Hacker News

I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

2026-03-1118:17240221schwarztech.net

Hayden Field for The Verge: For this video, I tried out three AI interviewers myself for a range of jobs,...

Hayden Field for The Verge:

For this video, I tried out three AI interviewers myself for a range of jobs, either ones created for the exercise based on my current position or real jobs currently listed at Vox Media. Some of the platforms felt a lot more natural than others, but no matter what, each time I wished I was talking to a human instead.

I realize the job market is tough, but in my opinion, the downsides to these tools far outweigh the benefits for jobseekers. While they might be presented as a just-the-facts interviewer, there’s no flow of conversation, no chance for anecdotes that might actually help a candidate that is on the bubble, AI is trained on models with implicit bias, and this will also lead to more interviewers since this isn’t tying up an employee. In other words, they can waste your time since you’re no longer wasting theirs. Furthermore, many candidates seem to forget that an interview is to also learn about the company—I’ve had a few interviews where I was a strong candidate, but the interview changed my mind about who I’d be working for. If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired?


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  • By JohnFen 2026-03-1118:3220 reply

    > If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired?

    For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

    • By arctic-true 2026-03-1120:136 reply

      I had this experience when I was trying to find an apartment - multiple different buildings very clearly had AI-generated responses. (To all you builders out there: quick replies are great. Instant replies are suspicious.) I immediately stopped considering them as options. If you can’t be bothered to have a human respond to my email when I’m trying to give you my money, what level of service can I expect once I’m already obligated to pay rent?

      • By csa 2026-03-125:541 reply

        > I immediately stopped considering them as options. If you can’t be bothered to have a human respond to my email when I’m trying to give you my money, what level of service can I expect once I’m already obligated to pay rent?

        I will go out on a limb and suggest that they are probably happy that you’ve self-selected out of the process.

        I’m not saying your expectations are unreasonable, but you have higher expectations than most consumers, and that ultimately becomes a pain in their ass.

        • By gleenn 2026-03-126:20

          I feel like it's not higher than most consumers, if I have a problem that is serious enough then that's the benefit and direct trade-off of renting - it shouldn't be my problem and my landlord should take it seriously. If everyone self-selects out we are just making the rental market even more hostile.

      • By skeuomorphism 2026-03-1123:342 reply

        This is more or less the go-to standard in the usa. One property manager handles possibly hundreds in an association, or dozens of townhomes, and will refuse to speak to you directly, except through a maintenance request system. Its incredibly depressing

        • By AnotherGoodName 2026-03-122:152 reply

          The electrical panel beeps an alarm constantly. Sent an email to the property management company. Guy comes over and presses a button to silence it for 24 hours. Rinse repeat for months on end. No method of escalation beyond the automatic replying inbox. I’m fine. twitch twitch Welcome to 21st century distopia!

          • By shakehar 2026-03-123:511 reply

            Call your fire department on their non emergency line and report this.

            • By ssl-3 2026-03-125:48

              Called the fire department's non-emergency line. Got a bot. The bot sent out someone who said the noise isn't a safety issue, and left.

              Called the police department's non-emergency line. Got a bot that told me it's a civil problem and that there's nothing they can do.

              Scouted out the fire department and chatted up the fire chief in person while he was walking back in after lunch. He was very concerned about all of this (finally, progress!) and called the management company while we stood there, but his call was answered by a bot that said someone would be out in less than 24 hours to silence the noise again.

              [...]

          • By Eisenstein 2026-03-122:21

            Whatever that panel is responsible for, that thing isn't working properly, its just set to be silent temporarily. Find out what regulatory body in your town deals with that panel's responsibility, contact them telling them that of the issue and say that you have contacted them when you submit your next ticket.

        • By Octoth0rpe 2026-03-120:43

          But at least they're passing on all the savings to the renters, right?

          ....Right???????

      • By bigtunacan 2026-03-123:091 reply

        A delayed response doesn’t mean it’s not automated, just that it wasn’t built to not feel automated.

        I worked on an automated reply system like this previously and we had intentional delays with randomness as well as variance in our responses to make it “feel more human”.

        • By avidiax 2026-03-124:531 reply

          That's even worse. If it's going to be a bot, at least give the advantages of the bot and be somewhat honest about it.

      • By garciasn 2026-03-122:231 reply

        I do Rover for extra fun money and I get to watch other peoples dogs when I don’t have one myself right now.

        Several folks have noted that my immediate reply threw them for loops. One told me she thought it was spam that I responded so quickly.

        Rover has a “Star Sitter” designation and response time is one of the metrics. Star Sitters show up at the top of the algorithm’s results so I’m incentivized to keep it up. Plus; I absolutely despise waiting forever for others to reply and I want to make sure I get bookings, knowing there are MANY available sitters in my area.

        I never would have thought it was spammy or suspicious AI behavior. Thank you for cementing it in my mind that maybe I’m a little too eager. Considering I’m entirely booked out until mid-October, I’m either doing something right or people are that desperate for a good human to watch their pup for them.

        • By Barbing 2026-03-122:481 reply

          Is this suspicious, probably:

          “ps— hope I hit my goal of responding in <5min like I said in my ad!”

          (w/biz hours mentioned in ad)

      • By EGreg 2026-03-124:45

        That goes for all AI generated content

        If you can’t be bothered to write something to me personally, why should I deal with you? :)

    • By nitwit005 2026-03-1119:474 reply

      To me the issue isn't seeming inhuman, but cost. Employers often seem happy to impose rediculous time costs on the people they're hiring: take home tests, long series of interviews, etc. What held that back is they also paid a price. Full automation leaves them free to impose infinite cost with no guarantee of anything.

      • By YesBox 2026-03-1123:264 reply

        Applicants are using AI too. I've heard from people who hire/post jobs that they gets hundreds to low thousands of applications, and maybe 5% of them have any relevant experience. The problem is the breakdown of trust is costing all of us.

        • By tdeck 2026-03-123:011 reply

          > Applicants are using AI too. I've heard from people who hire/post jobs that they gets hundreds to low thousands of applications, and maybe 5% of them have any relevant experience.

          This happened before "AI" too. When all it takes is clicking an "apply now" button on LinkedIn some desperate people will spam any job they see.

          • By Nursie 2026-03-123:56

            And in some places they are incentivised to do so, as they may need to prove a certain number of applications per-week, or they'll lose unemployment benefits, so they end up applying to all sorts of unsuitable stuff.

        • By slumberlust 2026-03-120:061 reply

          The companies have made this bed. They are upset its finally a mor even playing field.

          • By hexaga 2026-03-121:521 reply

            Everyone is upset because the situation is a trash fire.

