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There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers

(workweave.dev)
263 points mooreds | 2 comments | 30 Sep 25 03:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.399s | source
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Cornbilly ◴[30 Sep 25 04:08 UTC] No.45421796[source]▶
When I hire juniors, I try to give them problems that I know they likely won't be able to solve in the interview because I want to see how they think about things. The problem has become that a lot of kids coming out of college have done little more than memorize Leetcode problems and outsourced classwork to AI. I've also seen less and less passion for the career as the years go by (ie. less computer nerds).

Unless the company is doing something that requires almost no special domain knowledge, it's almost inevitable that it's going to take a good while for them to on-board. For us, it usually takes about year to get them to the point that they can contribute without some form of handholding. However, that also mostly holds true for seniors coming to us from other industries.

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1. MattPalmer1086 ◴[30 Sep 25 06:04 UTC] No.45422415[source]▶
When I used to interview developers, I was more interested in how they approached problem solving and working collaboratively than attaining any correct answers.

So I'd split the interview in two parts. The first bit I'd give them a set of requirements and ask them to come up with a design for it on their own. They had internet access and technical references available. It wasn't a memory test, and I'd leave the room (this probably wouldn't work well now given LLMs).

In the second part, I'd ask them to talk me through their design, and then explain we were going to change the requirements and work together on altering it to accommodate them.

The second bit was the most useful part of the interview; it's what we needed to do in the actual job, and pretty much everyone we hired in that process was good.

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2. mwigdahl ◴[30 Sep 25 18:56 UTC] No.45429630[source]▶
The second part sounds like it would be good protection against LLM abuse -- if they don't actually understand their design, they'd be hard pressed to explain and adapt it with any fluency.