want to help a clanker steal their job? These are all popular beliefs that can easily come from following the right crowd rather than forming their own opinion. In fact, from what I usually hear of people's opinions, they almost never come up with them themselves, you can practically predict people's opinions on some topics just from what they look like (what social group they belong to) or what other unrelated opinions they've already told you.

[michaelsalim]

I guess that's the point though? If their opinion only comes from common popular opinions, then that signal is quite useless to me.

In this case though, I'll admit that it would be a negative signal if they never tried it even once and refuse to do so. You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all. It would be different if they at least gave it a shot and disliked it.

[overfeed]

> In this case though, I'll admit that it would be a negative signal if they never tried it even once and refuse to do so

I was arguing that this is a bad question elsewhere but you provided another reason. If a candidate tells you they haven't tried using AI (without saying why), that offers no signal at how well they'll do if you hire them, and you construe it as a negative signal. If you want to know if they would be willing to use AI as part of the job ask that question instead!

> You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all.

What do you think about using heroin?

[account42]

> You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all.

Of course you can, from the effect you see it have on others. Not everyone needs to do hard drugs to say they are bad for example.

[robertn702]

Yes. Hedging results in a middle-of-the-road answer that, at best, comes across as lukewarm. Companies want to hire people they're excited about and are convinced fit into their culture. An honest answer will get you more strong noes but also more strong yeses, and strong yeses turn into offers. Hedging, produces only weak yeses and noes, which tend to end in no offers especially in tighter job markets like the one we're in.

[hypfer]

If whoever is hiring is actually good at their job: yes.

That is of course assuming that they're looking for some long-term stable team member.

A skilled interviewer smells dishonesty.

However, and to be fair, whether and how they act on it depends on the specific situation.

[ACCount37]

What is this "skilled interviewer" thing and where have you seen it?

[hypfer]

While this industry surely is frustrating and full of pitiful fraudsters, I don't think that what you're saying is fair or leading us anywhere.

Most of our stuff in this world actually does work, and the reason why it does is that skilled (teams of) people that care have built it. Meaning that these people can be found in many _many_ places.

[ipaddr]

The skilled interviewer is rare. But if truly skilled they understand why people hedge and would not consider that dishonesty but a skillset the company might need. A semi-skilled interview might pick up on that and assume the worst.

Very few jobs are looking for opinioned most are looking at people who might fit in unless you are hiring to distory from without.

[chrysoprace]

The two job interviews I had recently - the interviewers were clearly AI maximalists. My answer each time had been to the effect of "yeah I use it but I make sure to check it over thoroughly since it can make mistakes" and I'm guessing that wasn't the answer they were looking for.

It's a gamble of the dice as to whether the engineering manager is equally realistic about LLMs or has unrealistic expectations about what LLMs can or can't do.

[yawnr]

Because almost every HR department now has a directive to only let people through the screening process who say they are using "fully agentic workflows" even though that's moronic.

[satvikpendem]

Not everyone has that luxury when there are bills to pay and mouths to feed.

[grugagag]

Yeah, I just responded the same thing almost verbatim before reading your response. Yes, it's a luxury if you're not well off in the first place.

[tomrod]

> It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products.

I'm an old hat on both sides of this type of discussion from a post-grad view.

Recommendation: use it to own the conversation and to signal mutual fit. Yes, your idea of AI lover versus hesitant matters. I recommend reframing the question to pivot to your fit to the org (and org fit to you) question. Show/concisely explain how you consider whether LLMs are fit to a task and how to tell it improves outcomes.

An outcome focus and willingness to show thought process around a common use case will be a substantially strong response.

[AnotherGoodName]

Just in general these questions are probes on curiosity and ability to show depth too. I’m astounded by suggestions of stating flat out refusal to even try out LLMs or suggestions to over praise the merits as if the interviewers want to hear binary answers. A well thought out pros and cons story wins over binary yes/no answers at pro and anti ai companies alike.

[sdesol]

> A well thought out pros and cons story wins over binary yes/no answers at pro and anti ai companies alike.

