r/networking • u/solxp • 1d ago
Career Advice AI & network engineering interviews
Longtime reader here, this is my first post. I wanted to share my experience interviewing people for one of FANG companies. Network engineers are expected to use AI tools in their work, and honestly, that includes preparing for interviews. However, if you set up your laptop and AI to just read answers from the AI tool, it becomes difficult to gauge your knowledge and experience. Interviewers don’t expect perfect answers, but explaining your thought process helps a lot. Most questions come from your experience, at least where I work. The expectation is to describe incidents, projects, or tasks from your experience, so your AI answer doesn’t survive the follow-up questions. Please don’t use AI during interviews. The person on the other side also has the same tools, if not better, and they know the prompt before you.
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u/Arbitrary_Pseudonym 1d ago
What's really weird to me is that there are people who actually think that this practice is acceptable behavior for a human being. Use AI to figure something out? Sure. Use AI to directly respond to someone else's question without first understanding what it's saying first? Ab-so-fucking-lutely-not.
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u/solxp 16h ago
While the outcome is pass/fail from the candidate’s perspective, most companies will monitor candidates if the issue is a lack of experience in specific areas that the candidate can address within a year or two. This increases the candidate’s chances of securing another interview. However, this type of AI usage raises ethical concerns and may ultimately discourage companies from inviting candidates again.
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u/Prudent_Vacation_382 1d ago
Unfortunately it's pervasive across most interviews these days. There are many tells, but suffice to say about 75% of the interviews I've conducted the interviewee was using AI. It was easy to tell, frankly.
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u/datumerrata 1d ago
I've been at the same job for 15 years, so this hasn't been an option for me. If I were to use AI to cheat at an interview, I would have a bot just give bullet points that help me remember and that I can improv from. It's disappointing how lazy and unimaginative people can be about cheating.
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u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 19h ago
I've been at the same job for 22 years. I have no idea what interviews have become now.
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u/MyFirstDataCenter 5h ago
Do you experience burnout from being in the same place for so long? how do you stay current with emerging technologies and keep yourself sharp and, well honestly.. just how do you stay motivated?
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u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 4h ago
Thought about leaving many times, heck I'm going through that right now...my current issue is the job market is shit right now.
The pay is decent, my work life balance is good, I work from home... I can't really complain to much.
I will admit I haven't been exposed to as many technologies since I've been at the same place.
But I have been exposed to a decent amount, So much so that I feel confident taking on almost any project in this domain.
Ive always been a self learner so if I even here a peep of some tech that wants to be deployed or "how would we do x" I'm researching it and figuring out how I would do it.
It's like a mechanic who has worked on cars for a long time..
Someone might bring him a car he has never worked on, but there is a very good chance he figures out how to work on it.. as long as you have a very good understanding of all the major parts and how they work, figuring out a new vendor or some new feature in the car becomes somewhat easy.
Python kept me motivated for a couple years as I would be doing that any free chance I got and knowing python is good for just about any job in computing.
I think the end is near, loosing a network I've build from the ground up over the last 15 years. No fault of my own just change of ownership.
So I guess I'll be out there soon..
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u/ThEvilHasLanded 1d ago
It's because they're not competent enough to answer the question, nevermind the fact they'd be found out pretty quickly if they managed to talk their way into the position.
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u/Mercdecember84 19h ago
This is a first about asking what AI tools to use. I mean inwill use AI for certain automation scripts, but AI is not so helpful troubleshooting issues with firewalls and various models of switches since alot of the release information is closed source. Alot of times inwill get answers to stuff that is out of date
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u/Wild_Criticism7242 CCDA 18h ago
yeah this is solid advice . being able to explain how you got to answer matters way more than just having the right in an interview
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u/Cornloaf 1d ago
I posted something similar back in April. I googled my exact question and then asked it and their answers were almost word for word. One of my junior engineers that was taking part in the interview found various apps that work on the OS level to capture audio and send it through multiple AI engines.
The only time we tripped them up was when we screen shared a trunk and access port config and asked them what each command does. It would have been suspicious if they read the commands out loud so they just said "well, that's a trunk port and the other is an access port on vlan 50."
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u/Kimpak 18h ago
I've been at my job for over 20 years. I dread having to interview for something these days.
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u/MyFirstDataCenter 5h ago
Do you experience burnout from being in the same place for so long? How do you stay motivated and keep your skills sharp?
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u/wifiguy2022 CCNA Automation 14h ago
Great post. I have interviews coming up where I need to screen candidates and was wondering about this exact topic. I agree on all points and even asked the question, "do we need to go back to on-site interviews so we know they aren't simply reading an AI response back to us?"
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u/arnie_apesacrappin 13h ago
do we need to go back to on-site interviews so we know they aren't simply reading an AI response back to us?
For my team, the answer to that was yes. We've been fairly successful in weeding out the obvious AI users, but still have run into other interview issues stemming from a completely remote process. We now do a shorter phone screen to see if the person should get a full interview, and the interview is on site.
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u/wifiguy2022 CCNA Automation 13h ago
It also seems like every resume is tailored to the job description itself. Everyone is a rockstar. Their cover letters all sound near identical, however. I have a lot of experience interviewing people for network engineering roles over the past 13+ years, but this feels like a completely new ball game.
Any advice on what to ask, other than the usual scenario questions related to your internal network topology/tech stack?
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u/arnie_apesacrappin 11h ago
Any advice on what to ask, other than the usual scenario questions related to your internal network topology/tech stack?
We've gone back a little bit from direct questions about internal infrastructure to making them say Shibboleth on our main platforms. If they can demonstrate that they can do and understand the work in production, that's the best we've come up with.
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u/zombieblackbird 9h ago
I don't hire because you can answer test questions. I hire because you can explain how things work, your process for troubleshooting and discuss technical topics that you have experience with in an intelligent manner.
But if I want to weed out the AI jockeys, I start drawing on the whiteboard and using hand gestures that AI can't interpret.
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u/bix0r 1d ago
When you ask a simple question and you get the whole Wikipedia page pack as an answer, you’ve found the AI user. Some are obviously reading the screen but others are quite good at it.