Fun new interview question I'm seeing
Posted by Packeselt@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 48 comments
Senior/staff level depending on company size, usually startups. I've been interviewing recently, and a brand new question is out there:
"Tell me about your agentic coding setup."
5 for 5, every company has asked me this. I haven't managed to find a good answer for it yet, because quite frankly, I can't tell if they're trying to disqualify people for using them, or disqualify people for using them too much. One company asked me why I thought \~BIG AI COMPANY\~ had a superior coding agent / sdk.
I almost miss the leetcode questions.
spez_eats_nazi_ass@reddit
In person? I’d ask the interviewer to stand up. And then [reddit ai censor] right in the fucking cock n balls. This shit has barely been a thing for more than 6 months. Fuck you just fucking fuck you. Probably break some chairs on the way out and piss in the corner to establish dominance.
2cars1rik@reddit
Mmm yes, the copium of salty devs is my favorite substance in the world
blckshdw@reddit
Found the node dev
spez_eats_nazi_ass@reddit
Fuck off bot
2cars1rik@reddit
Mmmm more please
blckshdw@reddit
Hired!
testy_balls@reddit
Reddit moment lmao
spez_eats_nazi_ass@reddit
I’d also get the job and turn it down. But seriously mcp had only been a thing since late 2024. Fuck all the bots and fuck everyone chugging this diarrhea flavored coo-laid.
enricojr@reddit
Part of the reason I don't use AI is that I simply can't afford to spend anything on tokens, and I don't think the quality of output is good enough to justify the cost.
Am I screwed then? Is my career over after a mere 10 years because I can't afford to use the shiny new token guesser?
blckshdw@reddit
Naa. I think the AI circle jerk will settle down when the c-suites start complaing about how expensive ai is. Give it a quarter or two, especially with the GitHub for copilot for GitHub billing changes coming in June. 2 quarters max.
Fearless_Champion377@reddit
You have to learn this stuff if you want to stay in the loop
Thus is a revolution that will be fast, we have been told for decades that code will be replaced with natural language eventually and now it’s closer than ever
We as engineers have to learn this more in depth because we need to start building around the agentic loop from now on
I can see so many possibilities with this that I’m overwhelmed and at the same time stuck
old-new-programmer@reddit
Yeah until the token costs rise to a level where small companies can no longer afford the bill. This all feels like Cloud back in the day. Just wait till the bills come due and there is so much AI slop that doesn't work and no one can read code any longer.
I agree that you gotta stay in the loop but I am not convinced this will not implode in on itself eventually.
Fearless_Champion377@reddit
This is not a bubble
Cloud was different, I lived it, used to work on bare metal servers and VPS on Linode back then
You’re right that we are having subsidized tokens with subscriptions vs enterprise
But that’s because we just started on this
Hardware companies like Nvidia investing huge amounts on improving their chips for inference to reduce cost and improve throughput
Harness devs making great advances with the reasoning/logical aspect of the brain each month
Elon investing in huge data centers for training new models
Data scientists improving their methods to train the models and improve context windows size and inference power
A lot of people still don’t even understand how all of this works and what you can build with this using the same principles, imagine a few years when more Devs learn this and can help moving forward the momentum
old-new-programmer@reddit
The economics just don’t make sense to me. These companies aren’t making a profit. Smaller local models trained on the codebases would make sense to me but I don’t see companies investing in that.
We are just given some Claude subscriptions and told to go see what happens. All I see is slop and code being merged that the submitter has no clue about but Claude said it was good and co pilot reviewed it and said it was good too.
Next day there’s a new but ticket and the GPS receivers are broke. The original submitters of the code say “We don’t know what else to do”. They run their slop through Claude again. Surprise it finds more problems about what it did before. If Claude was so good, why wouldn’t it have found its own issues earlier?
Then two weeks later the submitters decide to revert it all because now they have no clue what’s on and they made the situation worse.
So is this a people problem? Certainly. But bad engineers are being amplified by it. And when you work for a shit company like I do that doesn’t fire even the worst employees you just get an insane amount of bad and unmanageable code.
attrox_@reddit
Cloud back in the day? Like anyone going back to non cloud? There's no going back.
2cars1rik@reddit
Yup - just like when cloud went away and when Google stopped existing. Such wisdom.
Muhznit@reddit
Hey how's the migration to COBOL going?
For real though, those of you who keep making the assumption that natural language is sufficient to replace code should learn to flawlessly recite The Chaos and write an essay on how language should be influenced by structure, rather than the other way around.
The only reason anyone "needs" to practice this is because people with more money than sense are trying to justify what will otherwise be a massive expense by micromanaging their employees like hardware. I mean really, if your AI adoption metrics include leaderboards and a goal of 10x productivity increase but you're providing only a 4% salary increase, what kind of circus are you running.
Let's not forget how the AI companies have all the financial incentives to infest social media with burner accounts such as yours to manipulate sentiment in favor of it.
Fearless_Champion377@reddit
“The total time spent on the migration was reduced by an estimated 50% as reported by the engineers doing the migration.”
This was in 2024, and you know what they say about the 6 month rule on AI innovation
vaevicitis@reddit
It’s a super reasonable question to ask. But Reddit and this sub in particular is so anti-AI your reasonable take will get downvoted to oblivion.