The issue with this is, you need to know how to really program to be able to articulate the pros and cons, which a new grad would mostly likely not have.

For example, if you want to include how AI can onboard quickly, you really need to understand the pain points like, I tried asking people but really, everybody is busy. Or I've found coding agents help me speed up making code changes, but it some situations, they can help accelerate making mistakes.

I think the issue that a lot new grad are faced with is, you don't know, what you don't know.

[synergy20]

still 10x better than the 'finish this leetcode tweak algorithm in 20 minutes and tell me your thought process along the way, and yes you will never need that skill in the real job but we need find out who had time to cram for the algorithm books in the last few months'

[ozgung]

How are the technical interviews these days? Do they still ask Leetcode style questions or is it getting deprecated?

[tayo42]

I've unfortunately been doing alot of interviews. Leet code is common. Or "practical" which seems to more or less mean implement some kind of kv store class with some trick constraint.

[conformist]

I think what would be great is to have eg a concise example where it works well for you and a concise example where it doesn’t. This shows you have explored it and thought about it enough to explain interesting observations. It’s good to then be ready to go deeper if of interest.

[themafia]

> It's tough to answer because you want to hedge

You should just be honest. If you're not a good fit for the company then you should honestly be eager to discover this.

> I've been responding with a sort of long winded answer

"I don't. I personally don't find value in them for the type of work I do. I am also uncomfortable with using their outputs under the current copyright regime. I also question how competitive any organization can possibly be if LLMs become the main driver of their work products."

> I've had more bad results than good the few times I've tried them

"I prefer to write correct code rather than debug bad code generated from a limited context window."

[vibe_that_works]

Replying as a hiring manager since this might help other post-grad job seekers:

- Any long-winded answer to a question is immediate out and has been for years.

- Not having used agents and not being able to comment on what to do and what not to do with them is immediate out since early this year.

[zerobees]

Replying as a person who acted a hiring manager for decades: their loss.

Hiring for technical roles, I love long-winded answers as long as they are coherent. I don't want slogans, I want to understand how you reason through problems and that I can trust your judgment. Everything else is secondary.

Note that this doesn't mean "rambling". Get to the point. But if you want to show me nuance / reasoning, I want to hear it. Also a good way to spot bullshitters.

> Not having used agents and not being able to comment on what to do and what not to do with them is immediate out since early this year.

I've not observed that anywhere. It takes a couple of hours to figure out how to use agents. It might be a slight negative if I suspect you're not demonstrating enough curiosity about what's one of the most significant developments in tech in a long time, but the assumption is easily overcome if you geek out about something else.

[xpct]

> Not having used agents and not being able to comment on what to do and what not to do with them is immediate out since early this year.

From all the tech that we have, agents are really not that hard to learn on the job. They're also not a magical silver bullet.

[vibe_that_works]

True, but please don't give job seekers false hope with this statement. I commonly see 60 - 180 applicants for one open position. Good luck finding a hiring manager who wants to take a bet instead of going with proven experience.

I think upskilling is the right move in this environment and it is dead simple: Invest a couple of days to show initiative, learn agents yourself and be able to speak from true experience.

[moregrist]

I love that we’re already talking about “proven experience” for a technology that’s essentially 15 months old, arguably only broke into the mainstream 3-6 months ago, has an unclear RoI for many companies, and seems to be changing quickly in both cost and “best practices.”

You’re more or less admitting that you’re playing trendy tech lottery. Which is fine, but maybe not generalizable to the whole industry.

[ejpir]

15 months, 15 months ago, is not the same 15 months now. You'd be ignorant to think this a trend that will just fade. If we look at that has happened the last 15 months, it'll keep getting bigger and better. Hopefully not more expensive though.

[sdesol]

> playing trendy tech lottery.

I don't know about that, and I am 100% biased so take what I say with a grain of salt. My position is very much this: you may not trust coding agents to make code changes, but if you're not willing to treat them as a research aid or have them work for you, you're pretty much saying they can't help you work more efficiently.

