The 40-Point Gap Between Your Interviewers When the Candidate Says 'I'd Just Prompt It'
· 9 min read
The candidate hit the wall on the system-design question, paused for two seconds, and said: "I'd just prompt it." Your most senior interviewer wrote strong hire — this is exactly how good engineers work in 2026. Your second-most-senior interviewer wrote no hire — handing the problem to a chatbot is not engineering. Same five words. Same forty-minute window. A forty-point gap on the same scorecard.
The candidate didn't fail your loop. Your loop failed to have an opinion. And the worst part of the debrief is not the disagreement — it's the way each interviewer is so confident their read is the correct one that the meeting devolves into a referendum on AI itself rather than on whether this human can ship.
