so, just had a guy ousted today in part due to my own judgment, as well as my boss'.

this guy passed the interview rounds cleanly with decent answers -- I was in one, and I suspected something was "off" about him, but was willing to go ahead.

after a couple months it becomes apparent this person is not really as inquisitive or critical as I'd like. they ask no questions, need no clarification, are silent in meetings.

once it comes time to look at PRs, it's incredibly apparent it's LLM slop. not even GOOD slop -- lots of things outright broken, non-conforming frontend design, messy and redundant code. you can imagine.

the person also cannot seemingly answer questions in sync. everything gets delayed, seemingly processed through the mouthpiece of AI. watching them live code is a mess. they seemingly have no idea what to do, until the AI instructs them. sometimes I even see them typing my questions in.

so, needless to say, the person is gone now after much hand-wringing. still a very bizarre experience, especially at my fairly tight-knit company composed of just two small dev teams.

now I'm wondering what we can do to prevent this from happening -- are in-person interviews the only way forward? thoughts?