I'm working on a Show HN post that includes:

https://github.com/gitsense/smart-ripgrep

It's a fork of BurntSushi/ripgrep. What I hope to show with it is that you don't have to use coding agents to code. They can be used to surface knowledge that's buried in documents, issue comments, PR discussions, and other places.

Believing coding agents are trendy would be like saying search was trendy in 1998. They're not going to change the world the way Anthropic wants us to believe, but they will shape how humans develop software. And I think for the better, since AI is capable of processing information at scale to help you move forward.

[moregrist]

Regardless of how you think about LLMs (I do find them useful), there’s something really odd to think that you can select for “proven experience” in a young technology where current experience appears to have little to do with experience 15 months ago, and where the biggest boosters fully claim it will have nothing to do with experience in 15 months.

What you’re selecting for is enthusiasm, knowing the current shibboleths of the in-group, and possibly for who knows how to use them to make a good demo.

And, fair enough, if that's what you want. But it's not "proven experience" in my mind.

[ludicrousdispla]

your post on Who's Hiring provides some needed context...

want a Flutter developer who is unusually strong at directing AI-driven software delivery. This is not a traditional "write the code yourself" role.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47223956

[vibe_that_works]

Not wrong. But my statement is true across organizations I have worked with in the past year, several of them not AI-native.

[heartbreak]

You've worked as a hiring manager at several organizations in the past year?

[vibe_that_works]

I said "with" and not "at". I was tasked with doing interviews and reshaping the interview process as multiple companies within the last 18 months through fractional roles, consulting and co-founding.

[hackable_sand]

They're LARPing

[hypfer]

> Any long-winded answer to a question is immediate out and has been for years.

Why?

If the winding path is actually interesting and gives you insights into how the person works, why would that be a bad thing?

[tokioyoyo]

Not the OP, but because that’s not usually the answer I’m looking for, and my assumption would be the interviewee is not familiar with the concepts. I’d want to hear about how they use it, what are their pain points, how they’ve automated stuff and etc.

[hypfer]

Okay I see thank you.

But that sounds more like "evasive" is the problematic attribute and not "long winding".

Which does show up at the same time often, true. But not always.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

This is also describing an interview scenario where the interviewee is trying to throw everything at the wall hoping to stick. Sure there is discretion in how much to elaborate, but it is a performative act, where someone is trying to demonstrate that they have deep knowledge about a topic and can appreciate nuance that not everything is black and white.

[michaelsalim]

Not OP also but it typically signals that you're not confident with your answers. If I am actually curious about it, I'd ask a followup question for them to expand.

[vibe_that_works]

Often the hiring manager will have the person to be hired somewhere in his report chain. So if a person can't effectively communicate and can't properly respond to a "I only have 2 minutes, shoot", then I am getting a future liability into the company that will slow down all future communications.

I much rather prefer someone who needs 3 seconds to triage a question and tell me: "This is X, I know this, here is the solution" or "This is Y, I don't know it, but I will get back to you within 24h".

I do absolutely not want a "Well let's think jointly about this for a couple of minutes". There is no jointly with your boss. Let's do a some math of a 1:12 manager to direct report ratio. That means for every hour you have, your boss only has 5 minutes. And if you talk to your boss' boss, they have 25 seconds for every of your hours.

[wk_end]

I absolutely do want to work with people who want to think jointly about interesting questions for a couple of minutes. Give me your long-winded (thoughtful!) answers. Let me see how you think. Let me see how well I (and others) can think through things with you. That's what the point of an interview is, IMO. And I've been gainfully employed in tech for 15 years now with that attitude, often in environments with other like-minded folks, often involved in the hiring decisions that have led me to work with those other like-minded folks.

So in the same interest of helping post-grad job seekers, do what you've gotta do to get yourself paid, but maybe don't presume that vibe_that_works speaks for every hiring manager.

[tayo42]

This thread is why job searching sucks. Every one making hiring decisions has conflicting advice and requirements.

[hypfer]

That does sound like a bad org tho, sorry to say that.

