Ask HN: How are companies hiring developers nowadays?
Hi, using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm currently in a situation where I'll have to both create a hiring process to hire a couple of programmers at a startup where I'm working at, but at the same time I'm also starting to think about looking around and start sending out job applications.
Since it's been a while from my last job interview I'm wondering how companies are hiring programmers nowadays. Do they still require leetcode exercises? What about take-home exercises? Or is it all done in real time during a call?
My last interviews all had a take-home project that I had to do (some paid and some not), is that still the case? I'd guess that with agents that changed a lot since someone could just have Claude doing all the work and submit it back.
I want to both create a process that is fair and worth the time on both the parts, but also want to know what other companies are doing in order to start preparing if I'll get lucky and move to the next interviewing steps.
How is it at your company or in your [recent] experience?
Every company is different, just like every person. But based on my experience as senior software engineer interviewing (both as candidate and as a hiring manager) over the past three months (big tech and startup), I've noticed two broad categories:
1. Traditional Big Tech Interview Style
A LeetCode-style coding exercise during the phone screen, followed by an onsite consisting of a mix of system design, debugging, additional LeetCode problems, and behavioral/product interviews.
2. Early-Stage Startup Style
Start with a coding homework where you're expected to build using agentic coding tools. The interviewer expects a fully working prototype, along with thoughtful design decisions and trade-offs. Note that for manager/director level hires, homework is usually a ppt presentation. Onsite completely depends on who is the hiring manager, different not just on company but on who is the hiring manager.
Early-stage startups seem more interested in seeing how you use AI agents to build real software, rather than just how well you solve isolated leetcode problems.
Hope this helps!
These guys have a good hiring process (detailed) https://docs.fly.io/hiring/hiring
Last interview I had the only programming task was to design a video player API which required a lot of planning through the problem because they kept adding features to see if I had to rewrite it all.