Code.org: Use AI In an Interview Without Our OK and You're Dead To Us 37
theodp writes: Code.org, the nonprofit backed by AI giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and whose Hour of AI and free AI curriculum aim to make world's K-12 schoolchildren AI literate, points job seekers to its AI Use Policy in Hiring, which promises dire consequences for those who use AI during interviews or take home assignments without its OK.
Explaining "What's Not Okay," Code.org writes: "While we support thoughtful use of AI, certain uses undermine fairness and honesty in the hiring process. We ask that candidates do not [...] use AI during interviews and take-home assignments without explicit consent from the interview team. Such use goes against our values of integrity and transparency and will result in disqualification from the hiring process."
Interestingly, Code.org CEO Partovi last year faced some blowback from educators over his LinkedIn post that painted schools that police AI use by students as dinosaurs. Partovi wrote, "Schools of the past define AI use as 'cheating.' Schools of the future define AI skills as the new literacy. Every desk-job employer is looking to hire workers who are adept at AI. Employers want the students who are best at this new form of 'cheating.'"
Explaining "What's Not Okay," Code.org writes: "While we support thoughtful use of AI, certain uses undermine fairness and honesty in the hiring process. We ask that candidates do not [...] use AI during interviews and take-home assignments without explicit consent from the interview team. Such use goes against our values of integrity and transparency and will result in disqualification from the hiring process."
Interestingly, Code.org CEO Partovi last year faced some blowback from educators over his LinkedIn post that painted schools that police AI use by students as dinosaurs. Partovi wrote, "Schools of the past define AI use as 'cheating.' Schools of the future define AI skills as the new literacy. Every desk-job employer is looking to hire workers who are adept at AI. Employers want the students who are best at this new form of 'cheating.'"
Slamming the lookback buffer behind them. (Score:5, Funny)
Before everyone starts dunking on this, remember that it's possible, even likely, that Code.org used an LLM to write their AI-use policy.
And then resume dunking.
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Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes their corporate masters to make them square their policy with their marketing efforts like stuffing co-pilot everywhere they can?
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They all will use AI to rate your interview and any work you produce for the interview. They will also use any and all of your work product from your interview to train their AI models.
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Yeah, well (Score:5, Insightful)
> We ask that candidates do not [...] use AI during interviews and take-home assignments without explicit consent from the interview team.
Assign a take-home task as part of your interview and you're dead to me, so I guess we're even?
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Take home tests are far better than in-person, proctored coding tests.
Re:Yeah, well (Score:5, Insightful)
Take home tests are far better than in-person, proctored coding tests.
That doesn't mean that either are an effective part of the interview process.
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Well yeah, coding tests in general are fucking stupid and pointless. If someone has a resume and prior job experience, let me talk to their former boss. If someone is a new grad, let me talk to their professor. But if I HAVE to give a test I am giving someone a one day project. I want to see if they can accomplish a task and I really don't care how efficient their leetcode game is. At the end of the day, results are what pay the bills. Not how clever your code syntax is.
I'm getting dependent on it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a gray beard developer, so I've been coding WAY longer than AI has been around. I don't vibe code in any way, but when I'm coding in VS Code with Copilot enabled, I'll be typing a line and AI figures out what I'm doing and completes the line. TAB. Next line, AI figures out what I'm doing and completes the line. TAB.
I'm getting used to it and maybe a little dependent on it. Put me in a coding interview without AI, and it might be harder than it used to be.
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Coding without any AI assistance will be much like LeetCode in that it will be a skill that developers must learn in order to pass coding interviews, which have nothing to do with how coding is done on the job.
Oh No! (Score:3)
A completely reasonable and intelligent policy that does not, in anyway, invalidate their greater message or goal.
Let's try to make a big deal out of of this outrage clickbait. /s
Analogy: 'Winchester firearms does not tolerate the use of firearms as a coercive tool during the hiring process.'
It's not a double standard.
We do the same (Score:5, Insightful)
We do not allow candidates to use AI, IDEs, or high level languages to perform their coding tests. In their real jobs we know they use these things, but why should the hiring process reflect the skillset we require?
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Nothing is really changing here. When has the hiring process ever really reflected the skillset required?
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Exactly.
This seems like laziness from Code.org.
Rather than rejecting candidates that use AI, how about instead adapting your candidate evaluation process to evaluate if they know how to productively use AI coding tools (beyond just "vibe code me an app to do X").
Using AI isn't cheating - it's a tool that as a developer you need to learn to use.
