13 ms·

On the post-grad job hunt right now - I note that most employers will ask in a technical interview or whiteboard interview "how are you using LLMs?" It's tough

• dmitrygr 3mo ago
  "for entertainment value, when i'd like to see how an enthusiastic 5-year-old would react to the task."
  • paulddraper 3mo ago
    Your 5 year old is going to a heck of a kindergarten.
• hypfer 3mo ago
  > It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products. Have you considered just answering truthfully? Would you even want to work somewhere where you need to play a role and where they flip out when you say the wrong word you should've correctly guessed through mind reading? That sounds not like a job but a toxic relationship.
  • emodendroket 3mo ago
    I assume it's because he is seeking to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment.
    • acc_297 3mo ago
      you assume correct
    • hypfer 3mo ago
      I mean maybe that is because I live in a still mostly not failed state (Germany), but I can't imagine that these things would be _so bad_ that living in fear of saying the wrong thing would be something worth considering. Plus, and leaving that aside, I have my doubts that even if you did that, that that company would stay alive for very long. Reality has the habit of eventually ripping this kind of unproductively delusional people (like e.g. a boss that flips if you don't say the right word with regards to the current hype) to shreds eventually.
      • retired 3mo ago
        How is Germany relevant in this?
        • hypfer 3mo ago
          Acknowledging that my perception might be skewed because there are still a ton of social safety nets in place. The same might not be true everywhere.
          • retired 3mo ago
            Last time I was in Germany I saw elderly people going through garbage bins in the park I sat at. I think you overestimate the safety net in Germany. In my European country the elderly sit at cafes drinking coffee, not going through bins. Update: Every street corner has a yellow garbage bin for recycling. That is where your plastic bottles go. Seems like a better system than having elderly going through bins.
  • satvikpendem 3mo ago
    Not everyone has that luxury when there are bills to pay and mouths to feed.
    • grugagag 3mo ago
      Yeah, I just responded the same thing almost verbatim before reading your response. Yes, it's a luxury if you're not well off in the first place.
  • hdhdhsjsbdh 3mo ago
    > Would you even want to work somewhere where you need to play a role and where they flip out when you say the wrong word you should've correctly guessed through mind reading? This just sounds like a standard tech interview. Mind reading to find and perform the secret “signal”. Nobody flips out if you don’t find it, they just move on to one of the other 1,000 candidates for the role.
  • blitzar 3mo ago
    > Have you considered just answering truthfully? I remember the graduate recruitment days - If you told the truth you were the only candidate they saw all day that wasn't the captain of the football team, top of the class and voted most likely to succeed - aka the worst candidate they saw all day.
  • ACCount37 3mo ago
    Would being truthful improve my chances of being hired?
    • hypfer 3mo ago
      If whoever is hiring is actually good at their job: yes. That is of course assuming that they're looking for some long-term stable team member. A skilled interviewer smells dishonesty. However, and to be fair, whether and how they act on it depends on the specific situation.
      • ACCount37 3mo ago
        What is this "skilled interviewer" thing and where have you seen it?
        • hypfer 3mo ago
          While this industry surely is frustrating and full of pitiful fraudsters, I don't think that what you're saying is fair or leading us anywhere. Most of our stuff in this world actually does work, and the reason why it does is that skilled (teams of) people that care have built it. Meaning that these people can be found in many _many_ places.
      • ipaddr 3mo ago
        The skilled interviewer is rare. But if truly skilled they understand why people hedge and would not consider that dishonesty but a skillset the company might need. A semi-skilled interview might pick up on that and assume the worst. Very few jobs are looking for opinioned most are looking at people who might fit in unless you are hiring to distory from without.
    • michaelsalim 3mo ago
      It's funny cause I just interviewed some people last month and I asked the same exact question. And the answer to your question is probably. The technology is so new that I expect people to have a variety of different opinions. From the 3 people I interviewed, all of the answers are very similar which is along the lines of: Kinda, but we need to be careful of using it, privacy, hallucination, etc. All very safe answers and doesn't say anything new to me. If they had been more specific about why and their experiences with it, I'd probably favor them more due to their experience with it. It'd also signal to me that they form their own opinion rather than simply following the crowd.
