The AI Coding Interview: Can You Build Beyond a Demo?

0:00One of the biggest barriers for a software engineer like you to making 150 000 per

0:06year is not whether you can solve a leetcode question It's not whether you can have

0:12a strong resume It's a new type of interview that almost no one is talking about

0:18So if you're a computer science student and you want to get the software engineering job

0:23paying you 100 000 150 000 200 000 per year stop and save this video This

0:32interview is fairly simple It is the AI coding interview The AI coding interview essentially assesses

0:41your knowledge in the way that you write code using AI Companies like Meta Figma Headway

0:49and a bunch of other big tech companies are using this round because on the day

0:55to day you're going to use AI So they want to know can you engineer software

0:59using AI Or are you a vibe coder Are you letting in cross site scripting vulnerability

1:04attacks Are you letting in horrible slot code that duplicates functions that we already have How

1:11are you using AI to develop and engineer software And here's the exact process for what

1:17you should do during the interview So for one you have to understand what they're actually

1:22asking you And the AI coding interview can go a number of different ways They might

1:27ask you to fix a bug in a very large repo or they might ask you

1:32to implement a brand new feature using AI Hell they might actually ask you both But

1:38for either of these questions here's what you're going to do So step one you're going

1:43to try to understand the repo And the best way I found to understand it is

1:48to tell the AI to first create an HTML diagram or a mermaid diagram that explains

1:55all the components of the repo Now depending on your coding tool of choice you might

2:00not have a way to view that HTML You might not have a way to view

2:04the mermaid diagram You're going to articulate out loud and say hey you know I'm going

2:08to view this HTML in an HTML viewer online so you can actually see what the

2:14repo actually looks like And at the same time it's going to take a little bit

2:19of time You can open a new tab and ask the AI to explain the architecture

2:24of the repo And once these are done you should have a high level understanding of

2:30how the repo actually works Once you have this understanding you want to make sure you

2:36look at the task that they're asking you Let's say it's to fix a bug You

2:41try to change this button and then it flickers to one value Then it flickers back

2:45to the value that you change it to fix whatever bug there is What you'll do

2:50is you'll open a tab and say create a plan to fix the bug You'll describe

2:55the bug And hell you might even just give it the mermaid diagram so the AI

3:00already knows how all the parts fit together Maybe you can just continue a previous session

3:04that you had But you want to say create the plan to fix the bug And

3:09then you want to explain anything that you think might be the root cause It might

3:14be a stale state It might be that the updates aren't optimistic You want to say

3:20whatever you think might be the cause But because of the AI coding around you can

3:25actually get away with saying nothing at all You might have no idea what the bug

3:29is That's fine Just say fix the bug and create the plan After the plan is

3:34created you want to at least pretend to read the plan Look at what the AI

3:40is saying And hell maybe you can ask the AI for some considered alternatives You're going

3:46to get your final plan Maybe make some changes so the interviewer knows that you're paying

3:51attention And then you're going to execute on the plan using test driven development Tell the

3:57AI to do test driven development to create the failing test first then to get those

4:03tests to pass And the reason why you want to do test driven development is it's

4:07a cheat code for writing high quality code using AI The AI will write the test

4:13first The test will fail The AI will write the business logic and then the test

4:18will pass So not only do you have tests already natively but you also have code

4:23that works And once you do this the functionality should work as you expect it You

4:29should test it out You should make sure everything works And if it involves some sort

4:33of database migration you should tell the AI to dry run the migration first to inspect

4:40what the migration would do If you were to ship it then you run the migration

4:46And if you follow this plan this outline this guide step by step as I explained

4:51it you will absolutely crush the AI coding round Good luck