Meta pilots AI coding interviews, allows candidates to use AI tools
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — Tech giant Meta is changing its hiring process by allowing coding job candidates to use an AI assistant during interviews, according to internal documents viewed by 404 Media.
The move signals a shift in Silicon Valley hiring practices, with software engineers increasingly expected to collaborate with AI systems as part of their day-to-day roles.
“Vibecoding” becomes part of Meta’s culture
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has publicly stated that “vibecoding”—working with and managing AI coding agents—will become a central part of the company’s engineering work.
In a January podcast with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg predicted, “Probably in 2025, we… are going to have an AI that can effectively be a [mid-level] engineer that… can write code.”
He added, “In the future people are going to be so much more creative, and they’re going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things.”
Expanding on these remarks in April, Zuckerberg told Dwarkesh Patel that “sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, we’ll reach the point where most of the code that’s going towards [AI] efforts is written by AI.”
Volunteers sought for mock AI interviews
Internal messages show Meta is calling for employees to participate in mock AI-enabled interviews.
“Meta is developing a new type of coding interview in which candidates have access to an AI assistant. This is more representative of the developer environment that our future employees will work in, and also makes LLM-based cheating less effective,” read one memo.
Employees were asked to sign up if interested in becoming test candidates, with data from these sessions intended to refine the approach before it is widely adopted.
Meta Is Going to Let Job Candidates Use AI During Coding Tests
🔗 https://t.co/XcXfqmyBbnhttps://t.co/XcXfqmyBbn
— 404 Media (@404mediaco) July 29, 2025
New industry standard or controversy?
While other tech firms have encouraged on-the-job AI use, allowing applicants to access AI tools during interviews is relatively new.
Rival company Anthropic, which makes the Claude AI tool, has explicitly prohibited interview candidates from using AI. The issue remains controversial in Silicon Valley, with established engineers raising concerns that new hires could become AI “prompters” and “vibecoders,” possibly lacking the ability to troubleshoot when AI-generated code fails.
A Meta spokesperson stated, “We’re obviously focused on using AI to help engineers with their day-to-day work, so it should be no surprise that we’re testing how to provide these tools to applicants during interviews.”
The future of coding at Meta
Meta’s experiment could pave the way for broader adoption of AI-assisted interviews in the tech industry, reflecting Zuckerberg’s vision of integrating human creativity with AI-powered engineering.