  • maxbond 3mo ago
    I don't think having trouble knowing how to tailor your message to your audience because of limited information implies it isn't truthful. Answers to jobb interview questions are usually very manicured and rehearsed but I don't think they're generally lies.
  • yawnr 3mo ago
    Because almost every HR department now has a directive to only let people through the screening process who say they are using "fully agentic workflows" even though that's moronic.
  • jazz9k 3mo ago
    As if most people have a choice in the matter. To be honest, I don't think I would want to work with or hire you, based on your response here.
  • queenkjuul 3mo ago
    > Have you considered just answering truthfully? It's 2026, you gotta sell your soul just to get a phone screening
  • Forgeties79 3mo ago
    > Have you considered just answering truthfully? We all filter and “nudge” the truth during interviews. We all cater our responses to the person in front of us. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Your interviewers sure aren’t.
  • zerobees 3mo ago
    > Have you considered just answering truthfully? ... That sounds not like a job but a toxic relationship. It's a job, not a relationship. It's best not to confuse the two. In any workplace, you will occasionally have to do things you find boring or objectionable. And if you're hoping to find a corporation that is a "perfect match", it will only hurt more when they unceremoniously fire you because the quarterly revenue growth is 1% off or because you cracked an off-color joke.
    • csomar 3mo ago
      Define objectionable? Not ethical is not illegal but maybe if you are okay with it, do it for yourself. Illegal is just dumb, you are still responsible. So at least, if you are doing, make sure you are appropriately compensated.
      • zerobees 3mo ago
        The parent was talking about giving a diplomatic answer about your attitude / use of AI. I'm not talking about Enron here.
    • quintushoratius 3mo ago
      > It's a job, not a relationship. It's best not to confuse the two. A relationship is defined as two parties that interact. It's not friends, it's not romantic, and it's definitely not family, but a job _is_ a relationship. That said, GP is absolutely correct that you can fall into toxic relationships with your employer. Especially in the US where, realistically, we're forced to rely on our employer for too many things (e.g. healthcare coverage), employers can and do take advantage of the situation.
      • zerobees 3mo ago
        You're being pedantic. By your standard, I also have a relationship with the DMV, and to avoid a "toxic relationship" (parent's language), I should be honest with them about all the times I rolled past a stop sign.
  • aduwah 3mo ago
    "Have you considered just answering truthfully?" Said by no-one who has a decent paying job and has bills to pay
  • mitthrowaway2 3mo ago
    Even a truthful answer can require a lot of long-winded disclaimers because an interview is a new relationship without shared context. You have to state the obvious because nothing can be taken for granted.
  • sumeno 3mo ago
    You are playing a role at every job. In 20+ years I've never had a job where there would be no negative consequences for speaking truth to power
  • surgical_fire 3mo ago
    > Have you considered just answering truthfully? This is terrible advice. Everybody lies on interviews. Especially the interviewer.
  • solatic 3mo ago
    > Have you considered just answering truthfully? To give you just a little more context than other commenters - You answer truthfully when you're interviewing from a position of power. Either you're already employed somewhere and you're taking your time exploring your options to see if maybe you can end up somewhere a little better, or you're an employer with applicants lined out the door and you want to winnow them down to the best match. In either case, you don't care too deeply if an individual interview sucks, you just move on. Truth is always the first casualty of war. And when someone is out of work and fighting for their ~life~ livelihood, or a founder is trying to convince the first customer or the first engineer to take a risk on them so that they can get their baby off the ground, the truth dies real quickly.
    • account42 3mo ago
      Sometimes the only reason you don't have power is because you have internalized the idea that you don't.
      • solatic 3mo ago
        That's true, but it's about as helpful as a self-help book. Therapists, coaches, mentors are all helpful in that case.
