Something’s been bugging me about how new devs and I need to talk about it. We’re at this weird inflection point in software development. Every junior dev I talk to has Copilot or Claude or GPT running 24/7. They’re shipping code faster than ever. But when I dig deeper into their understanding of what they’re shipping? That’s where things get concerning. Sure, the code works, but ask why it works that way instead of another way? Crickets. Ask about edge cases? Blank stares. The foundational knowledge that used to come from struggling through problems is just… missing. We’re trading deep understanding for quick fixes, and while it feels great in the moment, we’re going to pay for this later.
But how do you find those people solely based on a short interview, where they can use AI tools to perform better if the interview is not held in person?
And mind you the SO was better because you needed to read a lot of answers there and try to understand what would work in your particular case. Learn how to ask smartly. Do your homework and explain the question properly so as not to get gaslit, etc. this is all now gone.
Pretty easy to come up with problems that chatGPT is useless at. You can test it pretty easily. Throw enough constraints at it and the transformer starts to loose attention and forget vital parts.
With a bit of effort you can make problems where chatGPT will actuallt give a misleading answer and candidates have to think critically.
Just like in the past it was pretty easy to come up with problems which werent easily found on SO.
Same landscape. If you put in the time and the effort to have a solid recruitment process, you get solid devs. If you have a lazy and shitty process, you get shitty devs.
Evil me: Ask questions to which there is no solution but ChatGPT will happily give incorrect solutions to and will run itself in circles trying to answer correctly as you feed it error messages.
But how do you find those people solely based on a short interview, where they can use AI tools to perform better if the interview is not held in person?
And mind you the SO was better because you needed to read a lot of answers there and try to understand what would work in your particular case. Learn how to ask smartly. Do your homework and explain the question properly so as not to get gaslit, etc. this is all now gone.
Pretty easy to come up with problems that chatGPT is useless at. You can test it pretty easily. Throw enough constraints at it and the transformer starts to loose attention and forget vital parts.
With a bit of effort you can make problems where chatGPT will actuallt give a misleading answer and candidates have to think critically.
Just like in the past it was pretty easy to come up with problems which werent easily found on SO.
Same landscape. If you put in the time and the effort to have a solid recruitment process, you get solid devs. If you have a lazy and shitty process, you get shitty devs.
Evil me: Ask questions to which there is no solution but ChatGPT will happily give incorrect solutions to and will run itself in circles trying to answer correctly as you feed it error messages.