Veteran engineering manager Karthik Hariharan advises leaders at startups, and recently shared an interesting observation with me: “It feels like

The Pragmatic Engineer

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2024-12-03 18:30:02

Veteran engineering manager Karthik Hariharan advises leaders at startups, and recently shared an interesting observation with me:

“It feels like the interviewing process for engineers has changed since ChatGPT hit the scene two years ago. Some startup eng leaders I've talked to are embracing it, and assuming, or even encouraging usage during interviews! Others are putting in a lot of checks/secure approaches to ensure AI tools are not used.”

LLMs have taken the industry by storm in two short years, and our recent survey found that around 80% of software engineers use LLMs daily. The most popular are ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot, and there’s a long tail of other tools in use — with “GenAI-first” IDEs like Cursor, Windsurf and Zed also seeing a surge in popularity. It’s rare for a new technology to be so rapidly adopted as AI tools have been.

Coincidentally or not, ChatGPT is very good at solving Leetcode-style algorithmic interview questions. As a rule, LLM tools make for strong coding companions. This means many interview processes for software engineers which currently focus on algorithmic coding are rapidly ceasing to be useful at identifying coding talent when candidates have access to these LLMs.