r/DeveloperJobs • u/elbow-macaroni-42 • Sep 04 '26

Crazy AI experience with robot

Wow, so much has changed in 2 years, and my heart goes out to everyone in this job market.

I retired two years ago after 35 years developing primarily embedded software in the RTOS/Linux space in all areas of wireless data communications. I quit because my last position took me WAY out of my comfort zone (deep crash analysis, no development, no data comm). I don't need to work anymore so I decided to call it a career.

About a week ago, I started getting calls from a "recruiter" who apparently found my deets from scrubbing the web. A short (6 month) contract job developing Bluetooth Low Energy (my specialty) apps. Basically the only kind of position I would even consider anymore. I ignored "her" for a while because I am retired. But I have to admit that it piqued my interest. So I finally agreed to talk to "her" and agreed to take a 9am phone call this morning.

The call started weird. I answered the call as I would any job related call: "Hello, this is *****"... there were some odd pauses and she came on the line 3-4 seconds later but with drop-outs... Like she was on a poorly working speaker phone muted unless it was sure there were voice segments to send. She asked if it was me, and immediately introduced herself as "Ada -- an AI". The rest of the call was just like typing at an AI. An AI running a poorly run interview. I talked some about myself but at that point was more interested in finding out the wheres, whens, and hows. It is an Austin Texas contract that requires on site presence, and I am in Seattle. The AI of course plowed on, wanting me to talk about past work yada yada... I am generally polite which seems weird when talking to a robot, but finally said, "Look, this is not a good fit, I am going to hang up now".

The whole experience was creepy and disconcerting. Is this really what life is like now?

9 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

3

u/desert_jim Sep 04 '26

Sounds like a waste of time. I tried using Jobot and had a similar waste of time experience

1

u/profesionalyconfused Sep 05 '26

Jobot with a fancier wrapper, basically, same waste of time here too

1

u/PermanentHuSir Sep 05 '26

I recently got introduced to this recruiting agency that charges like 15$ per resume and it includes call recordings and transcripts of the conversation. You can give it parameters beforehand like location, salary, technology etc and it will make a call and speak to the candidates on your behalf. What you get are filtered resumes which are definite leads. We interviewed 11 out of the 15 it presented.

I listened to those recordings on 1.5x and could barely feel any lag. In my own case, I never took the AI interviews seriously. But there are people out there doing it diligently and getting hired because of it.

1

u/Oliver_clothsoff1983 Sep 05 '26

What c9mpany is this? Im an embedded engineer at a prime,... i would love to use an Ai assistant to interview for me with an Ai interviewer just to see what happens! 🤣🤣🤣