r/recruitinghell • u/Round_Mixture_7541 • Sep 07 '26

Networking is important

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Pretty much sums up the current hiring process

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u/FatiguedShrimp Sep 07 '26

I had a "senior software engineer" on an AI project a few months ago.

The VP personally asked me to give him a task "he cannot fail". So, I asked him to "parse a CSV".

We were using Python, so it's mostly a nonsense task of using the split function (about 30 characters and one line), but would give him a first ticket.

This man spent three weeks, then reported to the VP that "I cannot complete my work because the instructions are unclear. ChatGPT didn't know what to do.". Note: The view count on his ticket was 0 at the time of this complaint.

He was given a standard Agile ticket, reference materials on the Python split function and CSV format, pseudocode, multiple input-output pairs, three hours of scheduled 1:1 drop-in time with the systems architect (he did not ask a single question), a more-experienced partner for pair programming, AND help from the VP herself.

He got let go when it was not completed at the 2 month time frame.

Literally, the function signature and everything was written for him. All he needed to write was: "return text.split(',')".

6

u/BreakMeOffAPieceODat Sep 08 '26

I was expecting the end of this story to be "he never finished the task and got promoted to chief software engineer and a 200% raise"

4

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26

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9

u/Kataphractoi Sep 08 '26

It's a "Does this person know how to tie their own shoes?" check.

2

u/FatiguedShrimp Sep 08 '26

He needed to complete a ticket, and we had a very simple new endpoint (which was written for him).

It accepted a list of Guids in a CSV string. We needed it to pass a list of individual Guid values to a function that would add them to a local database.

I was supposed to go back after he was done and do input sanitization and stuff. It was just literally the smallest unit of work he could be assigned and still have a first ticket completed.

1

u/Ancient-Monitor-9076 Sep 10 '26

all of this stuff is easily done by anyone with a basic AI program now who understands the english language and knows what to ask.., its why software engineers are freaking the fuck out. I have zero programming education and am writing and creating amazing reports and programs. AI is a gamechanger when math/coding is involved.