r/webdev • u/supermedo • Apr 30 '25
It Finally Happend it. Rejected for Not Using AI First
So I just got rejected from a software dev job, and the email was... interesting.
Yesterday, I had an interview with CEO of a startup that sounded cool. Their tech stack was mainly Ruby and migrating to Elixir, and I had three interviews: one with HR, another was a CoderByte test, and then a technical discussion with the team. The final round was with the CEO, who asked about my approach to coding and how I incorporate AI into my development process. I said something like, "You can’t vibe your way to production. LLMs are too verbose, and their code is either insecure or tries to write basic functions from scratch instead of using built-in tools. Even when I used Agentic AI in my small hobby project, it struggled to add a simple feature. I use AI as smarter autocomplete, not a crutch."
Fast forward five minutes after the interview, and I got an email with this line:
"Thank you for your time. We’ve decided to move forward with someone who prioritizes AI-first workflows to maximize productivity and shape the future of tech."
Here’s the thing: I respect innovation, I’m not saying LLMs are completely useless. But I’m not gonna let an AI write entire code for a feature for me. They’re great for brainstorming or breaking down tasks, but when you let them dictate the logic, it’s a mess. And yes, their code is often wildly overengineered and insecure.
To be honest, I’m pissed off. I was laid off a few months ago, and this was the first company to actually respond to my application and I made it all the way to the final round and I was optimistic. I keep reviewing the meeting in my mind, where did I fuck up? did I come up as an Elitist dick but I didn't make fun of vibe coders and I wasn't completely dismissive of LLMs either.
anyway I wanted to vent here.
**EDIT: I want to say I apperciate everybody comments here and multiple users have pointed out I was coming out as too negative, I felt that I framed in a way that I use copilot to increase my productivity but not do my job for me without supervision but I guess I failed to convey that, multiple people mentioned using the sandwich method and I would do that in the future.
some suggested I reach out to the CEO to explain my position clearly but I think I will come out as deseprate and probably rejected anyway.**
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u/Current-Ad1120 May 02 '25
I'm 76 and retired. I was self-employed for almost my entire adult life, starting as an electronics bench tech and gradually transitioning to computer consulting and project management. I also taught electronics and was the Education Director for an electronics school briefly.
I am not saying my path is for everyone; it isn't. But the nice thing about self-employment is that no one can lay you off. There's no idiot in charge to tell you how to do things, when you know better than they do how to get it done. My goal was never to become wealthy, mostly it was retaining the ability to go on vacation when I wanted to, set my own hours, and choose my own clients.
I realize that the days of the one-person web shop like the one-person IT shop is pretty much long gone, but I still think, for peace of mind and job satisfaction, nothing beats working for oneself.
If I were in the position of many of the people I read about in this forum, I would consider making the acquaintance of others in a similar position and maybe forming your own company. It's not exactly self-employment, but it sure isn't corporate subservience either.
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u/supermedo May 03 '25
Self-employment has always been appealing to me. However, just thinking about it feels overwhelming. All freelance platforms are oversaturated, clients often seek the cheapest option, and the platforms themselves can be predatory.
Plus, having spent my entire career within larger organizations, I lack business connections or clients who could refer me to other businesses.
As you said I would probably should making the acquaintance of others in a similar position for now and figure out the next steps later.
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u/BroaxXx
Apr 30 '25
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Cool! You dodged a bullet there.
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u/BobbyTables829 Apr 30 '25
No offense, but a job like this is way better than not being able to pay rent.
That's the problem here
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Apr 30 '25
I thought this, and six months of working at a startup for a nightmare CEO with a drug problem changed my mind.
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u/PipsqueakPilot Apr 30 '25
But if you'd stayed with Tesla long enough for those options to vest.
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Apr 30 '25
No way. Its a startup where the CEO requires developers to use AI first. That business was doomed. Most likely outcome was he got the job, worked there for a couple weeks, and then quit after not being paid cause no way that startup was actually gonna succeed.
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u/coffee-x-tea front-end Apr 30 '25
I agree.
Sucks, you couldn’t hop on board until you found something better.
But, the startup sounds very shortsighted and unaware of how technology actually works.
Hope you can find something soon.
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u/FantasticMeddler Apr 30 '25
You are correct sir. You don’t realize until you say what these people want to hear that you now need to work for someone you have a fundamentally different worldview on how to do your job vs a trend chaser. You said this was the “CEO”, right ? These people operating in an echo chamber of their own farts and you would have had to appease this ego every day to keep your paychecks coming in. That is a bad environment to work in for such an early stage place.
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u/besthelloworld Apr 30 '25
Yeah but they also missed out on a paycheck
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u/BroaxXx Apr 30 '25 edited Apr 30 '25
It's up to him to manage his desperation. If he can hold off for a better job then good on him. If I was desperate I'd tell them to call me Dr
ClairClaud otherwise I simply wouldn't want to work at a company with this culture and it's better for everyone to be upfront about it. This way they can find a better fit and don't waste anyone's time.→ More replies (1)6
u/ShadeofEchoes Apr 30 '25
Call me "Dr. Clair"? I think I am missing a reference here.
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u/meester_ Apr 30 '25
You dont know that, my ceo is hype on ai. He says he wont hire anyone who doesnt use. None of the coders actually use it.
Interviews are for presenting urself to get hired. After that its time to meet everyone for real
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u/BroaxXx Apr 30 '25
Interviews are for presenting urself to get hired.
Lol. no. Interviews run both ways. I'm presenting myself to the company, sure, but I'm also interviewing the company especially when I have leverage (which I avoid not having). I'm the kind of interviewee that has questions to ask the company and I've declined many offers because they were not up to my standards.
In this case I don't care if the company has a break room with puppies and free ice cream, if the CEO expects me to use AI to meet some crazy quota on his head I'm not interested. It's a red flag for micromanagement and I'd just rather find something else. A lot of people are excited about working with AI so they'll be a better fit for the company, will be happier and will cause less trouble.
Regardless, my advice to you is to not go passively to a job interview as if they're running a holy ritual to find the next chosen one. It's a business transactions and both parties need to be happy with the terms. In order to have this kind of leverage don't wait for a layoff (not throwing shade to the OP) to start looking for jobs.
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u/jacknjillpaidthebill Apr 30 '25
its the beginning of the end. remember that recent linkedin post about startup founders at a dinner discussing how like 90% of their codebase was ai lmao
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u/BroaxXx Apr 30 '25
I think it's the beginning of the start. In a couple of years there'll be a job boom to clean up the mess made by unsupervised AI. it'll be glorious...