It's like rejecting a candidate that is using a calculator to do math, or for using Google to search for an algorithm, rather that doing math with pencil and paper an
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Perhaps they want to hire someone who has a deeper understanding of algorithms than just cut-n-pasting them so when a real knarly problem shows up they can actually solve it rather than just saying "Uh, AI can't fix it for me, dunno what to do"
Perhaps you'd be happy if your doctor just asked ChatGPT to diagnose you, i mean , he's just using a tool right, whats the problem?
Re: We do the same (Score:2)
Which part of those use AI exactly?
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It's easy enough to check if the understand the code they've submitted, whether they wrote it or not, by getting them on a video call and asking questions about the code.
If they used AI to write the code, but show a level of understanding of it, including motivation for writing that way, alternatives, etc, equal to if they had written it themselves, then I don't see a problem.
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People lying on their resumes is nothing new, but truth comes out when you talk to them or put them in front of a whiteboard.
IMO a phone interview or at-home assignment should anyways only be a screening step, but if you are going to hire without ever having interviewed the person face to face, and in front of a whiteboard, then you better be good enough at interviewing (doesn't take much) to weed out the liars.
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but why should the hiring process reflect the skillset we require?
The skillset requires the knowledge to see that AI is often wrong. It's not at all unreasonable to test the applicant rather than whatever OpenAI's latest creation is in an interview.
does anyone need code.org (Score:2)
Why should anyone play their gatekeeper games? Just move on, they're basically irrelevant anyway
Fuck code.org (Score:1)
Also code.org: We'll pay you not to teach boys.
Fuck code.org
Right back at you (Score:1)
You use AI in the hiring process, you're dead to me.
Remember, a candidate also interviews you and your company. If you think it is a one-way process, you just failed the interview.
This is a good example of (Score:3)
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believing AI is not here to stay is just delusional. and universities better start adjusting accordingly.
I'm tired of hearing that this is just "a bubble that's going to burst anytime soon". You know what was also a bubble, that also burst? The fucking internet.
And now we can't even imagine our lives without the internet.
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Any CS program that starts churning out hundreds/thousands of AI-specialized CS majors, in order to meet the current bubble-level demand,
Ability and willingness to follow instructions (Score:1)
Maybe the real "test" is your ability and willingness to follow instructions even if you think they are inefficient/wrong/not-the-way-I-would-do-it.
Those are things management is usually looking for even if they won't say so out loud.
Or take the cynical view: Maybe management is looking for people who can lie and not be caught, with the goal of promoting to the C-suite.
CS Instruction (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a CS professor. The problem with AI is that allowing it and disallowing it both lead to awkward outcomes.
Suppose you allow it. Then what are you going to ask students to do? Implement bubblesort? No. That would be pointless -- AI trivially generates all boilerplate code. Of course Chegg long ago broke the oldest and best coding assignments, which consisted of implementing classic algorithms from pseudocode. Still, all traditional undergrad assignments are out the window.
What *can* you ask students to implement? Realistically, they should be able to do just about anything. The order to "Recreate Facebook" is a valid 2 day HW assignment. But that's so broad that it's ungradable. And the students' ability to do the task means very little about their inherent ability.
So, suppose you *don't* allow the use of AI. Then almost everyone will use AI anyway. Now you're not a professor, you're a detective, and everyone in your course is a suspected criminal. If students are smart AI work is easily disguised. Then who are you giving A's to? Cheaters. Solution: Give everyone an A. Educational value for most students, who need to be threatened and cajoled to do work: Zero.
Does that mean I'm saying that AI makes everyone a genius and you can't tell the difference anyway? No. The pinch happens when you get out on the bleeding edge and try to do something truly novel. But that is not how instruction of any kind traditionally works. Things at the bleeding edge are incomprehensible to students. Asking students in CS 101 to blaze a new trail is a stupid assignment.
Conclusion: Things are very broken and many students are in trouble. The only thing you can really do to educate the typical person (who requires cajoling and threats) is to lock them in a Faraday cage for four years (and they would probably still cheat). On the other hand, for the *very* rare individual who is self motivated and just wants to learn, it is a golden age.
I suppose we should really be teaching students how to use AI to educate themselves.
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I wonder how long until people who primarily write in high-level programming languages will be seen the way we now see people who primarily write in assembly language.
One key difference though: it's pretty rare that you have to switch from C# (for example) to assembly in the same project, but it's 100% normal to switch from English to C# when the LLM generates code that doesn't do what it was supposed to.
Maybe stop giving programming assignments, and instead give in-class exams to test your student's unders
and circumstance (Score:1)
The hypocrits are pretty emboldened these days. This is absolutely pompous.
And HR? (Score:2)
Isn't HR already using AI for interviews? Sometimes even trying to get data about you from your facial traits? It would only be fair play if the interviewed person could also use AI...
Good luck with that. (Score:1)
Sounds reasonable. (Score:2)