Why I Won't Make Job Candidates Pay for AI During Interviews
The cost of getting a job today
A newly promoted Head of Engineering at a startup confronts a hidden cost in hiring: candidates are expected to use LLMs during technical challenges, but they must pay for subscriptions or API credits while unemployed. He rejects company accounts and reimbursements as liabilities or gray areas, and instead redesigns the process—moving challenges later, making them smaller, running live sessions on company infrastructure, and weighing code less. The goal: minimize what candidates spend and focus on how they think.
A challenge that needs a top-tier model running for hours isn’t testing the candidate, it’s testing their wallet.
- methou
> 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.
- FinnLobsien
I think there are a few interesting things here:
-If the AI part is so important, why doesn't the company use OpenCode/Kilo etc. and fund it via OpenRouter? That way you could even level the playing field by giving everyone the same access to the same models.
-I believe some of this is temporary. Just about everyone is now constantly using AI, so I believe we'll soon care more about someone actually being able to explain how they'd go about something and why rather than just "can you produce code that does this"
-The idea of "applications are a numbers game" and spewing hundreds of resumes everywhere is dying. I know extremely highly qualified people whose resumes never get looked at and recruiters who never look at applications. Everyone is making application materials with AI and HR teams review them with AI. I believe we'll enter an era that's much more manual and high touch.
- pjc50
I appreciate that I'm out of touch here, since I have been several years at the same job, but I can't really see how the LLM should have any role in the interview process at all - indeed, other places are going to increasing lengths to keep them out! You're not interviewing the LLM, after all.
I suspect LLMs make the "take home coding challenge" even more useless than it already was. If you want to make it part of the candidate interview, then I guess you've got to sit them down with a laptop.
- solatic
> 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 mor […]
- 63stack
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.