Fearless_Champion377@reddit
Im used to go alone against the world.. no worries
dark_mode_everything@reddit
You're right about one thing for sure. We have been replacing code with natural language since 1980.
waba99@reddit
In the order what has impressed interviewers the least to the most.
CLAUDE/AGENTS.md, skills, custom MCPs, orchestration.
Hit them with the self healing CI or some bs that they’ve heard repeated on podcasts or some VC and you are golden!
tenthousandants44@reddit
I would ask that to disqualify them
mirageofstars@reddit
It’s a good question. It also allows you to flip it around and ask them how they’re using AI in their org, and include a few other “are you doing X? What does the org feel about Y? Is there a concern about Z?”
They not only want someone who can use the latest tools, but if you can also help them level up out of whatever default GPT sandpit they’re in, they’ll be more excited about it. Allegedly.
valbaca@reddit
So many places want AI cheerleaders, not senior developers
attrox_@reddit
How about preferring senior developers that can use AI?
spez_eats_nazi_ass@reddit
The fact that you got downvoted for that very simple sane comment shows the absolute bat fuck insane level of bot powered boostering going on now.
Fearless_Champion377@reddit
I was also downvoted to oblivion
Guess now this is a new problem too, bots everywhere
attrox_@reddit
Yeah that was surprising. The fact is many companies are now looking for senior experience that can drive AI agent. Many are no longer looking for mid or junior level unfortunately. The thinking is someone senior can drive how AI agent work, review the code and ship things faster. That is the reality of what's out there right now. Yes they are screwing themselves in the future but what do you expect when company want short term benefits
biosc1@reddit
Yup. My workplace is only seniors. All "junior work" is expected to be done by agents. It's a sad fact of life these days.
Free-Huckleberry-965@reddit
At this point, I'll be anything the employer wants me to be.
nickjvandyke@reddit
I answered a question like this by referring to my open source AI tool that has 3,500 GitHub stars and 10,000+ weekly downloads. They responded, "okay cool, but like have you added any skills files?" 🙄
thisismyfavoritename@reddit
but have you
nickjvandyke@reddit
No lmao. The loathe the non-determinism of optimizing MD files. I'd rather build good deterministic tools for the agent to leverage, and leave the harness to its developers.
neolace@reddit
Omg, feels like you’re talking to the hand.
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
My company asks this and it’s a thread the needle question. They want you to be using ai but also be aware that it’s wrong some of the time and have ways to actually doublecheck it.
normalmighty@reddit
Exactly. They want you to show that you're experienced using AI tools, aware of the pitfalls and already equipped with strategies to avoid or mitigate those issues.
kbielefe@reddit
Like it or not, a senior engineer nowadays is expected to provide some leadership to their team on AI usage, the same as other tools and processes. Leadership doesn't mean you have to have the exact same opinion on AI as the interviewer, but that whatever opinion you have is well founded.
travelinzac@reddit
I ask it in every interview. If your response is you copy paste code back and forth with chat, it's a nope regardless of how the rest of the interview goes.
RandomPantsAppear@reddit
This one I always just explained what I actually do, and then highlight that I will never push code that I can’t stand behind. Not just I have to believe it is right, it has to look like code that would have written. That way I can be sure I understand it, be sure I can debug it, and put my reputation behind it.
Most places want you to be an AI enthusiast, but there is a place that exists for someone who utilizes AI, but understands its limitations and still takes their professional responsibilities seriously.
attrox_@reddit
That is actually a very fun question that can illicit interesting answers. Im going to incorporate that as my interview question (since my company fully onboard). It's a good tie breaker question if you have more than 1 good candidate (after passing main interview questions/coding challenge of course).
TheRealManlyWeevil@reddit
I get asked this slightly differently "how do you AI in your day to day workflow", also haven't found a great answer so i'm going with the truth.
EspurrTheMagnificent@reddit
Just be honest. If you don't use it, say so and explain why. If you do, explain how and why you came to it, and potentially how you could improve it
Better get rejected by a company that wouldn't be a good fit anyway than to be let in a company that doesn't suit your way of working
edgen22@reddit
I mean this depends how badly you need a job. If you're unemployed and don't have 6 Plus months of funds, You should do whatever it takes. The job market feels really bad right now even for experienced devs.
rco8786@reddit
This is a legitimate question in 2026 tbh
originalchronoguy@reddit
I am fine with that line of questioning because it always lead to some deep conversations. Which either helps or damages the candidate's credibility.
It is all very subjective and as I've mentioned in the past, your job as a candidate is to steer the conversation in your favor. To take the driver's seat and control the conversation going forward. Some people can do this interviews and some can't. It also takes self-awareness when to stop if you exceed your boundaries.
SoftwareEngineer2026@reddit
Similar to the key-value data store trend, some will use them, others will not. Also. Agents by default tend to install lots of tools you might never use. My agentic setup is more minimal. Also. I use Python so I could only see this being relevant in a Python interview (unless the shop is language agnostic).
MisterHyman@reddit
Skills md files, mcp hooks and we'll defined requirements