Asking a software engineer to solve a LeetCode problem in 2026 is "like showing up to a secretary job in 1995 and being asked if you know how to service a typewriter." That's the argument from Chris Bigelow, who's published a hiring framework built around what he calls "AI-first engineers" - developers who can build an entire backend in a day using Claude agents rather than hand-coding binary tree traversals.
The core idea: traditional coding interviews measure a proxy for IQ, not actual job performance. And now that AI models solve those same algorithmic problems instantly, the proxy is broken. What matters instead, Bigelow argues, is agency - a candidate's ability to independently drive results using the tools available to them.
The Two-Step Interview
Bigelow's proposed process is deliberately short:
A two-hour take-home project designed to be impossible without AI proficiency. No weekend-consuming homework. He cites PostHog's model of paying candidates $1,000 for their time as an example worth following.
A 30-minute collaborative session using Cursor with an intentionally weaker model (not the latest GPT or Claude). The interviewer watches how the candidate navigates unfamiliar code, makes architectural decisions, and recovers when the AI gives bad suggestions. The last 10-15 minutes shift to discussing side projects and decision-making patterns.
The deliberate choice of a weaker AI model during the live interview is the smartest detail here. It forces candidates to demonstrate judgment rather than just accepting whatever the model outputs. Anyone can hit "accept all" with a top-tier model. Knowing when to override, redirect, or restructure an AI suggestion is the actual skill gap between junior and senior AI-assisted developers.
This framework has obvious limitations. Two hours isn't enough to assess system design thinking or how someone handles legacy code at scale. And "agency" is one of those qualities that's easy to define in a blog post and hard to evaluate in practice. But the broader point stands: if your interview process doesn't involve the tools your engineers use every day, you're testing for a different job than the one you're hiring for.