Apakah AI Membunuh Coding Interview? Data Bilang Sebaliknya

Lo pasti pernah denger orang bilang: "Lu gak perlu belajar coding lagi. Coding interview udah mati."

Feed social media lo penuh dengan statement kayak gitu. Tapi... faktanya gimana?

Data bilang: technical interview di AS hampir naik 2x lipat sejak 2023. Dan soal-soalnya makin challenging, bukan makin gampang.

Jadi sebenarnya apa yang terjadi?

Karena salah nangkep tren ini cost-nya besar ke dua arah. Lo bisa buang-buang waktu grinding LeetCode untuk interview yang udah gak exist, atau lo salah baca industri dan ninggalin karir yang masih sangat hiring.

Mari kita abaikan apa yang orang bilang, dan lihat apa yang perusahaan lakuin ketika duit mereka sendiri yang di stake. Karena fakta cerita yang beda dari yang lo denger.

Mungkin Gue Aja yang Sial?

Beberapa bulan lalu, gue interview ke 11 perusahaan berbeda. Setiap single company yang sampai tahap lanjut... tetep ada technical test.

Mix-nya antara coding challenge dan system design questions terkait niche perusahaan mereka. Dua dari 11 itu bahkan masih minta gue solve sudoku problem. Classic banget.

Sekarang, mungkin gue aja yang sial dan kebetulan pilih 11 perusahaan paling old-school di industri ini. Tapi... data bilang bukan gitu.

Inget gue bilang technical interview naik hampir 2x lipat? Data itu dari CoderPad - platform yang dipake huge share of companies buat conduct interview mereka.

Laporan State of Tech Hiring mereka bilang:

Technical assessment naik 48% globally sejak mid-2023
43% perusahaan masih run classic algorithmic assessments
Sisanya? Gak ngurangin technical bar. Mereka cuma pindahin focus: system design, pair programming, real-world debugging

AI Labs Test Paling Ketat

Oke, tapi mungkin itu cuma slow companies kan? Enterprise yang stuck di 2019, masih interview kayak AI wave gak pernah terjadi.

Fair objection. Except...

Interview paling strict di tech sekarang ini belong to the people yang bikin AI tools-nya sendiri.

OpenAI

Most commonly reported interview question: implement LRU cache, from scratch, live, sambil lo jelasin reasoning process lo.

LRU cache itu cuma hash map + linked list. Exact "obsolete" fundamentals yang feed lo bilang udah irrelevant.

Anthropic

Mereka publish official policy untuk kandidat: "no AI assistance unless we indicate otherwise. We're curious to see how you think through problems in real time."

Surprise: It Was Never About the Code

Orang yang beli "AI killed the coding interview" itu fundamental lack understanding tentang:

Purpose dari technical interview
Apa yang software developer job sebenernya butuh

Cara pikir mereka: AI tulis code sekarang, jadi kita out of the loop. Kayak itu job kita all along.

The interview was never about writing code.

Gue shocked ini perlu di-say out loud, tapi... here we are.

Bukan tentang syntax juga. Malahan, banyak interviewer biarkan lo pilih bahasa yang lo mau buat interview, karena itu never mattered to begin with.

Yang Mereka Grade: Judgment Behind Your Solution

Lo bisa think through a problem?
Kenapa this decision over another?
Tradeoffs, alternatives
Dimana breaks at scale
How scalable your solution

Chunk besar dari interview gue adalah system design: patterns, working through larger ideas. Most of them gak involve code sama sekali. Just a scratch pad dan situation to walk through.

Di sisi lain table, kandidat terbaik yang pernah gue interview adalah yang gue punya great conversations dengan mereka - talking through solutions and ideas. The way they reasoned told me they knew their stuff, dan mereka bisa jadi someone who adds new ideas to the team.

The Meta AI-Assisted Round Story

Ada funny thing yang orang report tentang Meta's AI-assisted round.

Kandidat complain bahwa model yang mereka pake tiba-tiba "jadi lebih dumb" during the interview dibanding hari sebelumnya pas practice. Same model, same prompts. Suddenly writing buggy code dan gak pointing out mistakes.

Belum confirmed sama Meta apakah mereka purposely bikin model do worse somehow. Tapi gue gak surprised kalau iya.

It's a great way to watch where candidates catch obvious issues dan where they glaze over them.

So imagine thinking AI ended all of this dan nobody would ever ask you to explain what you built.

Exposing someone has never been easier. A few follow-up questions, dan it's over.

Jadi Ada yang Berubah Gak?

Gue gak akan bilang nothing changed. Things are changing, cuma not in the direction you were promised.

Developer udah bilang interview process itu broken sejak long before AI:

Too abstract
Too much memorization
Nothing like the actual job

Tapi for years, nothing moved.

Real-World Scenario Simulations

According to CoderPad report, companies sekarang adopting real-world scenario simulations. Progress toward assessing what matters.

