A client of mine reached out asking if I could help with a project of theirs - they did not have enough skilled developers on their team at the moment. I was hesitant, I didn't have time to work on anything at the moment due to college. But they said it was easy, only a few hours per week, only for a few weeks, and paid well. I reluctantly agreed, and I joined the interview call the next day.

I'm not sure what I expected out of an AI startup. Maybe I thought that it would be more of the interviewer asking me about my tech stack and skills to infer whether or not I would be a good fit for the role based on my previous experience, or questions on how I work in a team. I was expecting the interview to be more about experience, learning, teamwork, and completing the product in the timeframe.

I was instead met with AI-generated questions, questions well outside the role requirements, and inquiries on my AI setup and usage when programming. The interviewer pressed on specifically about Claude Code, how much experience I had using it, how I "prompt engineer", and how I use multiple AIs to have them check each other.

They were bewildered when I said I've never used Claude Code, don't use AI as much, have a low AI:human ratio, and focus more on actually learning how to code better instead of relying on AI. It was fully expected that as a developer looking for a job in this age of AI, I would be versed in using AI to handle all of the tasks of programming.

The startup was completely vibe-coded, and there are already many successful startups doing the same thing as they are. They only hire vibe-coders, and look to push product as soon as possible instead of relying on slow human development - even if it's more accurate and humane.

It's becoming a clear job requirement and an expectation that new hires proficiently use AI to do all or most of the development work, instead of having the skills to create code from scratch. This is becoming a trend across many businesses and new startups hiring developers, with the focus being on creating a final product as fast as possible regardless of any human touch.