            • By stingraycharles 2026-03-122:31

              Yeah, the playing field isn’t leveled as much as it’s simply on fire and turning into garbage. In a way it’s similar to the eternal September, but on a much broader scale.

        • By hedora 2026-03-121:56

          For the 95% irrelevant and 5% relevant groups, I wonder what percentage of resumes come in through a third party recruiter.

          I get tons of spam that could be generated by even a basic LLM based on public information about me, but for positions that are not a reasonable fit.

          Apparently, it is common for such cold calls to come from “recruiters” that are not affiliated with the hiring firm, but are trying to collect some sort of referral bounty.

          I have no idea why an HR department would be dumb enough to set up such a pipeline (by actually paying for the third party “service”), but I guess once they have the program in place, they also need an LLM to screen spam applications.

        • By tharkun__ 2026-03-120:562 reply

          Using AI for what and is it bad or good?

          At this point, we think using AI and being able to use AI effectively is a skill in and of itself. When you're hired, you'll have access to AI. You'd be expected to be able to use said AI effectively.

          So, we still give you a FizzBuzz. You can use AI. Even if we told you not to use AI, we know almost everyone would use AI. But you have to understand the FizzBuzz and be able to explain it to us and make changes to it "live". The amount of people that get weeded out just by having to explain the code they "coded themselves" is staggering (even pre-AI, even on a take home where you had no "OMG I suck at live coding" pressure).

          • By hansvm 2026-03-121:462 reply

            It's been a year since I've actively given out take-homes for hiring, but I'm not sure I agree that everyone will use AI. I designed half the questions to be impossible for current-gen AI to answer without the candidate actually knowing what's going on [0], and only ~1% of candidates who responded did poorly on that half and not the other half (and, if we're worried about LLMs being better than I think, not all that many candidates passed most questions either).

            [0] The most reliable strategy I've found for that is choosing questions where the wrong answer is the right answer for some much more common question. Actually spending a few seconds and solving the problem easily lets a human pass, but an LLM with insufficient weights or training data (all of them) doesn't stand a chance.

            • By seer 2026-03-123:50

              Thanks for clarifying - I kinda get the idea but would love to see an example for this.

              I’ve mostly given up on all of the standard techniques for interviewing sadly, just because “using ai” makes a lot of them trivial, and have resorted to the good old fashioned interview, where I screen for drive, values and root cause seeking, and let people learn tech/frameworks/etc themselves.

              But I was wondering, isn’t a take home question still good, if you give a more open ended and ambitious task, and let people vibe code the solution, review the result but ask for the prompt/session as well?

              People will be doing that during normal work anyway, so why not test that directly?

            • By vaginaphobic 2026-03-125:34

              [dead]

          • By JoshTriplett 2026-03-121:17

            > Even if we told you not to use AI, we know almost everyone would use AI.

            You can likely control for that, if you either interview in person or via screen sharing. (Yes, it could be faked, but that's harder.)

      • By hansvm 2026-03-121:363 reply

        The last time I was hiring I gave out a take-home test, and I thought it was the opposite of an imposition on candidates' time. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts:

        - It was designed to be fast to complete (20min max -- not a huge imposition if being hired is likely, obviously very expensive if you're taking one for every job posting).

        - I only gave them out after a resume screen. If you had a 0% chance then I didn't waste your time. If you had enough other proof of abilities then I skipped the take-home.

        - Candidates were told that it was designed to be fast and that if they couldn't complete it quickly they were unlikely to be successful interviewing either. They still had the option to spend a lot of time if they thought my assessment of the situation was wrong, but part of the point was to allow candidates to gauge their own abilities and not waste their time interviewing without a chance of being hired.

        - I did a lot of work behind the scenes calibrating and re-writing the questions individually and as a whole so that the test score correlated very well with interview performance (most interviews administered by not-me, removing a form of bias that's easy to creep in there).

        • By heavyset_go 2026-03-121:533 reply

          For every "20 min max" take home assignment, there will be people who are willing to spend 4+ hours doing it to outshine candidates who have jobs, families and lives.

          If you want to make it more of a fair consideration of time, consider moving your take home to interviews, that way there isn't a time cost asymmetry. You can enforce your "20 min max" claim this way, you can judge a candidate's performance, thought process and filter out anyone who is LLMing or spending inordinate amounts of time on them.

          You will also make a better impression on candidates by investing your time in them in the same way they are with you. Maybe you're hiring kids out of college without experience, but you only have to do so many take home tests before you realize that they're a waste of time, and pass on potential employers who throw them at you, or you learn to just send them your hourly rate for the test.

          • By parpfish 2026-03-122:22

            One other way to keep things true to the “20 min max” is to have a clear objective/scoring rubric. Nothing open ended (data science jobs LOVE handing out open ended data analyses). I need to know that it’s okay to stop and that anything I’m doing would just be overkill.

          • By seer 2026-03-123:58

            Live coding during an interview is one of the most oppressive things I’ve witnessed in the industry in general.

            There is usually a huge disconnect between someone who knows that “this task should take 20mins” and doing it cold in a super high-pressure environment.

            People sweat, panic, brain freeze, and are just plain out stressed.

            I’ll only OK something like this if we give out a similar but not the same task before the interview so a person can train a bit beforehand.

            I’ve heard it all justified as “we want to see how you perform under pressure” but to me that has always sounded super flimsy - like if this is representative of how work is done at this organisation, then do I want to work there in the first place? And if it isn’t, why the hell are you putting people through this ringer in the first place, just sounds inhumane.

          • By stbtrax 2026-03-122:341 reply

            you can put a time limit on it from when they start to submit. It's really the only way to solve high volume of unqualified applicants. So much time wasted talking to people who could barely code

            • By Barbing 2026-03-122:49

              Submit 30min after interview, “you have 20min” (remainder for bio break or whatever)?

        • By crobertsbmw 2026-03-121:52

          That seems reasonable. Some employers will hand out 3-6 hour assignments after a candidate’s resumes make it through an AI screening.

        • By komali2 2026-03-122:12

          > but part of the point was to allow candidates to gauge their own abilities and not waste their time interviewing without a chance of being hired.

          In my experience this is the wrong game theory. Unemployed people can make job hunting their full time job, so a 20 minute take home doesn't select for "who delivers the highest quality solution in the least amount of time," it selects for "who is the richest applicant who can burn hours on a take home to deliver a higher quality result than people with less time they can afford to spend?"