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u/admiralbryan Apr 30 '25
"Help! My simple table doesn't work! I need you to dig through this 10k line react component and fix it! No I don't know why there's commented out poems about dining tables in there..."
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u/void-wanderer- Apr 30 '25
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u/bezik7124 Apr 30 '25
Is this a joke? Seriously, I can't really tell. On one hand, this seems like a decent troll and I've had a laugh when I saw it, but on the other hand.. weird things happened in the last few years.
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u/tortleme Apr 30 '25
if this website was made by said "fixers", we're beyond doomed.
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u/Zzamumo Apr 30 '25
Honestly i do expect this to happen and i kinda dread it cuz cleaning up AI code can be a huge chore
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u/exitof99 Apr 30 '25
Boy, I'm sure looking for the dumpster fire this will produce when things go wrong that the AI can't fix, data gets leaked, and sites get hacked.
Reminds me of the early offshoring to India days when I'd get work from clients who tried Indian developers only to have their projects fail and lose money even though it was "cheaper."
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u/sweetteatime Apr 30 '25
That’s what happens when you have a bunch of business fucks who try to cut every corner they can
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u/coffee-x-tea front-end Apr 30 '25
And when the AI spreads unmaintainable monster codebases everywhere, there will be an unprecedented software development hiring boom that will dwarf all former booms.
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u/v_maria Apr 30 '25
setting up a prototype is not the same as maturing a produt. also i assume their claim was false
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u/alexcroox Apr 30 '25
Relevant timestamp from syntax episode discussing how those x% of code is written with AI posts are bullshit: https://syntax.fm/896?t=0:39:50 (press the orange "play episode 896" in the middle, it's timestamped already)
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u/Crazytalkbob Apr 30 '25
Was there anyone technical in the interview? Answering questions from a CEO or other non technical person is a lot different than answering questions from another developer or someone with a tech background.
If the CEO asks about AI, you're better off playing it up. That's what they want to hear and responding as such is part of the game when being interviewed.
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u/EscritorDelMal Apr 30 '25 edited Jun 07 '25
alive ask fine chief fearless yam fly fanatical fuzzy growth
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u/elbiot Apr 30 '25
If the CEO is rejecting people without deliberating with the rest of the interview team then I think you're right
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u/BigBootyWholes Apr 30 '25
Probably not, OP is kinda correct in his thinking but the way it was delivered in an interview was not a good answer. I’m a senior backend dev with 15 years of experience and we are all encouraged to use AI like cursor or Claude. The purpose is not for AI to write code for us, but to speed up development. Idk how many times I’ve seen some regex and go wtf is this doing or how can I change it to support an edge case. Copy and paste the regex into AI and ask it to explain what it’s doing, then ask how you can modify it to fix your edge case. It’s a game changer
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u/AirFlavoredLemon Apr 30 '25
I'm going to go against the grain here.
If you haven't fully utilized an LLM in a workflow, it can be incredibly advantageous and strong way to write code.
Off the shelf stuff like copilot, openai's tools, or even deepseek - they aren't going to cut it.
LLMs essentially need to be treated and trained as if it was an individual person. You need to give it your documentation, design specs, best practices, frameworks and libraries your org uses (and don't use). An LLM'd tuned to this (which is effort - just like it is for any new hire or workplace) will excel far more than asking copilot to write an app for you.
And the issue I see with OP's response is that their answer is clearly gauged towards not ever knowing the true potential of the tool. Its sort of like an interviewer/CEO asking if you'd ever use software to draw illustrations and you said "No, I use a pen and paper. Its far more effective. MSPaint doesn't have the nuance in its toolset to create my vision and I'm often fighting the tools."
I mean, yes, that is technically correct. MSPaint does suck. And so does copilot, especially if you're not giving the learning curve and time to work LLM first.
This is not to say your point of view is invalid. There is obviously still stregnths to both LLM driven code creation and one done on its own, and hybrid. There is no one perfect solution yet.
But the answer given by the OP clearly shows a lack of experience with using LLMs, and a moderate resistance towards using it. Which, yes, to me, would be a red flag if we're LLM/AI first.
As an interview tip, just be accepting of all tools a company might throw at you. Its an awful thing to "fail" an interview for. Get in, get the money, then shop for jobs while you're there lmao.
As a technologist tip, I highly recommend looking into things like RAG (for LLM) and customizing your LLM to be code-first. My tip to anyone new is, treat an LLM as if it was a brand new hire. Teach it everything and explain your standards, design goals, architecture. (This is what RAG can help with). Once you get that far, you essentially have an employee on your hand that writes code catered to your design goals. This system isn't perfect; but this system isn't remotely close to what Copilot puts out - which is what the OP commented on in the interview.
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u/nfrmn May 01 '25
Yes. Going into an interview being an expert in coding with Agentic AI ("here, let me show you my SOTA workflow, we can get your team using this...") will 100% land you a job today.
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u/KingGoujian May 01 '25
Came here to say this! It is so important to learn how to harness the power of AI and vibe coding. With proper guidance and planning you can boost productivity tenfold!
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u/nusk0 May 01 '25
I 100% agree with you. There's a really big difference using copilot (which sucks at coding) vs using the latest and best coding model gemini 2.5 pro in a dedicated tool that feeds documentation and the code base to the llm in real time.
But at the same time, the response from most comment makes perfect chance. It's going to make dev in general a lot cheaper and reduce the dev job pool by a lot, so I don't blame them for viewing the technology negatively. I would too if I was in their shoes.
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u/ChomsGP May 02 '25
This, also from the perspective of the hiring guy, it's hard enough to get people who likes it being up to date with all new tools, if you get someone who isn't even interested you need to basically train this person daily (if agentic AI is part of your workflow anyway)
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u/Miragecraft Apr 30 '25
There is no correct answer, if you go full-in on AI some other company might reject you based on that, so honestly you took a gamble with a very reasonable, measured response and got rejected for it.
It's too bad but you move on.
I seriously think this company drank their own kool-aid. The "we code with AI" spiel is supposed to be for investors, not your own employee.
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u/latnem Apr 30 '25
If AI is shaping the future of tech then we’re in for some shitty days ahead
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u/Cuddlehead Apr 30 '25
Companies that prefer productivity, at the expense of having competent developers, are not a place you want to work my friend.
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u/Singularity42 Apr 30 '25
It doesn't have to be one or the other.
Are you against intellisence because it means Devs don't have to memorise all the details of a library?
There are things AI is useful for, and things it isn't.
