What's the risk in giving someone a deepseek api key that is loaded with $5? Five dollars in deepseek tokens is enough for like a week of constant use.

Is there not a way for candidates to use tokens via the company's own subscription during the test?

"Software engineers are poor and can't afford $20/month".

linkedin-drivel.

Why not put a proxy in front of the model, give each candidate a key with a hard budget, and revoke it after? If you require AI for the interview, you should pay for it

I like the idea to consider the token cost for the candidate, good. But why not keep it "on paper", asking how the candidate would use an LLM or agent and why? Actually using an agent means asking the candidate to deliver something that you must validate. And you then need to evaluate the candidate by looking at the output of the LLM indirectly. Isn't it better to directly ask the candidate to explain how an LLM could be used (or if/when it should be used) for your use cases?

At the end of the day, it is the same old 'interview coding game' problem, and I suspect it is working even worse now, using LLMs and agents.

> How you behave, how you relate to others, how you approach problems and the energy you bring to a team matter as much as your technical ability, and often more.

As much as I agree with this, I don't think that the whole rest of the post (about how best to examine LLM usage in an interview loop) coheres with this.

You cannot conclusively test for common decency in either interviews or recommendations. People are on their best behavior in interviews, and it's rare for someone to pass along a recommendation that will criticize them (or their behavior). Length of tenure at prior organizations is not proof, since too many will tolerate poor behavior. Accept that this is a risk involved with any hire, have clear, written business conduct policy, and be willing to show the door to people who cannot control their behavior after written warnings.

Asking how people approach problems with LLMs need not be more than a conversation. Architectural interviews need little more than a whiteboard. If you wouldn't hover over the shoulder of an employee while they work, why do you feel the need to do so in an interview?

I get it - bad hires are expensive in more ways than one. But screen-to-offer should not take longer than two weeks in small companies. Interviews help you derisk, but do not ever fool yourself into thinking that an interview process will ever reduce your hiring risk to zero. Getting a handful of dates before a shotgun wedding will always be risky. Accept it and learn to be more comfortable with risk.

> the energy you bring to a team matter

This is all the more true for hiring managers. Bad management will take strong, high-energy, high-ownership performers and handcuff them. Good management can, sometimes, take people with weaker skills, train them, set them up for success, and inspire them into becoming great performers. Someone who is interviewing, who might accept your job offer, is also taking a risk on whether you are the bad kind or the good kind of manager. The only difference is that job seekers often have more appetite for that risk than job offerers.

> They can’t get a visa. They live in another city. The contract terms don’t work for them.

I have to share my stories. For a position I’m a really good fit for at a company I’m familiar with, I asked a guy to ask a guy, and they said they would only hire in the US because the team is in the US.

For another position, they reached out to me. They can’t hire in Japan but offered relocation.

In both cases, I’m super grateful that people are willing to help, but I could sense that times have changed since 2023. Globalization is no longer that strong; many, many jobs are restricted to certain locations, such as certain cities in the US or India. I don’t know about the EU, though.

This gives me some hope that if I’m willing to leave Japan, I can get a good job.