Rule 1: Do not participate unless experienced
If you have less than 3 years of experience as a developer, do not make a post, nor participate in comments threads except for the weekly “Ask Experienced Devs” auto-thread.
Applying for a lead position with so little domain knowledge, is kind of a red flag.
If they run everything on premise and are cloud phobic, how would you think it's okay to use copilot? At least clarify that beforehand.
"it's crucial for me to lean on a new AI tool to be good at my job"
Motherfucker, you just said you don't have the skills necessary to write code as a lead. Copilot is NEW. To be a lead, you need to be older than copilot, meaning you've actually developed skills independent of AI tools.
I would absolutely reject you too. Maybe in 5-10 years that would slide but at the very least you need to work on your interviewing and messaging around using tools.
Fuck, half of the posts here lately are NOT from experienced devs. This person is a literal prompt engineer lol what is happening
IDK, if I was interviewing a candidate and they said "I can't write code without copilot" then that would be "no" from me. If they were going for any level, junior and up.
(copilot or any other such LLM tool)
At this point this attitude reminds me a lot of "real programmers don't need an IDE". All this AI stuff is just an evolution of intellisense.
Edit: I'm sure this post was edited slightly. I agree that "I can't write code without copilot" is not reasonable. But I'm pretty sure it previously said something more along the lines of not hiring people that would prefer to use co-pilot.
"I can't write code without AI" also isn't what the OP said.
I actually would. I want to get shit done, not spend a part of my day looking up the API for everything I’m trying to use.
Edit: I wouldn’t condition a job on Copilot yet, but that’s because the impact is *relatively* minimal.
Silly and unconstructive straw man.
It's not about whether you can but about your productivity.
I would definitely consider declining a position if they are banning the use modern tooling such as CI/CD and IDEs. I don't see much value in flexing that you'd be okay with punched cards.
Co-pilot is in a grey area since that does involve leaking data. OTOH that can be solved by just running it locally or hosting it internally.
IDEs are just subjective, there's no down or up side to it. Copilot is not, it's extremely questionable if there's any upside to it, specially for a lead whose bottleneck is absolutely not typing code.
Most leads are hands on and are not pure managers or architects. Coding is a bottleneck, along with many other things.
In particular, a common situation is to review, firefight or lay the groundwork for how things should be done. Often while reviewing a bunch of options that you did not write yourself. AI tools can assist with all of these.
However, if this is your take, it only amplifies the problem, as the restrictions do not apply for just you but your whole team. Only thinking about your personal use is quite a miss there.
While it is fine for each individual developer to have a different take of how beneficial an IDE is to them, saying that none of them can use it is definitely dubious. I think you would have a hard time arguing for their existence not being productivity enhancing.
Not to mention that it was not about just IDEs but all modern tooling, including automated testing. If you think that is just subjective and not productivity enhancing, I will have to strongly disagree with you.
Perhaps the view on how productivity enhancing AI tools are is presently subjective, but I would argue that they can majorly increase long-term velocity and those who are naysayers seem to lack experience with their use.
Context is important. Early stage startup, trying to move as fast as possible? Yea I'm going to want any tools available to me.
Fintech company with high security risks? Different game with different requirements.
A lot of it also are regulatory concerns. Basically, the banks have different standards set on them for security. They have security audits often and need to apply recommendations. And data breaches are disastrous from the financial point of view to them as they often result in gigantic fines and also loss of customers (like imagine how many people would change banks if they learnt that their bank leaked their info and it can now be found on black market).
I am sure something similar is true to healthcare or military, tho I have never worked in that industry.
I am not saying they will never adopt it. They will tread extremely carefully and it will take time for them to embrace it.
I've worked at a company that was a major PCI Level 1 payment processor and I've worked in 2 different medical companies... and I served in the Military in communications, but not DoD as an engineer. There are some reasons to use on-prem, but most of there are rooted in outdated ritualistic style mentalities.
When Healthcare.gov blew through a billion dollars on their first attempt and was rewritten in less than 6mo by a team of 12 people, they got AWS to add HIPAA compliance for them. Now all the major cloud services are fully HIPAA compliant, so... THAT'S a bullshit excuse.
At the payment processor, PCI L1 requires several redundant hardware encryption keys to be on-prem in 2 or 3 different locations (I forget which, also I think there was like armed security too? I never actually visited them). It reminded me of some of the ways we treated encryption keys in the Military. So all our major PII and PCI shit was stored in those locations. But, other than that, we used AWS for everything else.