  • coldtea 3mo ago
    >Have you considered just answering truthfully? It's a job interview, you're not supposed to do that, and they don't appreciate it when you do. Try something like: - Where do you see yourself in 5 years? - Working at a much better company than this shithole and see how it goes.
  • chrysoprace 3mo ago
    The two job interviews I had recently - the interviewers were clearly AI maximalists. My answer each time had been to the effect of "yeah I use it but I make sure to check it over thoroughly since it can make mistakes" and I'm guessing that wasn't the answer they were looking for. It's a gamble of the dice as to whether the engineering manager is equally realistic about LLMs or has unrealistic expectations about what LLMs can or can't do.
  • harrall 3mo ago
    This isn’t an AI problem. You can’t ask anyone to “be truthful” on any subject because everyone sees through their own world perspective. Two people might say “they love camping!!” But does it mean… - Going camping twice/year and partying by the river? - Or going 20 times per year, sometimes on 4 week long trips? Both types of people will, with complete honesty, tell you “they love camping” and only you, the asker of the question, can decode what that means. ayli can’t
  • __mharrison__ 3mo ago
    At this point, why wouldn't you ask on the phone screen what attitude towards AI is? I would hedge towards AI usage if you didn't probe before and then justify why. Ymmv, can also gauge whether you want to work for the company based on this
  • pmontra 3mo ago
    Interviews work both ways: employers select employees, employees select employers. Unfortunately often employees forget that part of the goals of an interview. An employer never forgets its goal. Of course the asymmetry stems principally from who pais whom and secondarily from who can wait more to find a better fit. Sometimes that's the employee. If one is not desperate to get a salary immediately, it helps thinking that the company applied for an interview and agreed to let the interviewer come and inspect their premises, their personnel and their processes. The right questions derive from that realization. By the way, that's what auditors do.
  • tychota 3mo ago
    On top of the other answer, the people interviewing you might be HR people ressource with limited tech knowledge and this lack of nuance. They are here recruit "AI ready engineer" or other vague, bullshitty slogan. You often need to pass this first barrier to discuss with real futur colleagues. Thus you have to give them what they want to hear. Which is hard on AI considering how polarised the subject is.
  • AlwaysRock 3mo ago
    Ha. Interviewing is about answering questions in the way your interviewer wants them to be answered. It is a game of trying to "read minds" by figuring out the most common/best possible interview answer for any given question even if it doesnt reflect your own personal opinion. People will say this is bad but then when they interview folks judge the interviewee if they dont answer questions how they expected the question to be answered.
  • butlike 3mo ago
    To this point, there are many advantages to answering truthfully. The job might be tailored (a little) to your expertise. Maybe the heavy AI tickets will get de-prioritized from your queue if you say you have light experience. If you say you're all in on AI, you just might find yourself becoming an AI expert out of necessity. Not because that's what the company wanted out of filling the position initially, but because that's what they got. It's expensive to have an open seat. The interviewing door swings both ways. You're looking for a fit just as they're looking for a fit. Going in every day pretending to be "a fraud" (or however else you might start to internalize it) eventually starts to weigh on the body, soul, and mind.
• bluefirebrand 3mo ago
  I personally think "I pretty much use it as a faster and more flexible StackOverflow" is probably the most neutral position you can have on it That's probably not going to be enough for AI maxxers, but it probably won't be too much of a turn off for anyone but the most extreme AI minners, and everyone in between will probably be fine with it. Frankly I plan to steer well clear of any "the majority of our code is AI generated" shops for the foreseeable future. Seems like disasters waiting to happen and I'd rather let other people step on those rakes
  • lkjdsklf 3mo ago
    The disaster isn’t even waiting to happen. It’s actively happening. Look at the uptime and incident rate of all the big tech companies that have gone all in on AI generated code
  • yw3410 3mo ago
    I know of a few shops (names you've heard of!) who are trying to transition to AI-only coding (i.e where engineers must vibe code...) - despite already having a few production bugs with their current approach.
