Meta to Allow AI Assistance in Coding Interviews, Signaling Shift in Tech Hiring Practices

Meta Is Going to Let Job Candidates Use AI During Coding Tests

Mark Zuckerberg has said vibecoding will be a major part of Meta's engineering work in the near future. Meta told employees that it is going to allow some coding job candidates to use an AI assistant during the interview process, according to internal Meta communications seen by 404 Media. The company has also asked existing employees to volunteer for a "mock AI-enabled interview," the messages say. It's the latest indication that Silicon Valley giants are pushing software engineers to use AI in their jobs, and it signals a broader move toward hiring employees who can vibecode as part of their jobs. "AI-Enabled Interviews -- Call for Mock Candidates," a post from earlier this month on an internal Meta message board reads. "Meta is developing a new type of coding interview in which candidates have access to an AI assistant. This is more representative of the developer environment that our future employees will work in, and also makes LLM-based cheating less effective." "We need mock candidates," the post continues. "If you would like to experience a mock AI-enabled interview, please sign up in this sheet. The questions are still in development; data from you will help shape the future of interviewing at Meta." Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made clear at numerous all-hands and in public podcast interviews that he is not just pushing the company's software engineers towards using AI in their work, but that he foresees human beings managing "AI coding agents" that will write code for the company. "I think this year, probably in 2025, we at Meta as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code," Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in January. "Over time we'll get to a point where a lot of the code in our apps and including the AI that we generate is actually going to be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers ... In the future people are going to be so much more creative, and they're going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things." In April, Zuckerberg expanded on this slightly on a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel, where he said that "sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, we'll reach the point where most of the code that's going towards [AI] efforts is written by AI." While it's true that many tech companies have pushed software engineers to use AI in their work, they have been slower to allow new applicants to use AI during the interview process. In fact, Anthropic, which makes the AI tool Claude, has specifically told job applicants that they cannot use AI during the interview process. To circumvent that type of ban, some AI tools promise to allow applicants to secretly use AI during coding interviews. The topic, in general, has been a controversial one in Silicon Valley. Established software engineers worry that the next batch of coders will be more AI "prompters" and "vibecoders" than software engineers, and that they may not know how to troubleshoot AI-written code when something goes wrong. "We're obviously focused on using AI to help engineers with their day-to-day work, so it should be no surprise that we're testing how to provide these tools to applicants during interviews," a Meta spokesperson told 404 Media.

Meta Is Going to Let Job Candidates Use AI During Coding Tests

"This is more representative of the developer environment that our future employees will work in." Meta told employees that it is going to allow some coding job candidates to use an AI assistant during the interview process, according to internal Meta communications seen by 404 Media. The company has also asked existing employees to volunteer for a "mock AI-enabled interview," the messages say. It's the latest indication that Silicon Valley giants are pushing software engineers to use AI in their jobs, and signals a broader move toward hiring employees who can vibe code as part of their jobs.

Meta says it will let candidates use AI in some job interviews

It's a closer reflection of real-world developer environments Meta is reportedly testing AI-enabled coding interviews in which it will allow candidates to use AI tools. For the time being, it looks like the company could be recruiting internal employees as volunteers for mock interviews to help it develop the shape and format of them, with the initiative revealed via internal communications and verified by 404 Media. The reality is AI assistants and agents now form part of most workers' workflows - especially developers - so permitting them within the interview stage more closely reflects the real worker environment. "Meta is developing a new type of coding interview in which candidates have access to an AI assistant," the post reads. "This is more representative of the developer environment that our future employees will work in, and also makes LLM-based cheating less effective." Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg already believes AI could eventually write most of Meta's app and AI code, ultimately ending up as mid-level engineers as soon as this year and freeing up humans to focus on more creative tasks. It's a similar story with Microsoft and Google - two companies that claim around one-third of new code is AI-generated. However, Meta's approach to AI-assisted interviews marks a different direction to other companies in the space. Anthropic currently bans AI use during interviews, presumably seeking genuine worker talent that can be further enhanced by AI. The benefit of AI-generated code is that it can be produced far more quickly than human-generated code, however its accuracy relies heavily on the quality of the prompts and thorough reviewing is crucial. "We're obviously focused on using AI to help engineers with their day-to-day work, so it should be no surprise that we're testing how to provide these tools to applicants during interviews," a Meta spokesperson added.

Meta Wants Potential Employees to Use AI During Coding Tests

Meta's existing employees have been asked to take mock interviews Meta is reportedly planning a new job interview format where the shortlisted candidates will be asked to use artificial intelligence (AI) for their coding tests. As per the report, the new restructuring in the hiring process is part of the company's growing ambitions in the AI space. The Menlo Park-based tech giant is said to be looking for a future workforce where employees, especially those working on the company's core products, are proficient in the use of generative AI tools. 404 Media reports that Meta is planning to bring AI into the job interview process. Instead of letting AI shortlist candidates and go through resumes, it wants the applicants to use AI in their tests. Citing internal communication reviewed by the publication, the report mentions that potential employees will be asked to use an AI assistant during their coding tests. To test the feasibility of using AI in tests, the company is reportedly also asking existing employees to participate in "mock AI-enabled interviews." An internal communication from earlier this month reportedly stated, "Meta is developing a new type of coding interview in which candidates have access to an AI assistant. This is more representative of the developer environment that our future employees will work in, and also makes LLM-based cheating less effective." The post, which was originally aimed at employees to ask them to participate in this new interview format, also asked staffers to sign an online sheet if they wanted to volunteer in the mock test. "The questions are still in development; data from you will help shape the future of interviewing at Meta," the post reportedly added. The new interview format aligns with the company's growing ambitions in the AI space. Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the Joe Rogan podcast, "I think this year, probably in 2025, we at Meta as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a mid-level engineer that you have at your company that can write code." In February, Meta fired 3,600 employees due to lower-than-expected performance. With the creation of the company's Superintelligence Labs, it is clear that the tech giant wants to build a workforce that is not only comfortable using AI tools, but can also effectively delegate certain tasks to chatbots.