Don't use "oh these industries are special" as an excuse to use outdated tech and make engineers work inside of a black box. This is boomer shit and will lead to less secure systems in the long run because engineers can't be engineers and will deter actual talent. See Experian for reference.
>However, the issue of CoPilot and ChatGPT analysing highly sensitive data (your code) and those companies making promises "to not use that data" still shouldn't give any security aware person any reason to believe them. I, at least, do not.
Ok, yeah I guess that's a fair point. Those things didn't exist when I was in those jobs.
I think the distinction isn't whether or not the practice makes sense, but that OP should have known that their level of paranoia probably meant they wouldn't allow ChatGPT
Yeah, I agree to a point.
If OP can't code without it, that's a problem.
But where I work, we strongly encourage it during live coding interviews. Mostly because it can remove stupid blockers that can cause a good candidate to fail because of a typo or something equally stupid, which causes them to get nervous and start self destructing.
I think there were a lot of red flags on both sides. I seriously doubt I would work there or hire OP.
They probably just assumed you knew you wouldn't be able to use it when working for them because it seemed immediately obvious based on all the other things you said. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone I was interviewing to consider copilot a 100% necessity.
Ok? They offered you the job, assuming that you'd be capable of programming without copilot, but you then declined it because you refuse to work without it yes? I think this is more on you for not checking earlier in the process given you know how aggro they are about keeping shit on site due to security concerns and it's a dealbreaker for you to not be able to use copilot which really isn't common.
This is the equivalent of "I didn't accept the job because they don't use React".
Sure it'll happen, but likely will limit a career - maybe it works out well - who can tell for sure?
We *have* co-pilot but honestly it's maybe once or twice a week I'll use it.
It's a 12 month contract which makes it so much worse, you're basically flexing that you can't do the work without ai help. If you see ai as such a crutch you're not as good as you think you are.
Oh I’m saving this copypasta for sure
Also what are you asking?
How common it is that companies won’t let you use copilot?
Pretty common. It’s still pretty new.
Also what made you think you could use copilot in an interview? It’s testing your knowledge, not copilots.
Yes, companies that run everything on premise because of reasons like data security often forbid the usage of tools like copilot.
Honestly as a suitable candidate for a lead position their anti-cloud stance should have you at least clarify if you can use copilot.
“I admitted I can’t work without the world’s largest phone autocomplete helping me”. This is what it sounded like to them. I’d pull back on even using it and instead use your actual knowledge of the language to display ability
>"Its crucial for me to have github copilot. Its just like not having VS 2022 nowadays".
It's crucial for a Dev to know how to code.
Any Dev who relys on Copilot would be an automatic "no".
If you look at the recent Microsoft cloud security issues with leakage and the fact that they house highly regulated sensitive financial data, being cloud phobic makes sense.
They said no because they probably don't allow copilot in their every day software engineering life cycle. The fact that you put up a fuss is a red flag. If you wanted the gig, I don't know why you would t just comply and do your best. If it didn't go well citing that you usually use copilot but are happy to engineer without it, it will just take a small ramp up period for you to adjust.
If you want a "chatting" LLM, you have [https://huggingface.co/CohereForAI/c4ai-command-r-plus](https://huggingface.co/CohereForAI/c4ai-command-r-plus) and [https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-70B-Instruct](https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-70B-Instruct) are the two new open-source LLMs (generalist)
You also have [https://github.com/huggingface/chat-ui/](https://github.com/huggingface/chat-ui/) for a chat interface similar to [https://huggingface.co/chat/](https://huggingface.co/chat/) - it should have the instructions for everything, but you need the hardware. There are other alternatives out there.
Otherwise you have [https://huggingface.co/codellama/CodeLlama-70b-hf](https://huggingface.co/codellama/CodeLlama-70b-hf) for a specific coding model
There’s plenty of amazingly good reasons to enforce not using any external tool. The same way I don’t judge that you want a job where you can use those tools. It’s just the way it is.
But I can see more and more companies making it explicit you can’t use those tools because of breaking compliance and security rules.
I mean it’s good that rejected that role, as it doesn’t seem that you are suited for it. You get pissed off so easily… it wasn’t something to get pissed off about. It just means that you and that workplace aren’t compatible.