Not to disagree of course that time is limited, but in my experience, optimizing it this harshly leads to poor results, because eventually, you just get leapfrogged by reality.

Hyper-optimized systems are brittle and can't really adapt to the market changing.

But yeah, I guess they still need developers. Just doesn't sound like a fun job :D

[vibe_that_works]

Just trying to fix the misunderstanding: I am not saying that you will have a literal 25 seconds meeting with your boss's boss. I am just making a math argument taking typical orgchart ratios.

So let me take this a step further. You want to meet your boss' boss for 10 minutes to present them something. 10 minutes of his time are an equivalent of more than 20 hours of your time. So if your initial idea was to "take maybe 1-2h" to prepare for this -> You are underprepared by at least one order of magnitude.

[ImprobableTruth]

This is a very strange mindset. Even if you want to treat everything as sort of billable hours this doesn't really make sense because the average boss's boss's isn't paid anywhere near 144x. If a SWE spends 100 hours to save their boss's boss one hour, they're wasting a ton of money.

[hypfer]

I mean I am no expert, but to me it sounds like the org you're describing seems to lean away from the "engineering" side of things and into the "org for the sake of org".

Which might not be ideal, because "orging for the sake of org" to my understanding consumes significant resources not going into building products/marketshare/shareholder value.

But then again, I'm no hiring manager in such a structure, so this is probably just an uninformed take.

[sensanaty]

> 10 minutes of his time are an equivalent of more than 20 hours of your time.

What does this even mean?

[awkwardpotato]

> I do absolutely not want a "Well let's think jointly about this for a couple of minutes".

But why?

Most of my most fulfilling experiences in tech have come out sitting down and hashing out a problem with someone else (including with managers/leaders).

It sounds like a miserable org if I am not expected/allowed to have an actual back and forth conversation with my boss. If I'm employed to be on a team working on an aligned common goal, why would I not use that collective skill and experience to my fullest advantage?

[sublinear]

> There is no jointly with your boss

You're describing a coding sweatshop. What is the point of any discussion at all then? If the "boss" can't carve out enough time, that's their own problem. Letting that stress propagate to the team is plain bad leadership.

I know you might think some of these candidates don't have other much better choices to find work, but they absolutely do.

[layer8]

> Any long-winded answer to a question is immediate out and has been for years.

That’s a bit ironic, given the typical output of LLMs.

[losvedir]

What does "use agents" mean from your perspective? Just Claude Code with some MCPs? Or like a full on GasTown type setup?

[throwaway219450]

The former. I would not expect any candidate - especially a new grad - to have actually used GasTown style setups unless they were coming from another company with money to burn on those sorts of multiple-agent scenarios. I barely run more than one or two Claude sessions at once because it slams into the usage limit so fast.

I could steer the conversation to explore if the candidate had insight into why GasTown or other "swarm" models exist though. Do they know what a system prompt is? How context is managed/affects output? How harnesses can delegate to simpler models, and when to use different classes of model? I wouldn't expect anything particularly deep here, but bonus points for a solid understanding/experience of the tooling and how to get the most out of token budgets is valuable.

To the parent point: even if you refuse to use LLMs for whatever reason, I would expect any coding applicant to have at least tried them. I'd assume the person is living under a rock if they said no.

[xpct]

I understand the pressure to get employed from your perspective, but differences in opinion should be voiced out and typically aren't the thing leading to rejection from the company. It's common that engineering leads seek out people with different backgrounds and views to work on the same team. If anything, answering truthfully will make you stand out from others who've responded in a generic, heavily hedged way.

[xboxnolifes]

4 years into job hunting. Answering truthfully does not work. Nobody likes the truth, and every bit of advise i get from anyone is to lie (though, some of them use euphemisms to avoid saying "lie").