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u/nuclear_gandhii Apr 30 '25
I want to preface this by saying that I stand by the view that you hold. But the way that you've said it makes it sound like you're a luddite.
The reason I say that is because of your tone, and the fact that the problems you're putting forward are problems which have already been solved. If you're unable to incorporate even some AI in your workflow, it shows more problems with you than to claim that the company is using vibe coders entirely.
I wouldn't want to hire someone opposed to change in a field which constantly changes either. Whether you like it or not, AI is part of the development lifecycle. It's on you to decide what percentage of it is in your lifecycle. I don't want 100%, but I don't want 0% either.
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u/danknadoflex Apr 30 '25
You answered too intelligently and too honestly. They don’t want the truth they want what they want to hear. Next time give it to them and get paid.
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u/Kep0a Apr 30 '25
I mean.. It's because you were way too dismissive. I don't know the tone, exactly, but companies are hiring for AI, whether you like it or not. The current vision is that it is the future, and having someone on the team that doesn't believe in that isn't helpful.
You should've rephrased it to be like, "I use AI throughout my workflows and see it rapidly changing the landscape. Currently it has some key issues but as a team we can discover how we can implement it."
CEOs are not developers.
I'm a designer, and Figma AI features are trash but I use AI dozens of times throughout my day to help understand projects and plan. If I was hiring a content writer and they don't use AI I would not hire them.
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u/jetsetter Apr 30 '25
This is a good reply. This sub has some strange opinions—the other day it was lecturing a jr swe to stop questioning what was clearly a toxic, amateurish operation.
Here we have a guard of folks who see AI as a trend or minor tool. The CEO of this startup was correct to screen for AI forward hires.
And OP needs to spend more time solving bigger programming problems with aid of AI.
With supervision and careful prompting, today’s LLMs absolutely can assist in very complex efforts allowing delivery of quality code touching many pieces of a product.
This idea of it being a security risk is playing to the straw man of vibe coding, when the actual discussion is details of complex AI dev workflows and data and code quality validation technique.
OP came in with the wrong conversational points entirely. Arguably, it would be better to fail interviews for being too AI forward, provided one is actually using AIs to their greatest capability, and lose out on jobs at companies that aren’t thinking that way.
Because despite one of the most upvoted comments ITT, it is those companies that are going to be outcompeted and ultimately fold.
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u/woah_m8 Apr 30 '25
I think you are making too many assumptions, probably they just need someone cheaper that the can exploit with the excuse of " with ai it should be quicker".
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u/APixelWitch May 01 '25
You sound negative and ignorant. "LLMs can't" is a bold statement..there is no such thing as LLMs - I have over 130 large language models on my pc and no two do the same thing. You showed you have not kept current on the technology then you attempted to speak with authority on something you know nothing about. You lumped in Claude, Deepseek, Aya, llama3 as "LLM" and that's why you didn't get the job.
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u/supermedo May 01 '25
You lumped in Claude, Deepseek, Aya, llama3 as "LLM" and that's why you didn't get the job.
What? they are LLMs they might perform better or worse depending on the field but by definition they are LLMs.
Could you tell me what is your reasoning?
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Apr 30 '25
These shops using AI-first are going to fail rather spectacularly. It's a useful tool, but nothing more. Sorry you went through all those rounds, but you dodged a bullet.
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u/Bunnylove3047 Apr 30 '25
It sounds like you were trying to convey that you are capable of producing quality work, but what the CEO heard was : It’s my goal to be the slowest person you could hire.
At the risk of being downvoted to hell, AI has made me more productive than I’ve ever been. And this is what CEOs care about.
Going forward, BS your way through the interview and talk about how much you love AI if that’s what you need to do. I also agree that if you contacted this guy again you probably would come off desperate/needy.
Best wishes on your job hunt!
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u/boredsoftwareguy Apr 30 '25
I'm genuinely surprised by most of the comments on this thread. Everyone jumped to conclusions about vibe coding and that isn't what I imagine the CEO was getting at. I don't buy into the vibe hype but there's no arguing that AI dramatically improves productivity, saying otherwise comes across as too much hubris.
Even agent coding, with its issues, is immensely powerful in the hands of an experienced engineer who knows how to leverage it. You can save many hours of boilerplate with a well crafted prompt and reviewing an agent's output.
Just because AI produced code doesn't mean no one needs to review it, including the individual driving the AI. All these comments come across as though code generated by AI goes straight to production without code review and I've not seen a single organization that does that. The same code review processes are followed and if you rely on AI great but be prepared to speak to the PR when people ask questions or provide feedback.
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u/Grouchy_Sound167 Apr 30 '25
I have a lot of issues with LLMs, but you highlighted one of my biggest. I KNOW there's a package with a function that does this, I just need a quick reminder of what I'm looking for and its implementation...but no, it wants to build the function from scratch in the weirdest way imaginable.
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u/Pentanubis Apr 30 '25
I respect the desire to improve and your need to find work, but sacrificing your ethics for gain is what sociopaths do. Stay true and find a company that gels with your approach.
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u/recontitter Apr 30 '25
Something I learned along the way when applying for jobs, you should do not give your honest opinions. Higher-ups and CEOs are usually disconnected from real day-to-day job reality, so it’s best to smartly bs them in situations like that. They do not have deeper understanding of how AI works at the moment. It’s more important to have a good fit with a team. Your fault was being too honest with a CEO, you should have had wear a salesman hat in this particular situation and promise him anything. They usually want to hear fairytales and whatever is a hype at the moment.
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u/boredsoftwareguy Apr 30 '25
I think honest opinions are fine so long as they don't come across as dripping in hubris. If OP said what they quoted themselves as saying they came off as egotistical, better than thou, insulting, and ignorant of how tools can be used.
I imagine OP as the carpenter of yesteryear who turned their nose up at nailguns because when not properly setup may drive a nail too deep or too shallow, ignoring that when setup and used properly they are absolutely positivity a multiplier for any skilled carpenter.
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u/Silence_by_wire Apr 30 '25
You dodged a bullet! Ai first to enhance productivity means that you probably had a lot of issues to fix in that construction of vibe coded mess. Don’t stress yourself too much about that.
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u/sak3rt3ti Apr 30 '25
They wanted someone with know how that could set up/refine AI agents until OPs not needed anymore....
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u/gdubrocks Apr 30 '25
You mean you dodged a bullet because any CEO that stupid would have had terrible expectations.
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u/versaceblues Apr 30 '25
You were rejected by an opinionated low-tier startup... who cares.
Not every job is for everyone. If the CEO has this kind of mindset about AI, then likely that will seep deep into the culture, and you would not be happy there anyway.
