TechLead Conference 2025: AI in Orgs

Technical interviews are struggling to keep pace with the reality of modern software engineering in a time of AI agents. LLMs and their offshoots can now easily solve take-home assessments, and traditional DSA formats reward memorisation over real-world skills. So how can we accurately and fairly assess the technical abilities of engineers as part of a standardised hiring process? In late 2024, I began a redesign of the technical interview process at HelloBetter, a mental health tech company in Berlin. The aim was to create a format that actually reflects day-to-day engineering work, while also being time-conscious, inclusive, and accepting of the presence of AI in developer workflows. In the process, we created "The McDougall Method": a new and emerging framework for better interview processes which is quickly forcing technical leaders to rethink their AI mitigation strategies.

I have watched well-meaning programmers, technical leaders, and their managers pour their hearts and souls into managing so-called "technical debt" and I worry that they're not getting very far. I believe that a fundamental misunderstanding from the very beginning has led almost everyone down a dark, painful road towards bitter disappointment, endless bickering, failed projects, mounting Imposter Syndrome, and debilitating learned helplessness. Fortunately, I think we can reverse these trends, at least for ourselves, with a combination of techniques from Extreme Programming and general psychology. No, really! You might be surprised to learn that everyone truly wants the same thing, but that some complexities of the human mind have made that difficult to see. Overcoming this fundamental misunderstanding fits squarely into the category of "simple, not easy", so if we want to make progress, then we'd better start now!