          Also, nobody should ever self-select themselves out of an interview process. Passing a resume review and getting a callback is about 10% likely: for every job hunt, in my experience , candidates get about 10 callbacks for every 100 resume sends. From there, it's about 20% chance to get to final stage, and from there, maybe 50% to get an offer (you're either their first choice or second; if second, your hiring hinges on whether the first choice accepts). Math is right there: once you pass a resume check, in terms of the volume of applications you've sent, it's optimal to spend far more effort into this gig than into firing off ten or twenty more resumes.

          Therefore, even if the candidate doesn't think they're a good fit, they should do everything they can to stay in the game, including lying by omission.

          After all they might be engaging in imposter syndrome, right? Why assume for the interviewer that your python skills aren't good enough - maybe the interviewer understands perfectly well that you've only used it for scripts and one off tools, but doesn't care because they personally believe your startup experience is more valuable to them and they believe you can up skill! Maybe the take home was designed poorly by someone who was tasked randomly by a lead to shit out a take home, and it's not an accurate indication of what the job would be like. Maybe they sent you the wrong take home? Maybe it's a good take home but you need money so fuck it, if you manage to sneak in despite not being a good fit, you can just bust ass to upskill and make up the difference before anyone notices. Or fuck it twice, it's a shit market and who knows how much longer you'll be able to sell your labor as an engineer, even if you can only fool them for two weeks, that's two weeks of income while you still keep up your job hunt.

      • By SchemaLoad 2026-03-1122:541 reply

        I hate the take homes because companies seem happy to send them out to people who have literally no chance. Sent after they already have a candidate in mind, sent before the resume has been reviewed, sent before the company has invested even a minute talking to you.

        So you waste the weekend on this project when you had no chance from the beginning. And the time restrictions they list mean nothing since if you actually stop after x hours, they will just pick the person who spent the whole weekend and did a more complete job.

        • By suzzer99 2026-03-1123:302 reply

          I got dinged on my Netflix take home 10 years ago because I used the DOM to store state instead of implementing a shadow DOM. Sure, let me just whip that right up.

          • By bluefirebrand 2026-03-1123:363 reply

            Outstanding.

            I've done quite a few interviews and as long as the interviewee maybe said something like "it would be better to use a shadow DOM" and could explain what a shadow DOM is, I would be pretty happy with that

            Expecting someone to build a full shadow DOM as part of their interview take home is excessive

            • By SchemaLoad 2026-03-123:35

              Often you don't even get to the interview step. One time I had a take home that said you could either do frontend only, backend only, or full stack. I decided to pick the backend only one and complete all of the optional backend tasks to make something pretty well made.

              Then they email me back and said the other candidate did the whole thing and they aren't sure if I know how to style a page now because I only completed the backend part.

            • By nitwit005 2026-03-1123:533 reply

              Often times people ding you for doing anything different than they're used to, or what they see as "the standard".

              The worst is when they basically ask how you'd build their product. Some people can't handle a different answer, even as they're busy hiring you to improve things.

              • By tharkun__ 2026-03-121:051 reply

                I do think we have to distinguish two things though.

                It's not really bad to ask someone to do a design session with them and "build their product with them from scratch" isn't inherently bad. That's actually pretty neat if you ask me.

                What's bad is if there's only a single answer and that's whatever they actually built themselves, which might be a pile of thrown together startup poo that was never cleaned up. But you have the same problem with all sorts of "needless trivia" type questions.

                And then do you really want to work at a company, where you can't have a proper "pros and cons of different approaches" type of discussion? If you got hired, you'd have those kinds of discussions with them on an ongoing basis. Bad on the company for letting that person do the hiring but they got what they deserved so to speak.

                Just to make an analogy:

                If they simply ding you for using 4 spaces coz they use 8, that's bad.

                If they ask you why you use 4 spaces, they use 8, give them pros and cons and are there any other approaches and what are the pros and cons of those? That's a good interview so to speak. As an interviewer I would give bonus points if the candidate says something like "I used 4 spaces because I thought that's what you guys were probably using coz everyone's moved away from 8 spaces but secretly I love usings tabs and setting tabwidth to what I want but in reality it really really doesn't matter as long as it's consistent across the codebase as humans can get used to almost everything and this one isn't worth fighting over. Linters and formatters exist for a reason".

                • By suzzer99 2026-03-121:152 reply

                  2 spaces ftmfw. I want to see as much on the screen as possible. Horizontal scrolling is bad.

                  Who still uses 8? Isn't that like a COBOL thing?

                  • By fwipsy 2026-03-121:54

                    Linux kernel still uses 8 I believe. IIRC wide indentation+narrow pages were chosen partly to encourage using functions and avoiding deep nested logic.

                    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.h...

                  • By fragmede 2026-03-121:573 reply

                    Let's compromise. What do you think of 3?

                    • By dotancohen 2026-03-122:57

                      I just recently read about something that requires - hard requirement - 3 spaces for indentation. Most likely read it here on HN. Makes me sick to even think about.

                    • By suzzer99 2026-03-124:11

                      Authorities have been notified.

                    • By mystraline 2026-03-123:03

                      Just add a few zero width spaces. It'll be FINEEEEE :D

                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space

                      Btw, at an old job, some joker developer added or copied 1, and broke the whole testbed. It was quite funny. I came over to the sourcecode hosted in Gitlab, ran my regexes that look for naughty characters. Found it after it ate the devs for half a day.

              • By operatingthetan 2026-03-122:52

                Engineering interviews in tech are arbitrary and biased by design.

              • By bitwize 2026-03-123:37

                This. No hire if, when asked an open-ended question, the candidate does not namedrop unprompted the components of the company's actual production tech stack. Clearly they're not knowledgeable about the engineering aspects of the job and are just bluffing their way through the interview process.

            • By parpfish 2026-03-121:40

              The inability to get feedback and course-correct is my biggest peeve with take homes.

              Is this one of the tests where I just need to throw together a five minute quickie to get over your “can you program” filter? or do you need me to put together something flashy and memorable to show off my ceiling? If o put together my flashy thing, would I get dinged for over-engineering something where a five minute hack solution was good enough?

          • By vaginaphobic 2026-03-125:39

            [dead]

      • By bbkane 2026-03-1120:097 reply

        Employers are also inundated by applications so they're applying higher bars to meet as a sort of back pressure.

        I hate it from the candidates' perspective, but it's not illogical from the employer perspective.

        No, I don't know how to fix it.

        • By nitwit005 2026-03-1120:331 reply

          Getting a lot of applications that don't meet your standard doesn't force you to raise you bar. You still just need someone who meets your standard.

          It's quite rare for companies to have evidence to support their hiring methods, which unfortunately means it's heavily driven by trends.

