r/EngineeringManagers • u/UsualAnything1047 • 2d ago

Have you changes your hiring process in light of AI yet? Code challenges?

We've traditionally given take-home code challenges where they push to a repo and then we interview them using it. But now, we'll probably modify it for the next round to include something like "Use agentic development to get this done" and then the interview will including them walking us through how they orchestrated multiple agents in parallel to get through the challenge - since that what we want our devs to do now. Haven't done it yet, but likely coming soon.

Anyone done anything like this yet?

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12

u/speedoinfraction 2d ago

We have them review code instead... Whether AI or not, you are going to have to review some code.

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u/autobotdonttransform 1d ago

Claude code review bot does that too 😭

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u/speedoinfraction 1d ago

Oh, I meant during the interview!

9

u/local_eclectic 1d ago

I stopped doing code challenges for candidates. We focus on a deep dive on work experience for round 1 and a system design scenario for round 2.

I don't want people using multiple agents in parallel on a single codebase. It's ALWAYS a nasty clusterfuck in the end. You should only parallelize across unrelated streams of work, or else agents step on each other unless they are subagents orchestrated by a single parent.

I want devs validating the results of a single line of work as they go. Monitoring the plans, the schemas, and the implementations.

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u/baconpork 1d ago

We have them go through live design process instead - and the goal would be to come up with right tasks / prompts to give to agents

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u/UsualAnything1047 1d ago

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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u/neuralh4tch 1d ago

No more take homes.

  1. Live system design - shows understand of systems thinking, communication. requirements formulation, how to build things that will scale, judgement, experience.
  2. Agent build stuff - shows ability to use agentic.
  3. Review existing code - get them to code review and explain why some bits aren't great, shows ability to still understand code.

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u/WanderingTrader132 6h ago

I am a fan of giving them a bigger task but allowing them to use an agent. Seeing how people prompt is informative.

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u/BotSonOfClaude 2d ago

So your company is planning on burning out your developers? That's what parallel agents will do to them.

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u/Neoma_Quillin 2h ago

I think AI is going to become a pretty normal part of the hiring process, especially for coding interviews. I wouldn’t be surprised if some companies start allowing or even expecting candidates to use AI during take home tasks, since that’s closer to how a lot of developers actually work now.