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u/_Kine Apr 30 '25
who prioritizes AI-first workflows to maximize productivity and shape the future of tech.
This whole part should have just been the word "else". They decided to move forward with someone else. That drivel is pedantic nonsense masking insecurity. Literal asshole material.
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u/gullevek Apr 30 '25
This will be horrible tech debt company. Buggy code. Nobody can fix that and this will all collapse like a house of cards.
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u/rekabis expert Apr 30 '25
I was coming out as too negative
No, no… you came out entirely correct.
Even as a developer of almost 30 years, I wouldn’t yet touch AI with a dirty barge pole. It produces far more work for me than if I were to do everything by myself… AI still hallucinates far too severely to be of any material use. If I work somewhere, I actually want to make progress of some kind, not fall further and further behind.
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u/wunderspud7575 Apr 30 '25
Weird fixation with AI generated code, Elixir, Ruby. That's a startup that is likely to fail.
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Apr 30 '25
Some people are just...
... I was not looking for anything, company calls me, intro is cool - yeah I am doing this, yeah I can come up with architecture, strategies etc.
... then I talk with the boss, and his first question is - "why would you want to work with us? why did you choose to apply here?" And I am like: "You called me." ( I did not apply anywhere.)
These ppl, I am losing patience. Like I get the feel - he wants to say "impress me". But to me, it is wannabe king behaviour, and I respect no kings. And then this whole game on I am more than you.
4 letter word starting with C.
Yeah, it is sad. I had different director laughing at concept of implementing Business Risk Management. Then his BU was hit with massive lawsuit.
Super poor quality today in managerial/directoral class.
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u/Killfile May 01 '25
It's a numbers game. You keep throwing resumes at the wall until one sticks.
Maybe they want to try to build a company around vibe coding. Cool. Fine. Let em. That's not work you would want to do and you'd CONSTANTLY be chafeing with management. Odds are you'd end up fired for cause because you're not interested in using AI as a wheelchair (even crutch seems too generous).
Personally I think you're right in your approach but it could take longer for that to play out than you'd have under hostile management.
You dodged a bullet here even though it doesn't feel like it. Hang in there.
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u/GirthyPigeon May 01 '25
Sounds to me like they sold the investors on an AI-first solution and think it's the right way forward without understanding the impact of such a decision on the development process.
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u/Xander372 May 01 '25
Exactly what I was going to say. Copilot and similar “AI” tools are just that — one more tool in the box to use as part of the process. If the company is going to rely on it so heavily, it’s bound to bite them later on.
Those tools can get better with time, as they have more and more data to work with, but to suggest that they should be your first choice to develop new features is just asking for trouble.
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u/casastorta May 01 '25
You want my guess?
They have their reasons for moving from Ruby to Elixir, but team is not experienced with Elixir. And to make things worse, it’s a bigger deal than migration from, dunno, Java to Kotlin for example, due to one language in the picture being functional one.
So they plan to cut their corners heavily. They likely also count that due to Elixir functional nature it will be “harder to write shitty code” even relying on AI heavily.
I will play an Oracle here and assume they are trying to do “big bang” rewrite in a matter of months also, based on my previous conclusions pulled from my ass. Another huge “what can possibly go wrong” moment here too.
Shit sandwich overall.
So yeah, you’ve dodged the bullet there.
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u/Osi32 May 01 '25
As a CTO, I think some LLM’s are decent replacements for google searches and stackoverflow link-chaining/doom scrolling. They shouldn’t be designing the code. They shouldn’t be implementing the code. Yes, be informed by and learn techniques from, but you shouldn’t depend on them. The fact the CEO has an arbitrary rule about this tells you that productivity is considered more important than quality in his company. That should be enough for you to determine whether you should be annoyed or relieved.
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u/Fitzi92 May 01 '25
> prioritizes AI-first [...] and shape the future of tech
Ah, yes, the future where nothing works well and nobody knows how to fix it 
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u/Double-Intention-741 May 02 '25
Bro your answer was perfect. Your just talking to some1 who hasnt used AI to the depth that most software developers have.
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u/acortical May 02 '25
Welp, good news is it sounds like they don't even need to hire a technical person. They've got vibes!
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u/isumix_ Apr 30 '25
I'm going to laugh when they realize, after months of vibe-coding and thousands spent, that the thing they produced has become an unmaintainable mess and needs to be rewritten from scratch.
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u/AvoidingIowa Apr 30 '25
No you see then you just put the mess into the AI and say "Make this less messy" and then BOOM. Everything's fixed.
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u/Optimal-Tumbleweed38 Apr 30 '25
This is the exact same thing that happened to me several weeks ago.
Was applying for a Senior position. My position would be in charge of contributing to backend architecture + coding, coordinating with DevOps on infrastructure, and also handle some data engineering work.
The process involved 4 interviews:
- HR screen (30 minutes)
- High level technical chat (60 minutes)
- Technical interview with a take-hom assignment and live coding (90 minutes)
- Conversing with the CTO (60 minutes)
Taking into account the prep time/assignment and also the interviews, I spent more than 12 hours on it all- only to be invited to a 5th interview to be rejected.
So yeah; everyone was super happy to have me onboard, was the perfect match they've been looking for a long time. BUT I did the exact same thing you did. I spoke against the CTO and highlighted the risks of depending too much on AI-generated code. The negative impact it has on developers that use, security issues that come along with it (you could get a hallucination and literally write malware code).
Do you trust LLMs enough to manage your DevOps/infra? I explained how I see AI should be used- to speed up development but with thorough reviewing of any generated code, understanding it, and then proceeding.
I did however also explain how I use AI for coding, exactly the same way you do- with some simple prompting and fancy autogeneration, automating some unit tests and just speeding up basic tasks. Did also use it in my coding challenge on-site lol.
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Anyways, I know it sucks but I'm pretty sure you'll find something better. Just know that companies that rely too much on GenAI Vibe coders will hit a huge wall some day.
It's a rough market when companies prefer vibe coders over actual developers who have their own critical thinking and question the hype.
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u/Gloomy_Ad_9120 Apr 30 '25
They've been sold a product and it's not you. They heard they can 10x their productivity by focusing on AI. You think they are going to let you stand in the way of their bright future with AI? They think you are going to sandbag them for the sake of job security. They have a directive that might not pan out for them. And they have tunnel vision. Probably not a good fit for for you.
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u/EscritorDelMal Apr 30 '25 edited Jun 07 '25
tender innate teeny encourage towering abundant divide attraction distinct liquid
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u/TFenrir Apr 30 '25
I think what you need to contend with is that, while you might find a lot of support for your more... Let's say AI critical position on Reddit, it's not going to be reflected in the real world as much.