          • By tmoertel 2026-03-1122:381 reply

            > Getting a lot of applications that don't meet your standard doesn't force you to raise you[r] bar. You still just need someone who meets your standard.

            I'm not sure that first sentence true. Let me play Devil's advocate:

            What's the primary cause of not being able to find someone who meets your standard when you already get lots of applications? It's that your hiring process is bogged down by the masses of unwanted candidates you must evaluate to find the few wanted candidates in the crowd of applicants. And what's the fix? It's better screening. Which is raising your bar, isn't it? Even if it's only to add cargo-cult screens to your bar, it's making the bar more selective, isn't it? Fewer people clear it, right?

            • By nitwit005 2026-03-1122:551 reply

              Arbitrary filtering of candidates is always an option, but then you may as well do it as cheaply as possible. Throw out half the resumes.

              • By dwohnitmok 2026-03-1123:381 reply

                Arbitrary filtering of candidates doesn't reduce the effort that it takes. Let's say 1 out of 1000 of the candidates you see is what you need. The total amount of effort to find the right candidate is still the same. But throwing out half the resumes just doubles the amount of time until you find the candidate you need (you just spread lower effort over a longer time).

                On the other hand if you "raise your bar" (let's say you do so by some method that makes it twice as expensive to judge a candidate; twice as likely to reject a candidate that would fit what you need, i.e. doubles your false negative rate; but cuts down on the number of applications by 10x, so that now 1 out of 100 candidates are what you need, which isn't that far off the mark for certain kinds of things), you cut down the effort (and time) you need to spend on finding a candidate by over double.

                EDIT: On reflection I think we're mainly talking past each other. You are thinking of a scenario where all stages take roughly the same amount of effort/time, whereas tmorel and I are thinking of a scenario where different stages take different amounts of effort/time. If you "raise the bar" on the stages that take less amount of effort/time (assuming that those stages still have some amount of selection usefulness) then you will reduce the overall amount of time/energy spent on hiring someone that meets your final bar.

                • By nitwit005 2026-03-1123:47

                  I wasn't suggesting arbitrarily removing candidates was a good idea, but simply responding to their specific devils advocate example of applying "cargo cult screens", which would presumably be arbitrary.

        • By hunterpayne 2026-03-1123:213 reply

          And why would this be the case? Maybe the solution is to ban AI from the hiring process. This seems like companies being hoisted by their own petard. This is because they are the ones who drove the hiring market to be this way. They are the ones who started using AI in the hiring process. They are the ones who decided to make applying so much work driving applicants to use AI to survive.

          Also, if you are having trouble hiring right now, that is 1000% a skill issue. It is easier to hire good talent right now than ever before. So I have absolutely 0 sympathy for this POV. Go down to your HR department if you want to see who is at fault.

          PS You fix it by charging $1 to apply for jobs. Took me all of 30 seconds to figure that one out.

          • By switchbak 2026-03-120:46

            > charging $1 to apply for jobs

            Yeah, I don't see anyone lining up to game that system. Maybe you ought to think about that a little longer than 30 seconds.

          • By diacritical 2026-03-120:551 reply

            I wouldn't pay anything to a company I'm applying to, but I would gladly send a small amount of money to a charity and show them the relevant bank or cryptocurrency proof if they explain why they need the micropayment. They could present me with a list of 10 or 10000 charities, I'd pick 1 and put "micropayment for applying to company X" in the comment of the payment.

            That way I know I'm not giving money to some huge corporation and they know I think applying to their job should at least cost me Y amounts of currency.

            And if they waste more than an hour of my time with the hiring process, they could similarly pay a charity some money per hour.

            That was neither me nor the company will feel cheated and in the end, no matter how the hiring turns out, a charity will have benefited.

            • By fwipsy 2026-03-121:571 reply

              To avoid overhead for many small payments, start a platform where users can buy many credits at once by contributing larger amounts to charity. Then, you burn your credits to apply to companies (or cold message applicants) to show you're not just spraying and praying.

              • By diacritical 2026-03-122:51

                Some more thoughts before I go to bed.

                This could also be used for combating spam elsewhere, like posting in forums, comment sections and so on. To preserve privacy, something like zero-knowledge proofs could be utilized. I don't know how the cryptography would work exactly, but if you can't double spend a credit and you can choose whether to keep it anonymous or not, it could work, too. It would be best if for a given credit spent, you could only disclose your identity to the entity you want access to, not the credit issuing entity.

                For spam, it seems like the cost of maintaining a forum like the servers are much lower than the cost of the mods that deal with spam. So instead of paying the forum directly, we lower the need for human mods to spend their time. That way we lower resources to the forum indirectly. The credits could be per post or per account creation. I assume the HN mods' time is worth a lot more than the servers and power HN runs on.

                Also, we won't have the issue that PoW and other proofs-of-X's have of being easier to do on some devices, but harder on others (like the power and time it takes to run PoW on a beefy desktop with AES-NI vs an on old phone).

                But we'll still have the issue with different standards of living in different places making the credits more or less expensive for the user subjectively. Companies hiring worldwide could require different amounts of credits for applicants from different countries, but for forums this wouldn't work.

                A solution to that could be issuers giving credits for local volunteering work. Clean up some garbage from the shore and get a credit regardless of whether you're in the USA or Bangladesh. But if you want to prevent credits from being traded (do we? idk) and, at the same time, have some amount of privacy, how would you do it?

                But now you'd have to make sure that credit issuers all over the world only issue credits for real charity-like work. And who's to say how to value picking up garbage vs volunteering at an animal shelter vs donating 1$ to a charity.

                It's interesting to think about this, even though I don't have any resource to implement anything like that.

          • By encom 2026-03-120:111 reply

            You have invented micro-payments, which has never worked, ever.

            • By mistrial9 2026-03-121:46

              micro-payments were sabotaged by existing financial interests on multiple levels

        • By sds357 2026-03-1121:481 reply

          Maybe we should go back to show up in person to drop off your resume

          • By ccosky 2026-03-123:31

            I wouldn't be surprised if eventually hiring becomes heavily dependent on personal referrals. That way you know you're at least dealing with a real person and not a bot, a North Korean trying to infiltrate your company, or someone who isn't even authorized to work in your country.

        • By eikenberry 2026-03-1122:291 reply

          Smaller companies is one fix. These are almost all problems of fast growth and scale.

          • By ChrisMarshallNY 2026-03-121:40

            The problem is that spambots don’t care how big the company is. I know folks that advertised local Office Manager positions for tiny companies, and got hundreds of totally unqualified and unrelated rèsumès, and that was before AI was common.

