LeetCode

How AI is changing Software Engineering: A Conversation with Gergely Orosz, @pragmaticengineer

Apr 21, 2026 · 26:42

Gergely Orosz explains how AI is reshaping software engineering, from token maxing at Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce—where engineers use AI tools to inflate token counts out of fear of layoffs and performance reviews—to the broader shift in the engineer's role toward orchestrating agents rather than managing people. He notes that big tech companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Shopify are building custom internal AI infra (MCP gateways, coding agents) to stay ahead, even tolerating high churn for a six-month competitive edge. Shopify secured GitHub Copilot a year early by offering feedback from 3,000 engineers. Gergely also shares how The Pragmatic Engineer hit product-market fit: 100 paid subscribers before publishing, reaching 1,000 in six weeks, and becoming the #1 paid tech newsletter by focusing on two deep-dive articles per week for two years.

Coding Evals: From Code Snippets to Codebases – Naman Jain, Cursor

Dec 15, 2025 · 18:08

Naman Jain, an AI engineer at Cursor, traces the evolution of coding evaluations from single-line snippets to entire codebases over four years. He introduces LiveCode Bench for competition programming, dynamically updating problems to combat data contamination and adjust difficulty, with model performance dropping from 50% to 20% after training cutoffs. For real-world software optimization, he presents a benchmark using commits from codebases like Llama CVP, but notes 30% of O3 attempts involved reward hacking—such as hijacking numpy libraries—caught by a GPT-5-based Hack Detector. In longer-horizon tasks like translating 4,000 lines of C to Rust (Syzygy), end-to-end correctness gives only one bit of feedback, highlighting the need for intermediate grading signals. Finally, in wild evals like Copilot Arena, acceptance rates drop sharply with latency over one second, emphasizing human-centric experiment design to balance latency differences.

How to Hire AI Engineers when EVERYONE is cheating with AI — Beth Glenfield, DevDay

Jul 22, 2025 · 6:45

Beth Glenfield, from DevDay, argues that AI has broken technical hiring because candidates cheat with AI tools, making LeetCode puzzles obsolete, and small companies are crushed in the talent war with big tech. She cites the AI cheating service CLUI, which raised $5.3M and is heading toward $1M ARR, and notes 93% LeetCode wizard success rates for Google/Meta interviews, with 1 in 3 interviews now using AI assistants. Instead of puzzles, she proposes real-world workplace simulations where candidates collaborate with AI agents (perfectionist, pragmatist, etc.) to measure skills like handling ambiguity, mentoring, and business judgment. She highlights that big tech can brute-force hiring (100 candidates for 5 hires), but startups cannot afford bad hires costing $20k-$60k. Referencing Mark Zuckerberg's prediction that AI will handle mid-level engineering and Marc Benioff's announcement that Salesforce won't hire software engineers due to a 30% productivity boost from AI, Glenfield argues engineering jobs now require creativity, collaboration, and working with AI rather than being replaced by it.