• synergy20 3mo ago
  still 10x better than the 'finish this leetcode tweak algorithm in 20 minutes and tell me your thought process along the way, and yes you will never need that skill in the real job but we need find out who had time to cram for the algorithm books in the last few months'
  • ozgung 3mo ago
    How are the technical interviews these days? Do they still ask Leetcode style questions or is it getting deprecated?
    • tayo42 3mo ago
      I've unfortunately been doing alot of interviews. Leet code is common. Or "practical" which seems to more or less mean implement some kind of kv store class with some trick constraint.
• MattPerry 3mo ago
  Exact same experience. My background is embedded and VLSI so I hedge my bets by saying that LLM are ok for Python scripting, but not there yet for synthesizable Verilog. It is really hard to see if the "how are you using LLMs?" question is for "we are AI Native™" or a form of cheating (like in university).
• whinvik 3mo ago
  > re-factoring a big repo of decades old fortran+C cod Having been in academia in the past and now in software I can say with a lot of certainty that this will take a lot more upfront work than otherwise. Academic code does not have a lot of structure. And usually lacks a lot in terms of tests. While AI is best when it can mimic patterns as well as there are tests to target. So you will probably need to budget a few weeks to establish good patters, docs as well as testing patterns before you can seriously make it really do what you want it to do.
  • acc_297 3mo ago
    exactly yeah it was a code base written by atmospheric physicists I assume and I had an idea that maybe copilot could get it working to interface with some more modern software and it just didn't really have what it takes. Even with 3 weeks I'm just not the Fortran/C programmer to get that job done so I moved on to other things.
• vibe_that_works 3mo ago
  Replying as a hiring manager since this might help other post-grad job seekers: - Any long-winded answer to a question is immediate out and has been for years. - Not having used agents and not being able to comment on what to do and what not to do with them is immediate out since early this year.
  • xpct 3mo ago
    > Not having used agents and not being able to comment on what to do and what not to do with them is immediate out since early this year. From all the tech that we have, agents are really not that hard to learn on the job. They're also not a magical silver bullet.
    • vibe_that_works 3mo ago
      True, but please don't give job seekers false hope with this statement. I commonly see 60 - 180 applicants for one open position. Good luck finding a hiring manager who wants to take a bet instead of going with proven experience. I think upskilling is the right move in this environment and it is dead simple: Invest a couple of days to show initiative, learn agents yourself and be able to speak from true experience.
      • moregrist 3mo ago
        I love that we’re already talking about “proven experience” for a technology that’s essentially 15 months old, arguably only broke into the mainstream 3-6 months ago, has an unclear RoI for many companies, and seems to be changing quickly in both cost and “best practices.” You’re more or less admitting that you’re playing trendy tech lottery. Which is fine, but maybe not generalizable to the whole industry.
        • ejpir 3mo ago
          15 months, 15 months ago, is not the same 15 months now. You'd be ignorant to think this a trend that will just fade. If we look at that has happened the last 15 months, it'll keep getting bigger and better. Hopefully not more expensive though.
• xpct 3mo ago
  I understand the pressure to get employed from your perspective, but differences in opinion should be voiced out and typically aren't the thing leading to rejection from the company. It's common that engineering leads seek out people with different backgrounds and views to work on the same team. If anything, answering truthfully will make you stand out from others who've responded in a generic, heavily hedged way.
  • sweetjuly 3mo ago
    I would hope this is true both in the context of LLMs and more broadly, but I think this is especially not the case for LLMs. It's hard to take the idea that companies are trying to hire people with reservations about LLMs seriously when many companies have LLM use mandates. It is counterproductive in the eyes of the employer to hire employees that will be combative on LLM from day one.
  • xboxnolifes 3mo ago
    4 years into job hunting. Answering truthfully does not work. Nobody likes the truth, and every bit of advise i get from anyone is to lie (though, some of them use euphemisms to avoid saying "lie").