            The “good” news, was, that it was pretty easy to bin the spam.

        • By RobotToaster 2026-03-1120:551 reply

          Require paper application.

          If someone has to pay for a stamp it will stop spam applications.

          • By deathanatos 2026-03-1122:111 reply

            … needing to pay for postage hardly stops the spam I receive in my own mail. Even the most trivially absurd stuff, like "install rooftop solar" — I don't own a roof.

        • By gedy 2026-03-1120:22

          In the end companies don't need to hook up to the sewer pipe that floods applications. What worked in past was (heaven forbid) technical hiring manager looking at resumes, etc and reaching out to clearly qualified candidates. Not hr 20-somethings with humanities degrees. Sorry

        • By tayo42 2026-03-1122:261 reply

          Certification process like what Cisco has.

          All companies attempt to give the same interviews, just have one centralized organization give two programing questions and two system design questions and some kind of proof once you pass it.

          You filter every one that can't pass the interview in the first place, you get a better interview experience, and just focus on experience

          • By singleshot_ 2026-03-1122:342 reply

            This sounds an awful lot like a college diploma.

            • By bigfishrunning 2026-03-1123:30

              Lots of people get through engineering school but are terrible engineers. Interviews are important (and difficult... Not many people are good interviewers!)

            • By tayo42 2026-03-1123:001 reply

              Colleges aren't all equal.

              Professional certifications are different

              • By hunterpayne 2026-03-1123:262 reply

                Professional certifications have a terrible reputation for good reason. You are perhaps too young to know why this is a silly idea. But its been tried and it failed spectacularly.

                • By acheron 2026-03-1123:422 reply

                  It works in essentially every other profession. Programming isn’t that special.

                  • By jjmarr 2026-03-121:51

                    In essentially every other profession the credential is gated behind years of work experience and often a degree or course.

                    We already have such a credential. It's called "lasting two years at a FAANG+ without getting fired". If you do that you can get interviews anywhere.

                  • By operatingthetan 2026-03-122:55

                    It appears that the coding job will be some variation will be some variation of vibecoding going forward, so a professional cert might be good enough.

                • By tayo42 2026-03-122:18

                  I have an example of a certification that is useful in my first comment...

    • By CoastalCoder 2026-03-1119:311 reply

      I agree in principle.

      However, having been unemployed for over a year with a family to feed, I learned a little about what I'd put up with to get a job.

      • By plagiarist 2026-03-1120:122 reply

        Yeah this. I hate this planet. So many problems would go away if people could actually afford to make choices.

        • By dmitrygr 2026-03-120:442 reply

          > So many problems would go away if

          Writing it like you did implies that a magical solution exists and we are all maliciously withholding it from you. It does not and we are not.

          • By brailsafe 2026-03-124:30

            I disagree with the notion that that's what their word choice implies. Also, there doesn't need be magical solution that's not being implemented for there to clearly be a severely heightened level of precarity in the economy that has a hugely negative impact on people who haven't had time to build a financial safety net, build their careers, or buy a house when it was feasible, in large part due specifically to aggressive, malicious, sometimes coordinated extractions of rent and land value

          • By john_strinlai 2026-03-122:38

            >implies that a magical solution exists and we are all maliciously withholding it from you

            i did not get that from what they wrote at all.

            they sound frustrated. but that does not mean they are frustrated at you specifically.

        • By 9rx 2026-03-1120:561 reply

          Resource allocation is entirely a social construct. Not being afford something is a 'pretend' state that only exists because everyone agrees to go along with it.

          Even if a magical unicorn were to step in and start distributing resources perfectly, solving that particular problem, if humans can't even get something as simple as resource allocation right, why are you so sure they won't also screw up everything else to ensure that all other problems remain?

          • By roenxi 2026-03-1121:336 reply

            > Resource allocation is entirely a social construct. Not being afford something is a 'pretend' state that only exists because everyone agrees to go along with it.

            That can't exactly be true, because scarcity is a physical limit. If there is exactly 1 apple, it is impossible for 2 people to eat it. That is no social construct.

            There is a large social element involved, but that in itself is done in such a way as to try and encourage creation of a large amount of stuff to a large number of people. It isn't arbitrary; there are a lot of allocation schemes that lead to mass starvation and poverty. The natural human instincts are beyond terrible at allocating resources; pretty much everyone at this point has discovered that laws and capitalism with some welfare trimmings on the edge is a much better approach than any alternative that got tried.

            • By altruios 2026-03-1122:061 reply

              I hear and understand your point. It is not purely a social construct. But how much available farmland to allocate to grow food from the available farmland becomes a political issue. Pricing, distribution... same deal.

              And considering our (humanity's) food production outmatches our total food calorie/nutrition requirements... any argument using food as an example for scarcity indicates that you may be working with incorrect, or outdated information.

              And Is "money" a social construct, or is there 'natural' money, some platonic ideal from which all other instantiations of money arise? I'm betting on the former.

              • By 9rx 2026-03-125:53

                > It is not purely a social construct.

                What else is involved? Despite the inane ramblings of the parent comment, scarcity isn't actually a factor. Allocation occurs because of scarcity. Without scarcity, there is no such thing as allocation. It is the reason for why resource allocation exists entirely a social construct.

            • By janalsncm 2026-03-1123:261 reply

              The amount of resources is not a social construct but how they are distributed is.

              The mean American has a net worth of $620k. The median American net worth is $192k.

              The global mean net worth is $95k. The median is $9k.

            • By schmidtleonard 2026-03-1122:07

              It's interesting that both the USA and China found that the prosperity maximum happened when capitalism was kept in line with a firm hand, even though China approached from the left and the USA approached from the right and later departed back to the right.

            • By einpoklum 2026-03-1123:06

              > That can't exactly be true, because scarcity is a physical limit.

              Indeed, but - human productive capacity has become so vast, that the only way for there to be scarcity is for it to be artificially maintained.

              > The natural human instincts are beyond terrible at allocating resources

              Disagree, in the sense that a lot of what we consider "natural" is the result of social circumstances, emphasizing or encouraging the expression of some sentiments and tendencies over others. In other words, "natural" is usually rather artificial.

            • By 9rx 2026-03-1123:511 reply

              > That can't exactly be true, because scarcity is a physical limit.

              Hence resource allocation. If there were no physical limit, there would be nothing in need of allocation. Allocation is intrinsically bound to scarcity.

              > If there is exactly 1 apple, it is impossible for 2 people to eat it.

              Hence resource allocation. If there were an infinite number of apples, there would be nothing in need of allocation. Allocation is intrinsically bound to scarcity.

