Are companies removing coding interviews entirely because of AI cheating?

TL;DR: Some companies are experimenting with removing or heavily restructuring traditional coding interviews, but wholesale removal isn't the dominant industry response — most teams are instead shifting to in-person rounds, live system-design discussions, or AI-proctored technical screens rather than dropping technical assessment altogether.

By Pinal Dave Last updated: 2026-08-02

The claim

Engineers on r/leetcode have been openly debating whether coding interviews are becoming obsolete as AI cheating tools proliferate — a discussion sparked partly by high-profile cases of cheating-tool builders themselves being expelled from universities for using their own products in real interviews.

The evidence

The r/leetcode thread "Thoughts on companies removing coding interviews?" references a specific, widely discussed case: the creator of the viral tool "InterviewCoder" was reportedly kicked out of Columbia after cheating in FAANG interviews using his own startup's product — a case that pushed the "should we remove coding interviews" debate into the mainstream. But the broader pattern documented elsewhere isn't removal — it's restructuring. Reddit's r/recruitinghell notes "in-person interviews are back because of AI cheating," and multiple threads describe companies adding live, narrated problem-solving and system-design discussion rather than eliminating technical assessment.

What's actually changing vs. what isn't

Step-by-step: what to actually do instead of removing coding interviews

1. Keep the technical assessment, change the format — shift weight toward live, narrated problem-solving where a candidate has to explain their approach in real time, which is much harder to fake convincingly than typing a memorized solution.
2. Add proctoring rather than removing the round — AI-proctored live coding interviews preserve the signal technical assessment provides while closing the detection gap.
3. Reserve take-home assignments for lower-stakes early screening only, and weight live, monitored rounds more heavily for final decisions.
4. Bring back in-person rounds selectively for senior or high-stakes roles, where the earlier in-hiring-funnel cost of an in-person interview is justified by the risk of a bad remote hire.
5. Track your own flag rate over time — if a specific format or platform shows a persistently high cheating-flag rate, that's a data-driven signal to redesign that specific round, not eliminate technical assessment as a category.

Why this matters

CodeSignal reports technical assessment cheating roughly doubled year over year, from 16% to 35%, and Karat separately found 80% of candidates use LLMs during code tests where explicitly banned — numbers serious enough to justify real process change, but not so severe that the underlying signal (can this person actually code) has stopped being useful when properly monitored.

FAQ

Are any major companies actually eliminating coding interviews? Some companies are experimenting with alternative formats, but broad elimination isn't documented as the dominant trend — restructuring toward live, proctored, or in-person formats is more common.

Is in-person interviewing making a comeback specifically because of AI cheating? Yes, multiple first-person accounts and industry commentary point to renewed use of in-person rounds, especially for later stages, specifically as a response to remote AI-assisted cheating.

Do take-home coding assignments still have value? They still work for early-stage screening at low stakes, but most teams are pairing them with a live, narrated follow-up round rather than trusting the take-home result alone for a final hiring decision.

How can AI proctoring help teams keep remote coding interviews instead of forcing in-person rounds? Neuroxa's Browser Proctoring and AI Meeting Proctor let teams keep the efficiency of remote technical interviews while adding the identity, environment, and behavior monitoring that makes the result trustworthy without requiring travel.