[bornfreddy]

This might not describe you, but I've met quite a few people who made similar claims. The problem usually wasn't that their counterparty didn't want to hear the truth. More commonly, the problem was that these persons assumed (and were convinced) that they knew the truth. Truth is rarely absolute and someone claiming to know it is a red flag in my book. Double so if multiple persons indicated their disagreement. Again, not knowing the exact question and answer it is impossible to say if you are an exception, but even if you are, you need to improve communication skills - what good is knowing "the truth" if others reject it?

That said, best of luck on the job hunt! Sometimes it just takes some time for the right opportunity to come along.

[xboxnolifes]

Truth is easy when the question is about your own involvement in something. You just don't lie and don't intentionally deceive. This isn't about technical arguments, or moral quandary, or ambiguous situations, it's about marketing yourself in a world where you are expected to lie about your accomplishments to look better. Citing metrics you know are not accurate, but make you look good. Overselling your own involvement in a project. Up-selling the impact of a project by not disclosing the parts you know would undermine your perceived competence.

[bornfreddy]

Then this is not the same situation, I agree. That sucks. I hope you find a company that shares (and rewards) your values.

[sweetjuly]

I would hope this is true both in the context of LLMs and more broadly, but I think this is especially not the case for LLMs. It's hard to take the idea that companies are trying to hire people with reservations about LLMs seriously when many companies have LLM use mandates. It is counterproductive in the eyes of the employer to hire employees that will be combative on LLM from day one.

[bluefirebrand]

I personally think "I pretty much use it as a faster and more flexible StackOverflow" is probably the most neutral position you can have on it

That's probably not going to be enough for AI maxxers, but it probably won't be too much of a turn off for anyone but the most extreme AI minners, and everyone in between will probably be fine with it.

Frankly I plan to steer well clear of any "the majority of our code is AI generated" shops for the foreseeable future. Seems like disasters waiting to happen and I'd rather let other people step on those rakes

[lkjdsklf]

The disaster isn’t even waiting to happen. It’s actively happening.

Look at the uptime and incident rate of all the big tech companies that have gone all in on AI generated code

[yw3410]

I know of a few shops (names you've heard of!) who are trying to transition to AI-only coding (i.e where engineers must vibe code...) - despite already having a few production bugs with their current approach.

[gimili]

Thinking about a similar question, I've tried to come up with this framework: https://assistedeverything.substack.com/p/ai-bowtie Maybe it helps in your interviews.

I think you will find that both AI-pilled as well as AI-sceptics will actually agree on that approach, because it rejects the question of "how much" and rather reflects it towards the "when to use AI". Depending on who it is, you can then talk more about the beginning, end or center piece of it.

[whinvik]

> re-factoring a big repo of decades old fortran+C cod

Having been in academia in the past and now in software I can say with a lot of certainty that this will take a lot more upfront work than otherwise.

Academic code does not have a lot of structure. And usually lacks a lot in terms of tests. While AI is best when it can mimic patterns as well as there are tests to target.

So you will probably need to budget a few weeks to establish good patters, docs as well as testing patterns before you can seriously make it really do what you want it to do.

[acc_297]

exactly yeah it was a code base written by atmospheric physicists I assume and I had an idea that maybe copilot could get it working to interface with some more modern software and it just didn't really have what it takes.

Even with 3 weeks I'm just not the Fortran/C programmer to get that job done so I moved on to other things.

[ltononro]

It's hard right now. I've been interviewing some folks for a while.

I am really interested how someone can make a 100x of themselves when working. This often means "how are you using claude code", "what is your coding setup", "how do you decide if your agent is going in the right direction or not w/o looking directly at the massive amount of code generated". This is not technical, but it measures how much we would have to teach someone that comes from a non-industry background. Remember that companies have money, universities dont pay for a 200 USD Codex+Claude+Grok+Cursor per employee.

That said, I also had to ask the same stuff to folks from big techs that dont actually are software engineers. How are data scientist leveraging LLMs to automate experiments? Are they using it for something other than data viz? Are they using it for /loop exploration? how trustworthy are the agents right now for this?