              > There is a large social element involved

              There is only the human social element involved. There isn't a magical deity in the sky waving a magic wand or a group of space aliens from Xylos IV deciding who gets what. Resources are allocated only by how people, and people alone, decide they want to allocate them.

              You being unable to afford something isn't some fundamental property of the universe. It is simply something people made up at random and decided to run with it. People could, in theory, change their mind on a whim such that suddenly you could become able to afford something.

              > The natural human instincts are beyond terrible at allocating resources

              Now you're finally starting to get on-topic. So given that you see humans as being beyond terrible at allocating resources, why do you think, if they were relieved of having to handle resource allocation, that they would suddenly become not terrible at everything else in order to see all of those other problems magically disappear, per the contextual parent comment? Not going to happen. The harsh reality is that creating problems is human nature.

            • By hackable_sand 2026-03-1122:00

              That's really funny

    • By kace91 2026-03-1122:37

      There is a limited ability to reject work, which is based on the fact that we all need a salary to live (the usual definition of class).

      Offer and demand have left most engineers at a level of comfort where we can usually ignore that reality (until we age, become disabled, or go through similar stuff), but we shouldn’t rely only on that to protect people from mistreatment. This should not be legal.

    • By piyuv 2026-03-1121:331 reply

      I’ve read many horror stories from Indian developers about how they’re treated. They can’t escape it since almost every company in India will treat them the same. Their only escape is a remote job or to relocate.

      I believe we’ll see this play out in a global scale. Once every employer paying a good salary does this, we won’t be able to pick and choose, without forfeiting a huge chunk of income. At that point I’d rather become a baker.

      • By eikenberry 2026-03-1122:251 reply

        Small companies are an obvious 3rd place to escape to and there should be a good number of them given all the big companies behave as you indicate.. unless it really hard to start a new business in India. Do you know if this is the case or why else wouldn't you consider small businesses as a alternative?

        • By dice 2026-03-1122:561 reply

          I'm hiring at a small company and it's a nightmare. 1,000+ applicants for a software engineering position and we have essentially no help from recruiting. I'm filtering based on keywords, giving each resume a max of 90 seconds, and anything that even slightly seems off gets rejected.

          I only have the bandwidth to talk to a couple 10s of candidates since I have the entire rest of my job to do, so I can see the appeal of an AI interviewer. I'd never use one due to the issues brought up here though.

          • By davnicwil 2026-03-120:27

            just thinking about this, if you had the latitude to explain it more or less exactly as you have here, in human language, and frame it as a screen stage of the application and not an interview, and add: 'hey, I know this is really far from ideal but if you're legitimately interested this probably works in your favour', good people might not mind it.

            I think most of the issue with this kind of thing, practical stuff aside like extra time invested and potential unpleasantness of actual experience, is what it implies about the culture and your relationship. If you level with people a lot of that gets addressed, and you're left with 'only' the practical inconvenience.

    • By TuringNYC 2026-03-125:24

      >> For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

      Was this an initial screener or the final deciding interview? Also curious if you felt the async nature of an AI screener (if it was a screener) might be beneficial to some w/r/t timing (e.g., if I have a job, I wouldnt have time to interview during the day, so i'd prefer an async screener I can do at night or over the weekend.)

    • By Manuel_D 2026-03-120:543 reply

      For a first-round interview, it was not uncommon to have a leet-code style automated assignment as early as the mid 2010s. I recall more than a few highly regarded employers that did this in 2014.

      Is an AI interview meaningfully different than one of these automated interview systems? A lot of people are assuming that there'd be a human interview absent this AI interview, but it could very easily just be another automated interview - just a less sophisticated one. A company using an AI interview where I'd normally see a Leet-code assignment (e.g a first round coding interview) would not strike me as a bad thing.

      Of course if they wanted to the the entire interview loops with AI I'd stay away.

      • By john_strinlai 2026-03-122:48

        >Is an AI interview meaningfully different than one of these automated interview systems?

        i think it is important to remember that ai interviews arent constrained to the tech industry. many people who have no idea what a 'leet-code' is, and who have always done normal human-human interviews, are now having to navigate being interviewed by ai as well.

      • By sarchertech 2026-03-121:10

        1. Plenty of people have problems with any screening that requires work on the candidate side but nothing on the employer side. In that regard both of these options are equally bad.

        2. Automated code screens usually have an objective right answer. With an AI interview you have no idea what the how you did or how your answers could trigger an LLM to reject you.

        And there’s the fact that you have to talk to it like it’s a human which many maybe most people find at least a bit dehumanizing.

      • By drcxd 2026-03-122:54

        A leet-code style automated assignment is like a test. We all did tests in school so I guess most people do not feel there is anything wrong about that.

        However, an interview, which should be conducted by human, but instead by something AI pretends to be human, would make most of the current human beings feel disgusted, naturally.

        Is there any formal proof that an AI conducted interview yields more than a pencil & paper test? Or is there any scientific research about that? I doubt there would be any in the near future. Then using such AI conducted interviews is simply a belief.

    • By rendaw 2026-03-126:06

      I hate that it's the case, but generally the ones doing the dumb stuff during the hiring process are HR, and you'll not be interacting with them for 99% of the job once hired. Even before LLMs they were using AI and dumber applicant screening, causing people to fill their resumes with keywords.

    • By toomanyrichies 2026-03-1123:421 reply

      Indeed- if they'll hire you via AI, they're likely to fire you via AI, when the time inevitably comes.

      • By RobRivera 2026-03-121:46

        At that point just send an email with attachments for regular outprocessing information

    • By beloch 2026-03-1121:00

      Many don't judge a company by their inhuman resources department, but probably should.

    • By rk06 2026-03-123:573 reply

      I think this is a bit unreasonable. there are a lot of people applying to every job post. if a company can use AI to better filter the candidates, then it is an improvement.

      there is issue only if AI is encoded with human bias, but treated as neutral and impartial judge

      • By autoexec 2026-03-125:22

        Would you be okay with applicants using AI for these interviews? If I have thousands of applications out and I can use AI to better filter the companies I want to work for then it's an improvement.

      • By bigstrat2003 2026-03-124:03

        No, it isn't remotely unreasonable. It is completely disrespectful of a candidate to make them "interview" with a bot. I'm not going to work for a company which disrespects me in that way right up front.

      • By Charon77 2026-03-123:59

        Interview is a two-way communication. Just as companies evaluating the candidates, the candidates are also evaluating the company.

        How would the company feels if the people applying uses AI avatar to answer the interview questions too?

    • By dgudkov 2026-03-122:061 reply

      Dehumanizing customers by making them talk to (or chat with) AI bots is OK and kinda cool.