    • bornfreddy 3mo ago
      This might not describe you, but I've met quite a few people who made similar claims. The problem usually wasn't that their counterparty didn't want to hear the truth. More commonly, the problem was that these persons assumed (and were convinced) that they knew the truth. Truth is rarely absolute and someone claiming to know it is a red flag in my book. Double so if multiple persons indicated their disagreement. Again, not knowing the exact question and answer it is impossible to say if you are an exception, but even if you are, you need to improve communication skills - what good is knowing "the truth" if others reject it? That said, best of luck on the job hunt! Sometimes it just takes some time for the right opportunity to come along.
      • xboxnolifes 3mo ago
• WhyIsItAlwaysHN 3mo ago
  Consider using agent mode for some things, you are definitely missing out. The analogy I've had for myself is that it feels like using a bulldozer to dig rather than a shovel. If you use it to dig archaeological artifacts, it can make things worse than you started. A lot of the work however, is just moving dirt around, so you are wasting time by using a shovel.
  • bluebarbet 3mo ago
    Digging with a bulldozer sounds like hard work. You mean a digger.
    • WhyIsItAlwaysHN 3mo ago
      Language barrier (bulldozer is used as a placeholder in my native language) , I should have said heavy machinery
      • bluebarbet 3mo ago
        Cards on the table, after posting I had doubts about this and had to look it up! Executive summary: "digger" = hole, "bulldozer" = flattish, "steamroller" (or just "roller") = flat as a pancake.
• giancarlostoro 3mo ago
  Just answer honestly, and include a note that you intend to fully comply with the companies AI policies. Thats the best answer anyone can give.
• goalieca 3mo ago
  You should find out during the screener what kinds of view the executives have on LLMs. don’t wait until you’re midway through the third round.
• divbzero 3mo ago
  A balanced answer that’s often true these days is: you’ve found that LLMs are impressively useful in some cases but fall dramatically short in others.
• tomrod 3mo ago
  > It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products. I'm an old hat on both sides of this type of discussion from a post-grad view. Recommendation: use it to own the conversation and to signal mutual fit. Yes, your idea of AI lover versus hesitant matters. I recommend reframing the question to pivot to your fit to the org (and org fit to you) question. Show/concisely explain how you consider whether LLMs are fit to a task and how to tell it improves outcomes. An outcome focus and willingness to show thought process around a common use case will be a substantially strong response.
  • AnotherGoodName 3mo ago
    Just in general these questions are probes on curiosity and ability to show depth too. I’m astounded by suggestions of stating flat out refusal to even try out LLMs or suggestions to over praise the merits as if the interviewers want to hear binary answers. A well thought out pros and cons story wins over binary yes/no answers at pro and anti ai companies alike.
    • sdesol 3mo ago
      > A well thought out pros and cons story wins over binary yes/no answers at pro and anti ai companies alike. The issue with this is, you need to know how to really program to be able to articulate the pros and cons, which a new grad would mostly likely not have. For example, if you want to include how AI can onboard quickly, you really need to understand the pain points like, I tried asking people but really, everybody is busy. Or I've found coding agents help me speed up making code changes, but it some situations, they can help accelerate making mistakes. I think the issue that a lot new grad are faced with is, you don't know, what you don't know.
• mgfist 3mo ago
  One trick is to ask them that question first to gauge their perspective on it first
• Blikkentrekker 3mo ago
  > It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer That this doesn't have a clear and obvious answer one can expect shows how the issue is politics, not strategy. When you apply as a mechanic, there is no such weird political debates about certain power tools where people have passionate opinions on which tool to use.