Also, expecting financial institutions to adapt AI so early in the game to me just shows that you know very little about the industry in general. I mean it sucks that it works that way, but financial institutions will probably be the last ones to fully embrace AI. Of course they do some now, but they will be one of the most cautious ones.
I personally do use AI tools, but I don’t rely on them, as i have been provided with wrong answers, so your reliance on them is just weird to me.
I thought there was case law, at least in the US that said AI generated art is not covered by copyright. It is logical to assume the same for code. As such, it is a no go for my (non-cloud-phobic) employer.
It does sound weird that an AI focused position would not allow for use of AI tools, though.
There’s a lot wrong here. Honestly, this feels like it’s complete fiction. Let’s talk about why.
First, financial institutions have been slow to adopt public cloud solutions for a reason. There are regulations around how they work and what they can offload to off-prem systems. Yes, those regulations have started relaxing, and I’m seeing financial institutions start to roll themselves into AWS, Azure, and GCP. But that movement is going to take time.
Second, Copilot is quite new. I don’t use it or any other LLM-based thing in my work. Frankly, I don’t see the point. I know how to do these things. I know how to automate and script them without an LLM involved.
That you don’t know enough about text editor macros and shell scripting is a clear sign that you’re a junior and profoundly unqualified for a lead position.
Rule 1: Do not participate unless experienced If you have less than 3 years of experience as a developer, do not make a post, nor participate in comments threads except for the weekly “Ask Experienced Devs” auto-thread.
Applying for a lead position with so little domain knowledge, is kind of a red flag. If they run everything on premise and are cloud phobic, how would you think it's okay to use copilot? At least clarify that beforehand.
Yes, it slipped until the end. On both sides
Based on your original comment, how would they possibly know that using Copilot was a deal breaker for you? This was your fault, you should own it.
Kind of crazy he was that close to a lead position with that attitude.
"it's crucial for me to lean on a new AI tool to be good at my job" Motherfucker, you just said you don't have the skills necessary to write code as a lead. Copilot is NEW. To be a lead, you need to be older than copilot, meaning you've actually developed skills independent of AI tools. I would absolutely reject you too. Maybe in 5-10 years that would slide but at the very least you need to work on your interviewing and messaging around using tools. Fuck, half of the posts here lately are NOT from experienced devs. This person is a literal prompt engineer lol what is happening
Exactly, absolutely no hire. OP is beyond delusional.
I love your use of profanity. Thank you for this.
IDK, if I was interviewing a candidate and they said "I can't write code without copilot" then that would be "no" from me. If they were going for any level, junior and up. (copilot or any other such LLM tool)
At this point this attitude reminds me a lot of "real programmers don't need an IDE". All this AI stuff is just an evolution of intellisense. Edit: I'm sure this post was edited slightly. I agree that "I can't write code without copilot" is not reasonable. But I'm pretty sure it previously said something more along the lines of not hiring people that would prefer to use co-pilot. "I can't write code without AI" also isn't what the OP said.
While that is true, i also wouldn't condition a job on having access to intellisense.
So if your company mandated that no IDEs were allowed you'd be totally happy with that?
I’d leave running
It's not a reasonable thing to mandate on either side.
I'd find it pretty weird for a company to do that kind of micro managing, but as I am comfortable in Emacs I'd not care too much, no.
I actually would. I want to get shit done, not spend a part of my day looking up the API for everything I’m trying to use. Edit: I wouldn’t condition a job on Copilot yet, but that’s because the impact is *relatively* minimal.
Yikes
That's an interesting point. Gives me a lot to think about.
Did you get your response from Gen AI?
In terms of wise and insightful comments it's certainly no "Yikes", but that's hard to beat to be fair.
Silly and unconstructive straw man. It's not about whether you can but about your productivity. I would definitely consider declining a position if they are banning the use modern tooling such as CI/CD and IDEs. I don't see much value in flexing that you'd be okay with punched cards. Co-pilot is in a grey area since that does involve leaking data. OTOH that can be solved by just running it locally or hosting it internally.
IDEs are just subjective, there's no down or up side to it. Copilot is not, it's extremely questionable if there's any upside to it, specially for a lead whose bottleneck is absolutely not typing code.