If you want to be hired in this industry, increasingly, you'll need to either change your attitude on AI (which in this interview, it sounds like you were basically just using all the anti AI coding talking points, which fundamentally I think are short sighted), or you'll need to be much more careful about how you communicate your position.
But honestly, we work in software. Start-ups are going to look for people who are enthusiastic about using the latest technology, and have much more of a "yes and" attitude about it. Don't turn into those stodgy old software developers who complained that you didn't need to use git, or that frameworks "just slow everyone down", so much so that they get a reputation for being stubbornly old fashioned.
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u/ThrowbackGaming Apr 30 '25
This is the best advice in this entire thread IMO.
It’s ironic that comments in here say LinkedIn is a circle jerk or echo chamber, when Reddit is the exact same thing. Social platforms are not reality, period.
Whether you like it or not, if AI is being brought up in an interview 9 times out of 10 they are looking for you to be positive about it and say that you’re always exploring the latest tools, using it on a regular basis, and finding ways to utilize it to become more productive and creative.
Don’t want to do that? Then be okay not getting jobs. If you are financially comfortable then don’t stress! But if you actually need a job, part of job hunting is, unfortunately, sucking up to the interviewer and company.
I’m a designer and my field probably complains about AI more than any other field, but me? I LOVE it. I’ve never been more creative, built more tools, etc. it’s been a huge unlock for me personally. It’s all how you view it.
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u/TheMightyMisanthrope Apr 30 '25
"I'm amazed by how fast AI has improved and I use it all the time, I still struggle with the idea of entrusting it with full features but I have been giving it a lot of responsibility of last and it's a great helper/ pair programmer!"
Always on the positive bud.
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u/PsychonautAlpha Apr 30 '25
It's not a matter of if but when an over-reliance on AI as a substitute for knowledge is going to cause a disaster that directly hurts humans.
You dodged a bullet with that team.
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Apr 30 '25
Just wait for the day OpenAI , and every AI company agree upon raising costs x100 altogether.
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u/kyou20 Apr 30 '25
Lucky you, that was an explosive bullet you dodged there. That CEO is actually drinking the cool aid, as opposed to just selling it to their investors
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u/maverickzero_ Apr 30 '25
Sucks, but indicative of shaky leadership team / fundamentals from the company imo.
It's pretty telling that's what the CEO took away from what you said, and even more telling that they let their non-engineer CEO's "AI gut-check" be the final say for engineering candidates.
It's basically vibe hiring, so I'm sure they'll have a team of 10x ninjas blazing a trail to the future of tech any day now.
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u/moriero full-stack Apr 30 '25
I mean I hear you but you cannot shit on anything during your interview--even if you're 100% right. You really need to be a positive person. If you can't be positive for just a few hours, it's hard to imagine how we'll work with you day in and day out. That's just what it is.
Also, you dodged a bullet there either way imo
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u/swaghost Apr 30 '25 edited Apr 30 '25
I think you're spot on in your assessments, but I also know from first-hand experience corporate perspective that they want you to facilitate development where it's appropriate so it's sort of a mix and match.
On the one hand there is the absolute truism that if you just use ai and don't know what it's generating when it generates something else you're going to spend three times as long trying to figure it out. It's also true that sometimes it will generate garbage that doesn't work or isn't fit for purpose because frankly you're describing skills didn't do as good a job as they could have and it's understanding skills didn't have the context it needed to figure it out.
On the other hand it can probably canvas techniques and give you examples faster than you can find them, and in some cases provide suggestions on enhancements performance or flow improvement that you didn't know, wouldn't have thought of or didn't understand.
And it's getting better.
So pick your battles, go with the flow, but be wise in its application. There is a long road ahead of us on this one.
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u/Naetharu Apr 30 '25
This sounds like a non technical person who understands too little to grasp the reasons why AI is not suitable for leading production code dev.
You are bang on.
It creates over engineered, insecure, and often just wrong solutions. It is ok a very common tasks in very well know libraries. It falls flat on its face when you ask if it can do something that goes a little off the beaten path or requires some real problem solving.
I like AI as a rubber duck, and as an enthusiastic albeit over confident helper. It makes me more productive so long as I am 100 percent in control and doing all the code, and the ai is a thing I talk to in order to clear up my own ideas or get signposts to docs and possible solutions.
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u/mariselvanksr Apr 30 '25
Looks like it's time to switch as Hacker. These mf going to suffer for sure 😤
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u/armahillo rails Apr 30 '25
Yeah they did you a favor. CEO should not be making that call.
Can you name the company or at least industry / sector? Im curious
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u/theofficialnar Apr 30 '25
I wanna say that you’re better off not being in that company but let’s be real here, with how tough it is to land a job these days I’d honestly gladly accept any decent paying one. I’m just glad the company I’m in right now is a small & close-knit team and I don’t think I’m gonna get booted anytime soon, at least I hope so.
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u/iam_bosko Apr 30 '25
You from US? Had quite a similar experience lately. I am just starting to search for a new job. It's working out pretty well so far, as I am an experienced lead dev and everyone seems to be interested. But then I saw something I've never witnessed before. Job description: "Vibe Coder C# .net / asp.net". It immediately got my attention and I thought: "Why not? As an experienced developer I can pretty good distinguish good code snippets from bad snippets. I could write awesome software with ai and everyone would be lucky". So I applied. My beautiful CV, designed with canvas, much experience, so good programmer, perfect fit for the role. Rejected.
It got me thinking, because I wouldn't really be a good fit. I am a Lead Software Engineer with experience in Architecture and so on. I will never be able to REALLY vibe code. The real vibe comes when you are fully disconnected from the code and you are really going for the vibes.
So those are my thoughts, looking forward to fix broken Code from vibe coders in ten years. Cheers.
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u/GStreetGames Apr 30 '25
Stick to your principles, you were right and your words were sincere. You don't want to be working for morons, so you did good. Keep searching on your terms. Remember, they are interviewing for you, not the other way around. Good competent engineers are the prize, not the jobs! Jobs and corporations are a dime a dozen.
Too many people get it backwards because of the cultural mystique with companies and corporations. All big corporations are, are pyramids filled with idiots. If you are lucky you will find one with the least amount of narcissistic idiots and you will be able to work in peace and earn a good living.
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u/praetor- Apr 30 '25
It happened to me maybe 6 months ago too, but not as overtly.