• Ifkaluva 3mo ago
  I am also on the job market, but as a Senior. Pro-tip: ask them this question before they ask you. “One quick question I have about the company culture, …”
• weavie 3mo ago
  The reason you've had more bad results than good is because you haven't fully learned how to use LLMs yet. They are not as simple as they first appear. I think a lot of people think using a coding agent is just a case of firing it up and telling it what to do and expecting to get it right first time. When it doesn't they just think it's no good and like you abandon the effort. The reason a technical interviewer will be asking this question is because they want to see how you adapt to using new technologies, LLMs being one of the most disruptive technology that has hit the tech industry since at least the internet. You will likely be expected to use LLMs and they will want to know that you are someone who truly understands the capabilities of them - upsides and downsides, where to use them, what guardrails you need to put in place. I'd encourage you to revisit the re-factoring task you worked on. Work out why it didn't work, work out what didn't work about it and if you have the chance try again, but use different techniques, there's a lot of conversations going on about what people find working and not working - try to join that conversation. Try to document what you learn. Then in the interview discuss these rather than just saying you gave up. The interviewer isn't going to check up on how successful your project was, they just want to know how you think and how you approach problems.
• AlexCoventry 3mo ago
  They might not have an answer in mind. They might just be exploring how you adapt to new tools and methods.
• themafia 3mo ago
  > It's tough to answer because you want to hedge You should just be honest. If you're not a good fit for the company then you should honestly be eager to discover this. > I've been responding with a sort of long winded answer "I don't. I personally don't find value in them for the type of work I do. I am also uncomfortable with using their outputs under the current copyright regime. I also question how competitive any organization can possibly be if LLMs become the main driver of their work products." > I've had more bad results than good the few times I've tried them "I prefer to write correct code rather than debug bad code generated from a limited context window."
• conformist 3mo ago
  I think what would be great is to have eg a concise example where it works well for you and a concise example where it doesn’t. This shows you have explored it and thought about it enough to explain interesting observations. It’s good to then be ready to go deeper if of interest.
• spike021 3mo ago
  If you're not already, try to see if those companies have engineering blogs or open github repos where you can see how they feel about AI beforehand.
• throwaway98797 3mo ago
  some employers may like this wishy washy answers. personally i find this offensive and would disqualify the candidate.
• alexeichemenda 3mo ago
  I'd take a candidate who fights for a view I disagree with over one who hedges to please everyone (Strong opinions weakly held, but willing to change their mind if/when the data tells a different story)
• imtringued 3mo ago
  I've personally started to dislike agentic coding, not because of the LLM side of things, but rather, because the non-LLM workflow itself is stupid. The UI/UX is built around one-shotting the code as a single fully baked unit. There should be intense competition around having the best code review tools to adjust the fine details and yet everything is devolving into a text prompt, even CAD tools where being off by a millimeter or less can make a part completely useless even if it is 99% of the way there. All of these tools are assuming that the LLM already achieved superhuman AGI capable of reading your mind while making zero mistakes.
• gimili 3mo ago
  Thinking about a similar question, I've tried to come up with this framework: https://assistedeverything.substack.com/p/ai-bowtie https://assistedeverything.substack.com/p/ai-bowtie Maybe it helps in your interviews. I think you will find that both AI-pilled as well as AI-sceptics will actually agree on that approach, because it rejects the question of "how much" and rather reflects it towards the "when to use AI". Depending on who it is, you can then talk more about the beginning, end or center piece of it.
• ltononro 3mo ago
  It's hard right now. I've been interviewing some folks for a while. I am really interested how someone can make a 100x of themselves when working. This often means "how are you using claude code", "what is your coding setup", "how do you decide if your agent is going in the right direction or not w/o looking directly at the massive amount of code generated". This is not technical, but it measures how much we would have to teach someone that comes from a non-industry background. Remember that companies have money, universities dont pay for a 200 USD Codex+Claude+Grok+Cursor per employee. That said, I also had to ask the same stuff to folks from big techs that dont actually are software engineers. How are data scientist leveraging LLMs to automate experiments? Are they using it for something other than data viz? Are they using it for /loop exploration? how trustworthy are the agents right now for this? Having someone with this grasp nowadays might be very very valuable IMO
• offercc 3mo ago
  [flagged]