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Comment by n4r9 | Hacker News Reader

Is there not a way for candidates to use tokens via the company's own subscription during the test?

interviewed with one company that gave a virtual card with $500 on it for tokens. that seemed super generous and reasonable.

There are not many companies like that.

Indeed; I've had the good fortune to run into two. First one offered the $500 virtual card for tokens. The other (pre AI), offered a market rate contract for an 8h project. They exist, but they are rare.

Setup a tcp/http proxy behind auth, ask candidates to use that endpoint, set that proxy to add whatever you need for properly authed LLM inference. You get both instrospection + reuse whatever subscriptions you have. Mention to the candidate that the requests go through your infra though, so you set the right privacy expectations.

Not an easy way afaik :/ but if someone knows a good way please let me know

virtual card. some of the startup finance/banking tools can issue one for a fixed dollar amount. candidate uses it to bump their own sub for a month or top up credits.

I think finance will hang me upside down if I even mention that we need to provision virtual cards for every candidate

It’s not all candidates, only candidates who progress to a certain gate in the process.

I think “we offer a $50 (or $20 or whatever) Visa/Amex gift card as part of this interview step” is easier to admin, might skate by finance more easily, and avoids all the tech support angles of “here’s how to use our specific tooling” and concerns of them misusing your key for something nefarious.

In some hiring processes there was already an element of paid work, like they pay a day's worth of salary and ask you to work on a day's worth of assignment. Rare, but exists.

This is may be a strong signal that there's someone on that team with a strong sense of empathy/sensibility. My experience small set of datapoints is that this is a very positive sign.

Can imagine. This was a maybe 50 person startup? So probably easier to admin something like this.

Create your own endpoint with some token limit the candidate would use.

I think you know how to do this. You are head of engineering at an AI startup. You know how to create and revoke API keys and how to share them with your interview candidates.

I thought about this but it's also a liability and puts too much strain on me.

1. Whatever limit I put needs to be completely arbitrary. 5$? 10$? 2. I cannot guarantee they will use it correctly. They might use it for the challenge. They might use it to generate harmful content. 3. It requires me to manually create and revoke keys. Candidates might want more credits. They might get leaked.

There are solutions. I just can't think of good ones.

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