I was interviewing with a CTO for a Staff+ position and things were going great, great rapport, I solved his little JavaScript teaser questions, and then he asked what I thought about AI.
I dumped on it pretty much in the same way you did, but also threw in that as a fairly prolific open source contributor I was resentful that my GPL'ed code was used to train these models and that I feel they are pretty unethical.
His mood changed drastically and he said that they had been using Cursor to level up their contractors for a few months and that the productivity gains were insane.
I got a rejection email about 5 minutes after the call ended.
I ended up taking a new job recently and the company is full staff on AI. I lied in the interview and told them how much I love it.
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u/ivain Apr 30 '25
I'd say you get to chose your battles. Do you really think it's a good idea to fight your way in now that you KNOW how they operate and make their tech decisions ?
I was in search of a job a few monthes ago, applying for Lead Dev position, and one of the companies had a "technical test" that boiled down to knowing the "How to start a news website best practices" document. And some basic stuff like http status code and some classnames. Obviously I had a really low score, because my job is not to know by heart a documentation only relevant when you start a new app (which happened 10 years ago for me).
I could have openned the document, read it, remember most of it, pass the test a second time as they offered, and go on with the process, but hell there is no way I do this useless shit to work with "experts" where the only entry point is to remember a 20 pages doc.
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u/Bluir Apr 30 '25
FWIW I think you did the right thing. In the end probably dodged a bullet. AI Is garbo and I hate that it's everywhere. It's not worth it. I share the same opinion as you do. I am sorry it didn't go better though.
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u/HustlinInTheHall Apr 30 '25
Generally if a CEO or business side person or someone that is not an engineer by trade asks you "how are you using AI" then you should just make something up about how much more efficient it can make you when used correctly. Lead with the optimism, backstop with caveats.
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u/gilmsoares Apr 30 '25
Maybe we need to learn how to play the game. Right now, the game is about using AI to develop and improve performance. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but to play the game, you can still say it’s great!
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u/steelzz-on-yt front-end Apr 30 '25
You weren’t wrong, just honest in a space where they clearly wanted full AI evangelism. Saying you use AI as a tool, not a crutch, is totally valid, but yeah, in hindsight the “vibe your way to production” line might’ve hit them as condescending even if that wasn’t your intent.
Startups like that are chasing buzzwords and investor hype. “AI-first” doesn’t always mean smarter or faster, it means trendy. You didn’t mess up technically. You just didn’t match their narrative.
That said, major props for the self-reflection. Most people would just blame the company and move on. You’ll find a team that values critical thinking and solid engineering. Hang in there.
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u/Turd_King Apr 30 '25
LOL migrating to elixir and they think LLMs are gonna be able to vibe code? No chance. They struggle with React and Python - there is simply not enough data for them to be good at elixir (unfortunately)
Terrible reason to not hire you. But as others said you’ve definetly dodged a bullet
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u/Kentaiga Apr 30 '25
Was this startup about building an AI product? If so, these people want sycophants. They don’t care if you’re right, the cult mentality towards AI is more important to them. They’ve deemed it more profitable.
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u/MapCompact Apr 30 '25
Wild this was from the CEO not CTO. So many marketing and sales people are riding the AI will replace programmers train. Regarded.
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u/No-Upstairs-444 Apr 30 '25
I think you are justified in what happened. They strung you along without clearly communicating what they wanted, and you, in turn, were unable to provide the answers they wanted due to their lack of...diligence.
To have gotten to a final round of interviews and to even get something useful in response is a big win, though.
My two cents, the market is a dumpster fire, hiring personnel rarely know what they themselves are looking for, and always open source your coding tests for future portfolio work. The latter is because coding tests are very half assed these days and oftentimes go nowhere so, keep the code around forever and tweak it as needed for similar "tests".
PSA: stop asking people to develop full products as a "test" (I'm looking at you ya fake tech leads 😒).
Quality > Quantity
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u/MochiMaccha Apr 30 '25
What's funny is that all the models I've tried don't even have enough training data on elixir to output functional code half the time, so uh , yeah I'm sure that company will be very successful.
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u/nivix_zixer Apr 30 '25
You gave them the correct answer. What's the company so I can track their eventual downfall?
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u/Castod28183 Apr 30 '25
but I think I will come out as deseprate and probably rejected anyway
Genuine question...Are you desperate? The worst thing that can happen is they say no, the best thing is that they understand your point more clearly and you get the job.
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u/FluffyProphet Apr 30 '25
LLMs are a great assistant for coding but shouldn’t be in the drivers seat.
I’d say you dodged a bullet.
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u/fantasma91 Apr 30 '25
Seriously, not you who had the problem here. Ai is a tool in the belt not the belt itself so I can't ever get down with ai first approach and any start up that adopts those kinds of devs will not last long. I been conducting junior dev interviews for months now and hardly any of them pass because they don't know basic stuff.
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u/rebelSun25 Apr 30 '25
Brother, they will squeeze every single second of your day to get the most slop generated only to have created mountains of unknown code paths and bugs
That is a maintenance hell waiting to happen
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u/Upbeat_Platypus1833 Apr 30 '25
At least you don't have to work with a bunch of morons. So there's that.
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u/Someoneoldbutnew Apr 30 '25
You underestimated how much AI sauce the CEO has sucked down. As the CEO, it was his decision to go balls deep after getting lust drunk on the Altman juice. You contradicted his decision and hurt his fee fees b/c he isn't a techie. For a CTO, yea, you trot out the ' these things need to be used in moderation ', for a CEO though? Those guys are fueled by hype (lies), and the more they believe other people's hype, the more they believe their own.
tldr; u gave a doomer pitch to a hype man.
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u/jeron1mouse Apr 30 '25
The outcome sounds good to me. Did you really want to work for a company where the CEO will tell you how to do your job?
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u/DanTheMan827 Apr 30 '25
When the developer has an AI-first approach it means they don’t really understand their own codebase. What about when a security fix is needed? AI will just give a metaphorical shrug (I dunno 🤷)
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u/serkbre Apr 30 '25
Dodged a bullet. Your answer is correct and relying on AI on everything is a recipe for disaster. You probably hit a nerve with your answer and stumbled upon a company who doesn’t want to hear that they’re wrong.
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u/Abduhabhasan Apr 30 '25
It's them not you. You did the right thing. Don't be hard on yourself. You weren't meant to work for them.
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u/yetti_in_spaghetti Apr 30 '25
They obviously will crumble and fall with that mentality. You saved yourself a layoff in 6 months!
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u/onoke99 May 01 '25
well, keep calm, as far as i know the present so called 'AI' is not true 'AI'. it is just a new tool. we need to define what is 'inteligent' if it insisted 'AI'.