      Dehumanizing [potential] employees by making them talk to (or chat with) AI bots is NOT OK and kinda sucks.

      Am I getting it right?

      • By tdeck 2026-03-123:07

        You've chosen to miss the power relationship completely.

    • By jvickers 2026-03-121:00

      Philosophically I really like the idea in terms of how I'd like to work. If they are paying for a data processing node then they can have that. It won't stop me from being a human, and it could give me more time to get on with my life.

    • By tracerbulletx 2026-03-1123:15

      Listen it does suck, but I dont think this is really true. A lot of the best places to work treat candidates like subhumans before they are welcomed into the fold and then suddenly you're making 300k+ doing interesting work with incredible people and treated great, (until they're done with you at some point)

    • By b8 2026-03-123:26

      IBM and the government often asks for recorded answers to questions for interviews now

    • By BurningFrog 2026-03-123:19

      I once worked at a company that received 1500 SWE applications per day.

      There simply wasn't enough people around to give everyone the personal treatment they may think they deserved. Taking this as a personal insult is not a great sign that I'd want to work with you...

    • By wordpad 2026-03-120:28

      I have a junior position open and got 1,300 applicants in 1 week before we took it down. Many of the candidates with strong resumes are just lying and doing so well enough to pass HR screens.

      I doubt any sort of AI screen would help though as many of the lying candidates are already using AI assist tools making it just a cat and mouse race...

      I don't know a good solution to give everyone a fair chance.

    • By esafak 2026-03-120:28

      > when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward

      Except they're not. A significant fraction of applicants are people you would not want in your company. Outright frauds. You find out when you are on the hiring end and you can see the raw applications without any filters. The question is are you going to reject them based on whatever information you can glean without a call or interview, or are you going to give them a chance? A looser screen is more democratic, but it calls for scalable solutions like this. Perhaps a middle ground is to screen only the suspect candidates with AI.

    • By ncr100 2026-03-1121:482 reply

      Need to say versions of this more often, "That is not how it works here."

      A very powerful and clarifying comment made by a European reporter, to a US Envoy of the Trump administration, during the first Presidency. (January 2018 press conference involving Pete Hoekstra)

      It was in response to the Envoy bullshit and lie about how he didn't say some anti-Islam thing (claiming that the Islamic movement had brought "chaos" to the Netherlands and that there were "no-go zones" where politicians were being burned). Then one reporter -- Roel Geeraedts, stated: "This is the Netherlands. You have to answer questions." And finally another reporter followed up with the top quote.

      • By hunterpayne 2026-03-120:022 reply

        "That is not how it works here."

        Right, how it works in Europe is there are just no jobs or economic growth at all. Works great for those late in their career who have jobs and basically can't be fired. Not so much for anyone younger though. Better hope your employer doesn't go out of business before you retire. Better hope your government doesn't go bankrupt before you die.

        Stop injecting politics into a non-political discussion that had nothing to do with Trump or politics at all. Especially since Europe's situation doesn't exactly shine by comparison.

    • By einpoklum 2026-03-1123:01

      Poorly, which is how a huge fraction of employees are treated by their employers. This is particularly true in the US, where unionization rates are very low, the dominant culture is massively biased in favor of owners/employers, and labor laws are few and grant little.

      That is to say, that as bad as this experience is, it is unfortunately not something so far from what many potential employees have to look forward to. Remember that people interviewing to work as unskilled laborers in a Domino's pizza store (to give an example from the video) may not have such a wide array of choices and likely really need to get some job to make ends meet.

  • By kazinator 2026-03-1122:592 reply

    > But as we’ve covered again and again, a bias-free AI system is an impossible-to-achieve standard, since models are trained on large swaths of the internet, which contain sexism, racism, and other biases.

    LLM trained on texts from before 1913 (Source: https://github.com/DGoettlich/history-llms):

    Q. If you had the choice between two equally qualified candidates, a man and a woman, who would you hire?

    A. I should prefer a man of good character and education to a woman. A woman is apt to be less capable, less reliable, and less well trained. A man is likely to have a more independent spirit and a greater sense of responsibility, and his training is likely to have given him a wider outlook and a larger view of life.

    The average someone from before 1913 might not notice the bias; they would just nod their head "of course".

    Just like Joe A. Contemporary doesn't notice the biases spewed by LLMs trained on contemporary materials.

    • By WarmWash 2026-03-120:521 reply

      The problem with erasing biases is that you cannot look at any statistics. The internet and training set can be free of any form of -ism, and the models would still be expected to have biases. In fact it's something desirable, because statistical inferences are a valuable tool.

      The AI won't care if some people get upset because it consistently recommends you get Mexican food instead of Italian when you're visiting south Texas. The weak link is humans not recognizing that that doesn't mean there cannot be good Italian food in south Texas. A logical hurdle I don't see AI having any problem with.

      • By projektfu 2026-03-121:111 reply

        I didn't find much in East Texas. Is South Texas much better?

        • By agrounds 2026-03-122:40

          There are dozens and dozens of cheap-looking restaurants in San Antonio with absolutely no online presence that will serve you the most delicious tex mex you’ve had in your whole life

    • By gozucito 2026-03-120:29

      That is a great way to illustrate it!

      Unfortunately, the message will not sink in because it is unpleasant. Almost ll of us want to think we're fair and unbiased.

  • By ossa-ma 2026-03-1119:495 reply

    Perfectly encapsulates the state of the job market. Interviewing is genuinely a hellscape at this point and I've experienced many interviews where there was a complete breakdown of etiquette/guidelines and good faith.

    One was so bad I had to write about it: https://ossama.is/writing/betrayed

    • By xlii 2026-03-1121:461 reply

      Geez. Good one. Was in something similar lately. 10 weeks wasted and a shittiest feedback ever. These companies should be legally required to pay candidates for gauntlets they put them through.

      • By ossa-ma 2026-03-1122:111 reply

        The lack of feedback is the worst part and is increasingly more common. Zero respect for the candidates time investment and propagates a terrible culture.

        • By whatever1 2026-03-1122:492 reply

          Most of big-CO legal teams do not allow for feedback to be communicated to the candidates. They are afraid the candidates will sue base on that. That is not new.

          • By lurking_swe 2026-03-122:381 reply

            They could at least allow hiring teams to send out a feedback email that highlights what the candidate did WELL, at a high level. This way the candidate gets some meaningful signal, while the company avoids the legal gray area of admitting why they rejected them. Just add a disclaimer like “unfortunately company policy prohibits us from explicitly mentioning why we chose another candidate.”