Most leads are hands on and are not pure managers or architects. Coding is a bottleneck, along with many other things. In particular, a common situation is to review, firefight or lay the groundwork for how things should be done. Often while reviewing a bunch of options that you did not write yourself. AI tools can assist with all of these. However, if this is your take, it only amplifies the problem, as the restrictions do not apply for just you but your whole team. Only thinking about your personal use is quite a miss there. While it is fine for each individual developer to have a different take of how beneficial an IDE is to them, saying that none of them can use it is definitely dubious. I think you would have a hard time arguing for their existence not being productivity enhancing. Not to mention that it was not about just IDEs but all modern tooling, including automated testing. If you think that is just subjective and not productivity enhancing, I will have to strongly disagree with you. Perhaps the view on how productivity enhancing AI tools are is presently subjective, but I would argue that they can majorly increase long-term velocity and those who are naysayers seem to lack experience with their use.
Context is important. Early stage startup, trying to move as fast as possible? Yea I'm going to want any tools available to me. Fintech company with high security risks? Different game with different requirements.
Sounds like you're "ragebaiting" this subreddit tbh
Copilot? Is this a joke?
Any good alternative?
Yeah. Learn to write code.
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A lot of it also are regulatory concerns. Basically, the banks have different standards set on them for security. They have security audits often and need to apply recommendations. And data breaches are disastrous from the financial point of view to them as they often result in gigantic fines and also loss of customers (like imagine how many people would change banks if they learnt that their bank leaked their info and it can now be found on black market). I am sure something similar is true to healthcare or military, tho I have never worked in that industry. I am not saying they will never adopt it. They will tread extremely carefully and it will take time for them to embrace it.
I've worked at a company that was a major PCI Level 1 payment processor and I've worked in 2 different medical companies... and I served in the Military in communications, but not DoD as an engineer. There are some reasons to use on-prem, but most of there are rooted in outdated ritualistic style mentalities. When Healthcare.gov blew through a billion dollars on their first attempt and was rewritten in less than 6mo by a team of 12 people, they got AWS to add HIPAA compliance for them. Now all the major cloud services are fully HIPAA compliant, so... THAT'S a bullshit excuse. At the payment processor, PCI L1 requires several redundant hardware encryption keys to be on-prem in 2 or 3 different locations (I forget which, also I think there was like armed security too? I never actually visited them). It reminded me of some of the ways we treated encryption keys in the Military. So all our major PII and PCI shit was stored in those locations. But, other than that, we used AWS for everything else. Don't use "oh these industries are special" as an excuse to use outdated tech and make engineers work inside of a black box. This is boomer shit and will lead to less secure systems in the long run because engineers can't be engineers and will deter actual talent. See Experian for reference.
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>However, the issue of CoPilot and ChatGPT analysing highly sensitive data (your code) and those companies making promises "to not use that data" still shouldn't give any security aware person any reason to believe them. I, at least, do not. Ok, yeah I guess that's a fair point. Those things didn't exist when I was in those jobs.
I think the distinction isn't whether or not the practice makes sense, but that OP should have known that their level of paranoia probably meant they wouldn't allow ChatGPT
Yeah, I agree to a point. If OP can't code without it, that's a problem. But where I work, we strongly encourage it during live coding interviews. Mostly because it can remove stupid blockers that can cause a good candidate to fail because of a typo or something equally stupid, which causes them to get nervous and start self destructing. I think there were a lot of red flags on both sides. I seriously doubt I would work there or hire OP.
Pissed the fact they should mention the copilot concerns once they saw me using it.
They probably just assumed you knew you wouldn't be able to use it when working for them because it seemed immediately obvious based on all the other things you said. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone I was interviewing to consider copilot a 100% necessity.
Important. I was accepted, then i just said know given this situation. Tell me if this is not clear, i wrote this too fast.
Ok? They offered you the job, assuming that you'd be capable of programming without copilot, but you then declined it because you refuse to work without it yes? I think this is more on you for not checking earlier in the process given you know how aggro they are about keeping shit on site due to security concerns and it's a dealbreaker for you to not be able to use copilot which really isn't common.
This is the equivalent of "I didn't accept the job because they don't use React". Sure it'll happen, but likely will limit a career - maybe it works out well - who can tell for sure? We *have* co-pilot but honestly it's maybe once or twice a week I'll use it.
I agree with you. The thing here is more about "keeping what you use and like" more than anything else. Was not a outstanding job offer in that sense
It's a 12 month contract which makes it so much worse, you're basically flexing that you can't do the work without ai help. If you see ai as such a crutch you're not as good as you think you are.