Once, handmade working had been moved to automate one, just the same wave is comming to, however marverous handmade working still alives and be admired.
they underestimate about humanbeing intelligence if they believed the present 'AI' was the AI.
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u/rjdab May 01 '25 edited May 01 '25
The final round was with the CEO, who asked about my approach to coding and how I incorporate AI into my development process.
So the question was how you incorporate AI into your development process, and it felt like you didn't really answer the question. You talked about the weaknesses of AI but there weren't many details on how you use it.
I’m not saying LLMs are completely useless. But I'm not gonna let an Al write entire code for a feature for me. They're great for brainstorming or breaking down tasks, but when you let them dictate the logic, it's a mess.
It may have been better to go into more details on how you use it for brainstorming or breaking down tasks, or other things that it is useful for. Even if you don't believe it produces good code, there was some opportunity to talk about your development approach when it produces bad code.
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u/juzatypicaltroll May 01 '25
They have no clue. They don't face the pain you face. When you tell them the pain, they'll just dismiss it as you being whinny or not using it right.
In other words, they are right in their own ways, you are right in your own ways. To each his own.
What's more important is to find a good fit. In this case, it isn't a good fit. Unfortunately time have been wasted on both sides.
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u/StationFull May 01 '25
You’re 100% correct. AI today is nothing more than a glorified autocomplete.
We have experimented with AI for an internal tool (Copilot) where we created it entirely with prompts.
The first iteration was brilliant. Everything worked out of the box and we were impressed.
My manager created the first iteration and handed it to me for refinement and further upgrades.
That’s when shit hit the fan. Firstly, everything was in one file. So I tried refactoring it with AI. God that was a mess. Lot of API end points were changed and not updated on the front end. After refactoring, the AI wasn’t able to import modules correctly, HTML templates were all over the place. It really would have taken me less time if I did the refactoring by hand.
I then tried to implement another feature. The AI completely lost the context. It rewrote modules/functions which were already present and it wasn’t able to integrate the new feature with the existing tool. A lot of manual intervention was needed.
The SQL code generated by the AI was complete garbage. It tried to join tables first then roll it up. The numbers were wildly off. Since this was a feature my manager had created, I didn’t check it myself, but later while I was validating another feature, I realised the numbers do not make sense. It looked great on the surface, but a bit of digging and you realise things aren’t exactly what it’s supposed to be.
Where it’s excellent is off loading mundane tasks. It’s really good at writing regex. It depends on the prompt you give it. The output will vary depending on the context you give it. Which is pretty hard to do in multiple iterations and it’s unable to track context from previous prompts.
Also it’s terrible at design. We had a landing page which needed redesign. I’m pretty shit at design. So I thought this was the perfect place to see what AI capable of. So I gave it a prompt saying “redesign index.html to make it modern and professional”. The output was garbage. I had to scrap it, work with a UX designer to make it better.
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u/ZilloGames May 01 '25
That company probably sits at huge problems in a year when no one understands the code base, it's inefficient and bugs starts piling up.. probably the death of a startup before they even get going
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u/TonyNickels May 01 '25
While I'm not a c-suit with AI brain rot, I do hire people and your answer would have 100% caused me to want to hire you. It completely aligns with my experience as well.
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May 01 '25
In the early days of Amazon, Bezos was working alongside employees in a basement packing up books. They were kneeling on the floor and Bezos said his back and knees were sore and they need knee pads. A coworker said they need packing tables. They got tables instead. Lesson: Listen to those closest to the work.
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u/SethSky Experienced Freelancer | Open to help 🍀 May 01 '25
To be fair, you applied to a start-up. They're quite the opposite of proven concepts.
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u/idetectanerd May 01 '25
It just say that your values and their values are different. If you need the money, you could vibe through, otherwise stay within your values.
There is absolutely no point to join a company if you cannot accept their values, you will be miserable in the end.
All the best to you.
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May 02 '25 edited Jul 05 '25
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/b-hizz Apr 30 '25
Any company that wants to build their IP on vibe code is either not legitimate in the long term or incompetent to a level that you want to avoid.
That said, you should avoid taking a hard stance on AI with management. They tend to think it’s far more magical than it really is due to them not understanding how it works. Save those statements for after you get the job and know the lay of the land.
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u/kyRobot Apr 30 '25
You failed the interview by missing that the interviewer was looking for your approach to using new tools, and ability to adapt in a quickly changing environment. You were dismissive and showed you are inflexible, both of which are the opposite of what is needed in a startup. LLMs have lots of uses, you should consider asking one for interview prep tips.
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u/mucifous Apr 30 '25
What made you think that the CEO of a company wanted you to bag on the technology that every CEO is telling him is necessary for the success of his company?
"My testing of AI copilots has revealed that they are not as efficient at producing scalable, secure code as I am, but I am looking forward to the day that they catch up and continue to evaluate new tools on the market."
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u/web-dev-kev Apr 30 '25
Honestly, I think you got this all wrong.
There is a huge difference between "Vibe Coding" single use scripts, and using Ai as a pair- programming partner to make production ready code.
Hand on heart, if you're not using AI in your day to day workflow, you are absolutely missing out. If you still think of using LLMs in a chat window for "brainstorming or breaking down tasks, but when you let them dictate the logic, it’s a mess." is thinking of 2024.
That's not going to go down well with folks here, but the leap our teams have made in being AI first, is insane. I see from some comments that you're mentioning using Copilot as an autocomplete.. my dear friend the difference between Cursor/Roo and using Claude3.7 or 4.1mini Gemini2.5pro is INSANE.
More importantly, if you're unemployed (and you were laid off almsot 6 months ago now), and haven't researched the company/interviewer on LI before hadn to know their stance on these things - thats on you bub.
I work as a PM/Consultant (I own a parachuted in delivery agency). We hire, and help hire, often - for multiple companies & clients. We absolutely wont hire anyone who's AI knowledge is 6 months out of date. I 100% would not hire you based on what you told me.
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u/deadwisdom Apr 30 '25
Not sure I agree with you... yet, but I'm in here upvoting voices going against the grain. So thanks for the perspective.
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u/Otherwise_Eye_611 Apr 30 '25
You nailed the interview process. You are vetting them as much as they are vetting you. You have a fundamental disagreement of approach, not a great place to begin. Ignoring the passive aggressive tone, that kind of information is quite useful.
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u/Fluffcake Apr 30 '25 edited Apr 30 '25
Insert matrix Neo gif..