            But you’d need to actually care to take something like that into consideration so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

            • By whatever1 2026-03-123:11

              Have you ever talked to a lawyer? The only thing that they keep repeating is "shut your mouth".

          • By _DeadFred_ 2026-03-120:17

            Our entire system is getting so bogged down by things like this that it is ceasing to function. Lots of things that make sense individually but are breaking the previous social contract, or removing the grease that made things work.

    • By quibono 2026-03-1121:36

      Sorry to hear that, here I was thinking that a blog like this could only be a good signal and a jumping-off point in an interview. Oh well

    • By gombosg 2026-03-1122:121 reply

      I'm sorry for your experience, but loved the painting at the end... :)

    • By givemeethekeys 2026-03-120:19

      Solid rant, mate! And a great blog, too!

    • By tmoertel 2026-03-1123:462 reply

      I'm sorry you had such a bad interviewing experience. You asked for feedback in your blog post, and since your blog doesn't allow comments, I hope you won't mind my responding here.

      You wrote something that I think is untrue of most tech companies, so I'd like to discuss it:

      > [As I and a friend spoke], I realised something: Three technical interviews went well, I was feeling confident going into the behavioural interview... This means that I'm heading into behavioural and HR contract stages with confidence in my performance thus far and my ability to excel at the role. And it means that I have the upper hand in salary and benefit negotiation. This is horrible for them. THEY NEED to shut me down and bring me down a few rungs before this step. And to edge me for 2 weeks (and counting...) after the supposed final round before I hear anything back.

      I suspect that approximately 0% of top tech firms are trying to tank your interview as a comp-negotiating tactic. For most of these firms, the biggest problem is finding people they want to hire. To find qualified people, they need to measure what applicants, like you, can actually do. And they can't get a good measurement when they sabotage your performance. Further, if they decide to hire you, they need you to feel good about the company, not hate it because of how you were maltreated. They want you to say yes to their offer, not rage quit the hiring pipeline.

      I'm not saying that there aren't bad companies or bad interviewers out there. Nor am I saying that you can't get into an interview where the other person is actually out to get you. It happens. Maybe it happened to you.

      What I'm trying to say is that if your mental model of the hiring process is that the company is probably going to sabatage your end-game interviews, you're probably going to be wrong most of the time and make some bad decisions.

      > What do you think? Was that a normal interview that I should have expected? I am in the wrong by posting this? Should I nuke my blog?

      Here's what I think. If you have a public blog, it's fair game at an interview. If you write mostly about data science stuff but you apply for a software engineering job, you ought to be prepared to explain the contrast. Understand that, for most top firms, hiring good people and getting them to stick is hard. Most employers will want some assurance that you are serious about the position you're applying for. If you send signals that you might want some other position, be prepared to get asked about those signals.

      And you got asked about those signals:

      > "How do we know we won't hire you and you'll try to transition to a data scientist?"

      You ought to be prepared for questions like these. For example, most interviewers would probably be satisfied with an answer like these:

      That's a great question. Data science is something I do for fun in my spare time. I don't want it to become my day job. I love software engineering and that's what I want to focus my career on.

      Or:

      That's an important question. Thanks for asking about it. I try to stay abreast of important trends in industry, and when AI and data became important in some of my past work, I put in some personal time to learn more about them. When I learn things, I often write about them on my blog to help me remember. My blog's just a learning tool, a memory aid, right? It's not a barometer of my career interests. If you want to know what my career interests are, let me be clear: I want to write software. Five years from now, I still want to be a software engineer.

      > Should I nuke my blog?

      I'd say no. But you should read your blog from the perspective of a firm that's considering you for a job and be prepared to explain away anything they might have concerns about.

      That's just my two cents. If you find anything in my comment helpful, great. If not, feel free to dismiss everything I've written.

      Best wishes on your job hunt.

      • By ossa-ma 2026-03-120:13

        > mental model of the hiring process is that the company is probably going to sabatage your end-game interviews

        I definitely agree and it is not a mental model that I carry into any interview, I have good intentions and I'm super friendly! This was only a tiny (disillusioned) post-interview reflection. I would say most interviews especially with engineers have gone well but there has absolutely been a vibe shift in the past year.

        You can tell teams are a lot more risk averse when it comes to hiring. The promise of a fabled 10x engineer on the horizon paired with SWE automation devaluing existing talent has meant they will make you jump through 10 more loops and even then the decision is scrutinised. Understandably hiring is an expensive process (both successful and unsuccessful).

        > Most employers will want some assurance that you are serious about the position you're applying for.

        This is also a reflection of the job market. If it was balanced this notion would not exist. It's become a game of numbers, automated screening + AI has meant candidates need to send out 100s of application often with automation on their end too. On the other side every job likely receives 1000s of applications especially with stupid things like "L*nkedIn Easy Apply". Me personally, I would not apply for a role I am not committed to taking and I especially would not have gone through FOUR stages for fun, the first interview should be plenty screening for both parties!!! Alas.

        I appreciate you taking the time to respond and thank you for your well wishes!

      • By Teever 2026-03-120:271 reply

        > Here's what I think. If you have a public blog, it's fair game at an interview. If you write mostly about data science stuff but you apply for a software engineering job, you ought to be prepared to explain the contrast. Understand that, for most top firms, hiring good people and getting them to stick is hard. Most employers will want some assurance that you are serious about the position you're applying for. If you send signals that you might want some other position, be prepared to get asked about those signals.

        This is kind of absurd. Could you imagine a registered nurse being asked to expain why they have a blog about astronomy and not nursing?

        "What do you mean you don't write about dressing wounds in your spare time? How much could you really know about it then?"

        "Managing Type 2 Diabetes isn't interesting enough for you to blog about? I'll have you know most of the patients htat you would be dealing with at this long term care facility have T2D. I'm skeptical that you'd be able to care for them."

        Why do we allow this kind of BS in the tech industry? Whens the last time a nurse did a whiteboard interview?

        • By matheusmoreira 2026-03-121:16

          > Could you imagine a registered nurse being asked to expain why they have a blog about astronomy and not nursing?

          That hits pretty close to home... I'm a doctor who has a small blog about the implementation details of the lisp I made.

          > Managing Type 2 Diabetes isn't interesting enough for you to blog about?

          If someone asked me this point blank I think I'd laugh out loud. It's interesting enough for me to keep up with the latest evidence, thanks.

          > Whens the last time a nurse did a whiteboard interview?

          To be fair, healthcare professionals have some pretty gruelling training and difficult licensing examinations. Some amount of preselection is taking place. Nobody needs a license to write software.

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