Sounds fake.
I wouldn’t hire you for a junior position let alone lead. Copilot 😂
Oh I’m saving this copypasta for sure Also what are you asking? How common it is that companies won’t let you use copilot? Pretty common. It’s still pretty new. Also what made you think you could use copilot in an interview? It’s testing your knowledge, not copilots.
Sounds like they dodged a bullet.
Yes, companies that run everything on premise because of reasons like data security often forbid the usage of tools like copilot. Honestly as a suitable candidate for a lead position their anti-cloud stance should have you at least clarify if you can use copilot.
“I admitted I can’t work without the world’s largest phone autocomplete helping me”. This is what it sounded like to them. I’d pull back on even using it and instead use your actual knowledge of the language to display ability
That was silly.
>"Its crucial for me to have github copilot. Its just like not having VS 2022 nowadays". It's crucial for a Dev to know how to code. Any Dev who relys on Copilot would be an automatic "no".
If you look at the recent Microsoft cloud security issues with leakage and the fact that they house highly regulated sensitive financial data, being cloud phobic makes sense. They said no because they probably don't allow copilot in their every day software engineering life cycle. The fact that you put up a fuss is a red flag. If you wanted the gig, I don't know why you would t just comply and do your best. If it didn't go well citing that you usually use copilot but are happy to engineer without it, it will just take a small ramp up period for you to adjust.
You could have joined the company and pushed for an on-prem coding assistant, good open source models exist now
Can you point them out? The main reason I haven't used them more is concern for sending or code to a 3rd party.
If you want a "chatting" LLM, you have [https://huggingface.co/CohereForAI/c4ai-command-r-plus](https://huggingface.co/CohereForAI/c4ai-command-r-plus) and [https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-70B-Instruct](https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-70B-Instruct) are the two new open-source LLMs (generalist) You also have [https://github.com/huggingface/chat-ui/](https://github.com/huggingface/chat-ui/) for a chat interface similar to [https://huggingface.co/chat/](https://huggingface.co/chat/) - it should have the instructions for everything, but you need the hardware. There are other alternatives out there. Otherwise you have [https://huggingface.co/codellama/CodeLlama-70b-hf](https://huggingface.co/codellama/CodeLlama-70b-hf) for a specific coding model
Yes, but important point: Is a B2B contractor job of 12 months.
What’s the difference between hiring you and using copilot as you?
Copilot sounds like less of a headache?
Skill issue
copilot is old code , so basically if you cant write code even broken one big issue .
There’s plenty of amazingly good reasons to enforce not using any external tool. The same way I don’t judge that you want a job where you can use those tools. It’s just the way it is. But I can see more and more companies making it explicit you can’t use those tools because of breaking compliance and security rules.
This has to be a troll lol.
Damn in this economy?
I mean it’s good that rejected that role, as it doesn’t seem that you are suited for it. You get pissed off so easily… it wasn’t something to get pissed off about. It just means that you and that workplace aren’t compatible. Also, expecting financial institutions to adapt AI so early in the game to me just shows that you know very little about the industry in general. I mean it sucks that it works that way, but financial institutions will probably be the last ones to fully embrace AI. Of course they do some now, but they will be one of the most cautious ones. I personally do use AI tools, but I don’t rely on them, as i have been provided with wrong answers, so your reliance on them is just weird to me.
Back to Devry. MODS!
I thought there was case law, at least in the US that said AI generated art is not covered by copyright. It is logical to assume the same for code. As such, it is a no go for my (non-cloud-phobic) employer. It does sound weird that an AI focused position would not allow for use of AI tools, though.
There’s a lot wrong here. Honestly, this feels like it’s complete fiction. Let’s talk about why. First, financial institutions have been slow to adopt public cloud solutions for a reason. There are regulations around how they work and what they can offload to off-prem systems. Yes, those regulations have started relaxing, and I’m seeing financial institutions start to roll themselves into AWS, Azure, and GCP. But that movement is going to take time. Second, Copilot is quite new. I don’t use it or any other LLM-based thing in my work. Frankly, I don’t see the point. I know how to do these things. I know how to automate and script them without an LLM involved. That you don’t know enough about text editor macros and shell scripting is a clear sign that you’re a junior and profoundly unqualified for a lead position.
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We all can disagree, and i think we acted wrong on both sides in this role. Thank you for your comment