AI Didn’t Kill Coding Interviews — It Changed What They Test

For months, social media has been filled with claims that AI has made coding interviews obsolete.

The reality tells a very different story.

According to CoderPad’s State of Tech Hiring report, technical assessments have increased by 48% globally since mid-2023, while 43% of companies still use traditional algorithmic coding tests.

So, if AI can write code in seconds, why are companies still testing developers?

Because coding interviews were never really about typing code.

The Interview Is Moving Up the Stack

AI has dramatically reduced the time required to produce code. But writing code has always been only one part of being a good engineer.

Companies still need to know whether you can:

• Reason through complex problems
• Make good technical decisions
• Understand trade-offs
• Design scalable systems
• Debug unfamiliar codebases
• Identify when AI-generated code is wrong
• Explain why you chose one solution over another

In other words, AI may be removing the manual production of code, but it isn't removing the need to understand the code.

Even AI Companies Are Raising the Bar

Look at companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.

These companies aren't abandoning technical interviews. In many cases, they're making them even more demanding.

Meta has even experimented with AI-assisted interview rounds, with some candidates reporting that these can be harder than traditional interviews.

That makes sense.

When everyone has access to an AI coding assistant, simply knowing how to generate code becomes less of a differentiator.

The differentiator becomes:

Can you understand the problem, guide the AI, evaluate its output, and build something that actually works?

AI Fluency + Engineering Fundamentals

This creates an interesting problem for developers.

On one side, there's the "just prompt harder" crowd:

"You don't need to learn programming anymore. Just learn how to use AI."

That's dangerous advice.

If you don't understand programming fundamentals, how will you know when AI gives you a terrible solution?

On the other side, there's the "real engineers don't use AI" crowd.

That's equally problematic.

Ignoring AI doesn't make you a better engineer. If another developer can use AI to eliminate hours of repetitive work while maintaining the same quality, refusing to use it can become a competitive disadvantage.

The future isn't AI or fundamentals.

It's AI + fundamentals.

The New Competitive Advantage

The developer of the future won't necessarily be the person who can write the most code from memory.

It will be the person who can:

Understand → Design → Prompt → Review → Debug → Ship

AI can accelerate several of these steps, but you still need engineering judgment to connect them together.

And that's why coding interviews aren't disappearing.

They're evolving.

The question is no longer simply:

"Can you write this algorithm?"

It's increasingly becoming:

"Can you solve real engineering problems in a world where AI can already write the code?"

And honestly, that's a much more interesting test of an engineer.