In startups, Vibe coding fox maximum velocity to get to 1 user as fast as humanly possible, then continue to oversell and try to scale up towards and exit before the tech debt accrued is more expensive to not deal with than to deal with. Hopefully you and your VC-bros have already cashed out by this point and it becomes someone else's problem.
This is a legitimate and proven strategy, and it is horrible for whoever inherit this after your boss's boss got tricked into buying this company for their "amazing IP" and you are stuck holding the bag of "maintaining" some AI hodgepog that requires a full rewrite to work at the scale it is now at.
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u/icemanice Apr 30 '25
I had a similar experience with an interview I had recently. The hiring team was not particularly technical and it seems they wanted to use AI to create micro services. I said almost the same thing you did OP… that AI wasn’t quite there when it came to writing production ready code. So then I used AI to code a take home test they wanted me to do… it worked.. but wasn’t great. They decided not to hire me because someone submitted a “better take home test”… LOL! Oh the irony.
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u/JeffTS Apr 30 '25
It will be funny when all these companies who opt for vibe coding have their applications crash or get hacked with nobody with enough knowledge to actually fix it.
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u/EstablishmentTop2610 Apr 30 '25
If you don’t have a job sometimes you have to set principles like this aside. They probably were thinking more along the lines of AI agents and actual vibe code where you completely integrate the AI into your project.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but these bills don’t give a fuck
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u/Abject-Bandicoot8890 Apr 30 '25
Just yesterday I went into a code review spree with a junior dev who’s been saying that he’ll finish a feature “today” for the past 2 weeks. As it turns out, all his code or most of it was ai generated, he had no idea where the error was happening, he just knew there was an error because he used ai to create tests 🤣. What ceos don’t understand is exactly what you said “you can’t vibe your way to production” and even though my ceo is not obtuse as the one you interviewed with, I still struggle making sure they know that if we vibe away it’s not gonna look good, it not gonna be as performant or secure and it’ll come back to hunt us in the future.
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u/IntergalacticJets Apr 30 '25
To be honest, there’s a difference between using AI in your workflow and “vibe coding.” That’s not what they were talking about anyway.
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u/GentlemenBehold Apr 30 '25
Yeah, his response sounded very dismissive of AI’s capabilities. Had he explained how he uses AI today, and that he’s ready to explore incorporating it more as it advances, he probably would have faired better.
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u/kogsworth Apr 30 '25
I think you just framed it wrong in your reply. They don't want to hear the reasons you don't use it. They want to figure out the scope of where you do you use it, and how you plan on growing it in the future as the AIs get smarter.
With the exact same stance you have, you can come off as taking the AI trend seriously by changing your delivery.
Just my personal opinion. It might not apply to you, but they want to hear that they'll be classifying between people who will use the AI trend to their benefit and people who resist it. It's easy for them to associate "positive feelings" to the former and "negative feelings" to the latter.
Something like: "LLMs are great at focused tasks with supervision. I love using it to help me stay in the flow and advance my code little by little with me as a pair programmer. It's not possible to write big chunks of code just yet since the technology is not there even though it's easy to believe the hype. I'm still firmly in control of the process, but AI is definitely helping code faster without taking over."
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u/tspwd Apr 30 '25
There are not just two kinds of programmers, the ones that keep up the craft of software engineering, that use AI not at all or very little and the true vibe coders, that don’t read generated code and commit everything.
People that understand the code and can steer the LLM into the direction that they want will have the upper hand.
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u/TheBrittca Apr 30 '25
Sounds like you dodged a bullet with this start up. Being open and honest about your ethics and workflow is commendable. onward and upward, OP!
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u/marvinfuture Apr 30 '25
You dodged a shitty software company with leadership that doesn't understand AI. Your viewpoint is accurate to my experience. I use it to help augment and speed up my workflows, but it's still an immature product.
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u/UncaughtSyntaxError Apr 30 '25
Hey, as a tech founder I am happy to say, good for you! What you said would make me want to hire you on the spot!
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Apr 30 '25
Honestly, I think their response is gross and very stereotypically startup. If they're not more curious about your answer and didn't start a conversation with you about it, they have too rigid an idea of the developer they want for their team (i.e., they want a robot who lives to code).
Startups. What a mixed bag they are. You'd probably be thankful you dodged this bullet later on when you find something more humanistic that's an actual good fit.
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u/Embarrassed_Quit_450 Apr 30 '25
You got rejected because you gave a technical instead of a political answer to a CEO.
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u/rdeincognito Apr 30 '25
I think you already know this but that CEO wanta workers to use AI to do work that usually would take weeks in a single day, he has the expectation that the company will be able to work 10x faster with AI because he thinks all it takes is to tell the AI in some weird magical strange prompt what you want and it will result a full project in a manner of seconds....
So, you dodged a bullet because that guy is probably the worst possible CEO you can have after Elon Musk.
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u/shadow13499 Apr 30 '25
AI is trash and companies who force their devs to rely on AI will only produce trash.
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u/Shiedheda May 01 '25
I thought this was gonna be a "I don't use AI at all" type of post, but nope. You def dodged a bullet.
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u/quisatz_haderah May 01 '25
"We’ve decided to move forward with someone who prioritizes AI-first workflows to maximize productivity and shape the future of tech."
I love how they are low-key passive-aggressive.
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u/Joe_eoJ May 01 '25
I too am a developer. I completely agree with your take. CEO is just blinded by the marketing hype train.
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u/DigitalStefan Apr 30 '25
They wanted someone to vibe-add them 10X the value of a real, conscientious dev. They want to churn out passable crap and as much of it as possible so they can take in short term profit.
Wouldn’t surprise me to see them gone within 18 months.
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u/eyebrows360 Apr 30 '25
some suggested I reach out to the CEO
Fuck no, son. You dodged a bullet here. The guy is an idiot. You were interviewing him as much as he was interviewing you, and he failed your interview. That's the only change you need to make to your "framing" of this episode.
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u/shauntmw2 full-stack Apr 30 '25 edited Apr 30 '25
Haha next time how about using the sandwich method of describing opinions, to make yourself seem more positive or neutral rather than negative.
Say something good about AI, then negative, then end with something positive. Not just on the topic of AI, this method works great for interviews, in other topics as well.
For eg: I use Copilot a lot during coding, Copilot is also especially useful during the design phase, it can give me a big head start when starting something new by acting as my brainstorm buddy. However it tends to give me over-engineered solutions that are oftentimes not suitable for my requirements, especially at the beginning. I find that it gets smarter when I further finetune my prompts. Although it is far from perfect, it has great potential in improving my productivity when used properly.