Exercise-nya typically include:

Multi-file codebases (not single-function puzzles)
Realistic debugging challenges
Working with existing code (not greenfield only)
Integration with actual frameworks and tools

Less "invert this binary tree," more "here's our code, make it better."

That's much closer to actual day-to-day engineering work, dan masih lean on same deep-rooted concepts yang lo butuh before.

Ini first change in years yang gue call progress ketika it comes to interview process.

AI Usage: Nobody Agrees

Tapi here's where industri masih split: nobody agrees on how much AI usage should be allowed.

Roughly 1/3 perusahaan masih ban it entirely
Half allow it
Sisanya decide case-by-case

Dan dimana it's allowed, gue udah lihat companies:

Ask for your prompt history
Grill you deeply on take-home project
Have you extend it live on a call

So no matter where a company lands (partial, full, atau somewhere in between), there is no version of this where knowing less is the winning move.

Kemana Bar-nya Pindah?

Pattern dari interview udah evolve over the past 70 years.

Think of it as a stack:

BOTTOM LAYER: Mechanical stuff - typing out working code
MIDDLE LAYER: Implementation - picking an approach and making it work
TOP LAYER: Judgment - tradeoffs, catching what's wrong, defending the decision

Producing working code used to prove the layers above it. Lo gak bisa get something real working without understanding underneath.

Every Era of Tooling Deletes the Bottom of the Stack

Compilers deleted assembly
Frameworks deleted boilerplate (nobody interviews you on memory management for a React job)
AI is deleting yet another layer: producing the actual code

So the test is moving up a layer.

As AI adoption grows, kita akan see more companies adjust interview mereka untuk include it, dan focus less on producing code without it.

But just because we may write less of the code by hand doesn't mean the bar dropped.

The bar moved up the stack.

Time to Upset Both Sides

Dan ini part yang actually bikin gue upset tentang rhetoric yang kita see online today.

The "Just Prompt Harder" Crowd

AI bros, you're telling beginners mereka gak perlu belajar coding dan knowledge is obsolete. Just prompt harder.

That's like telling someone they can skip flight school because planes have autopilot.

Autopilot is great. It's also not the reason anyone gets to sit in that seat.

Nobody is hiring vibe coders.

Dan market bilang ini dengan data:

74% developers say they're struggling to land a job
78% tech leaders say they can't find qualified people

Both true at once.

Jobs exist, tapi qualified people are getting harder to find.

Kita about to see biggest demand for developers, probably ever. Tapi public messaging malah manufacturing the shortage of qualified developers.

The "Real Engineers Don't Touch AI" Crowd

Gue mau bilang something yang will upset a few of you.

Outside of very specific cases, gue gak akan hire developer yang refuse to leverage AI tooling.

At this point it's just getting irresponsible not to. Dan pushback against it, yang gue could understand, is becoming just as much of a problem.

Gue inget back in 2017 pas gue hire first developer. Guy ini good, tapi refused to move out of his PHP stack dan always complain tentang framework yang project gue pake.

Claim-nya: "real" developer should be able to write their own web server from scratch. Dan frameworks like Django dan React are for noobs.

I think we're past the "AI is just a tool" phase, and need to adapt.

Lo gak cuma gonna be graded on your ability. You're gonna be graded on your AI fluency as well.

I don't make the rules. That's just where the market is right now.

The Price of Not Knowing Just Went Up

So to close this out:

No, coding interviews aren't dead.

There are more of them than ever, dan they're testing the same thing they always tested: whether you know what you're doing.

AI didn't change that. It just raised the price of not knowing.

So keep your fundamentals, get good with the tools, dan understand everything you build.

Because the developers doing both aren't scared right now. They're thriving.

Key Takeaways

Technical interviews naik 48% globally sejak 2023 - bukan turun
AI companies test paling ketat - OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta
Interview never about code - it's about judgment, problem-solving, tradeoffs
Bar moved up the stack - dari mechanical coding ke higher-level thinking
Both extremes are wrong:
- "Just prompt harder" = skip fundamentals ❌
- "Real engineers don't touch AI" = refusing modern tools ❌
Winning formula: Strong fundamentals + AI fluency

Yang Perlu Lo Lakuin Sekarang

1. Strengthen Your Fundamentals

Data structures & algorithms (masih relevant!)
System design patterns
Problem-solving approach
Ability to explain your reasoning

2. Embrace AI Tools

Learn to use AI coding assistants effectively
Understand when to use AI dan when to code manually
Practice explaining AI-generated code
Build fluency with prompt engineering

3. Practice Real-World Scenarios

Work on multi-file codebases
Debug existing code
Refactor legacy systems
Build with actual frameworks

4. Prepare for Hybrid Interviews

Some rounds with AI allowed
Some rounds pure technical
All rounds will test your understanding deeply

Market is telling us: developers dengan strong fundamentals + AI fluency adalah yang winning right now.

Jangan beli narrative yang misleading. Keep learning, keep building, dan understand everything you create.

Because that's what companies are actually looking for when their money is on the line.