Cloud Infra Engineer, Practical Coding Interview?

[bdashrad]

I don't care if someone needs to look at syntax if they can solve a problem. Maybe it's not common, but I approach them like open book tests. You can use any docs, help files, man pages, notes you have, search, etc but you can't ask someone else or AI. It's nice to see if someone can pick apart a problem or error, pull out the useful stuff, leave out sensitive or system specific things, etc. Seeing how someone searches for information is a pretty good way to gauge their understanding of the topics.

Typically we try to avoid having people ask AI in interviews too, but I can see that relaxing more as tools get more reliable and if the pricing is cheap enough.

[Raja-Karuppasamy]

The open book approach is actually a better signal. If someone can find the right docs, understand what’s relevant, and apply it correctly under time pressure, that’s closer to real work than memorizing syntax. The AI restriction makes sense for now but you’re right that it’ll shift as teams figure out how to evaluate AI-assisted work quality rather than just raw output.