Having someone with this grasp nowadays might be very very valuable IMO

[Ifkaluva]

I am also on the job market, but as a Senior. Pro-tip: ask them this question before they ask you. “One quick question I have about the company culture, …”

[divbzero]

A balanced answer that’s often true these days is: you’ve found that LLMs are impressively useful in some cases but fall dramatically short in others.

[goalieca]

You should find out during the screener what kinds of view the executives have on LLMs. don’t wait until you’re midway through the third round.

[imtringued]

I've personally started to dislike agentic coding, not because of the LLM side of things, but rather, because the non-LLM workflow itself is stupid.

The UI/UX is built around one-shotting the code as a single fully baked unit. There should be intense competition around having the best code review tools to adjust the fine details and yet everything is devolving into a text prompt, even CAD tools where being off by a millimeter or less can make a part completely useless even if it is 99% of the way there.

All of these tools are assuming that the LLM already achieved superhuman AGI capable of reading your mind while making zero mistakes.

[Blikkentrekker]

> It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer

That this doesn't have a clear and obvious answer one can expect shows how the issue is politics, not strategy.

When you apply as a mechanic, there is no such weird political debates about certain power tools where people have passionate opinions on which tool to use.

[WhyIsItAlwaysHN]

Consider using agent mode for some things, you are definitely missing out.

The analogy I've had for myself is that it feels like using a bulldozer to dig rather than a shovel. If you use it to dig archaeological artifacts, it can make things worse than you started. A lot of the work however, is just moving dirt around, so you are wasting time by using a shovel.

[bluebarbet]

Digging with a bulldozer sounds like hard work. You mean a digger.

[WhyIsItAlwaysHN]

Language barrier (bulldozer is used as a placeholder in my native language) , I should have said heavy machinery

[bluebarbet]

Cards on the table, after posting I had doubts about this and had to look it up! Executive summary: "digger" = hole, "bulldozer" = flattish, "steamroller" (or just "roller") = flat as a pancake.

[MattPerry]

Exact same experience. My background is embedded and VLSI so I hedge my bets by saying that LLM are ok for Python scripting, but not there yet for synthesizable Verilog. It is really hard to see if the "how are you using LLMs?" question is for "we are AI Native™" or a form of cheating (like in university).

[alexeichemenda]

I'd take a candidate who fights for a view I disagree with over one who hedges to please everyone (Strong opinions weakly held, but willing to change their mind if/when the data tells a different story)

[spike021]

If you're not already, try to see if those companies have engineering blogs or open github repos where you can see how they feel about AI beforehand.

[AlexCoventry]

They might not have an answer in mind. They might just be exploring how you adapt to new tools and methods.

[mgfist]

One trick is to ask them that question first to gauge their perspective on it first

[throwaway98797]

some employers may like this wishy washy answers.

personally i find this offensive and would disqualify the candidate.

[giancarlostoro]

Just answer honestly, and include a note that you intend to fully comply with the companies AI policies. Thats the best answer anyone can give.

[dmitrygr]

"for entertainment value, when i'd like to see how an enthusiastic 5-year-old would react to the task."

[paulddraper]

Your 5 year old is going to a heck of a kindergarten.

[weavie]

The reason you've had more bad results than good is because you haven't fully learned how to use LLMs yet. They are not as simple as they first appear. I think a lot of people think using a coding agent is just a case of firing it up and telling it what to do and expecting to get it right first time. When it doesn't they just think it's no good and like you abandon the effort.

The reason a technical interviewer will be asking this question is because they want to see how you adapt to using new technologies, LLMs being one of the most disruptive technology that has hit the tech industry since at least the internet. You will likely be expected to use LLMs and they will want to know that you are someone who truly understands the capabilities of them - upsides and downsides, where to use them, what guardrails you need to put in place.

I'd encourage you to revisit the re-factoring task you worked on. Work out why it didn't work, work out what didn't work about it and if you have the chance try again, but use different techniques, there's a lot of conversations going on about what people find working and not working - try to join that conversation. Try to document what you learn. Then in the interview discuss these rather than just saying you gave up. The interviewer isn't going to check up on how successful your project was, they just want to know how you think and how you approach problems.