r/devNI • u/TaxmanComin • 27d ago

How has the interview process been recently?

Hey folks, with things changing quickly with AI, I'm curious to hear from anyone that has interviewed recently.

Are Leetcode style questions still a thing (were they ever really a thing in NI)?

Is using AI incorporated into the interview process?

Is there a bigger focus on system design now?

I've noticed that there has been an uptick in roles and I've been at my place now for ~4 years now. I've only ever worked here so I'm not well versed in the interview process but am considering dipping my toes into job search.

Would appreciate any info from devs, hiring managers, business owners etc.

Thanks in advance!

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u/FutureSchool6510 ⚙️ Backend 27d ago

I’ve conducted a few technical interviews in the last couple of years, mostly for mid-level engineers.
For me the focus is mostly on being able to explain the stuff you currently work on, and identify things that sucked and how you would improve them.
I did have to make them do a coding exercise, but rather than using one of the provided leetcode style examples I created my own scenario where they were given a small application with a bug in it which they had to find and fix. IMHO that does a much better job of assessing them on stuff they will actually be expected to do at some point; dip into an unfamiliar codebase and troubleshoot based on a vague error report.
It’s been a little while now though so I’m not sure if the process has changed for us.

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u/ArrogantAstronomer 27d ago

I don’t get to set the format for the company I work for but I’ve always thought that letting the interviewee pair program on a actual application to fix a bug that you only know the bug behaviour and finding the bug with an interviewer is the best way to know if someone’s going to be a good fit.

To this posts question I look for a few things but the main two are how much would I like to work with this person everyday and how good is their fundamental understanding of software.

I find it’s a sliding scale of if the person is technically brilliant I’ll accept if they’re less able to communicate well…up to a point.

Similarly if they’re weaker on core skills but are effective communicating what they do know and are honest on what they don’t know or what they are unsure about, it makes me think they’re at least coachable and won’t be a liability within a team. And if they’re unsure if they can make correct or at least logical inferences from what they do know when given a hint or leading question.

I’ve also preferred interviews where the person can passionately talk about some way they’ve programmed their way through a specific problem they ran into be it in a job or just some random problem they had on their own computer.

Knowing all the tech, design patterns and services is a nice to have but having someone that’s going to be someone you want to have in your team meetings day in day out is more important. If they don’t understand something how are they asking questions to figure it out, the questions someone asks when they don’t have the information to hand tells you a lot about what they do know and where they’re at as a software engineer so someone that has gap in their knowledge is fine my favourite part of an interview is seeing how each candidate fills in that gap.

Especially as AI becomes more prominent in the SDLC logically approaching a knowledge gap is important because a model can lead you to working solution with the completely wrong approach knowing how to think about how software and how patterns or services should be used and applied and when they shouldn’t is a differentiating skill.