Dohyun Jung - Principal Consultant, ROBOCO

The era of vibe coding is well and truly upon us. A world where AI writes the code and handles most of the day-to-day work has become reality. According to a blog post from Final Round AI, an AI-powered interview assistance platform — Halfway Through 2025, AI Has Already Replaced 94,000 Tech Workers — the headline says it all: roughly 94,000 people lost their jobs to AI in the first half of 2025 alone.

Admittedly, the number was padded somewhat for shock value by lumping in business restructuring that merely happened around the same time. But it is hard to deny that the changes AI is bringing to the developer world are faster and more powerful than anyone imagined. So what should companies be thinking about in this situation? They need to change how they hire.

Hiring in the previous era focused on “what do you know” and “what can you do.” But if AI can do the job, there is no particular reason to hire a person for it. Instead, companies need to completely rebuild their hiring strategy around the capabilities found only in people: strategic thinking, leadership, and interpersonal communication.

TL;DR

  • Hiring in the vibe coding era should evaluate the human capabilities AI cannot replace, rather than knowledge held or output produced.
  • The core things to assess are communication, strategic thinking, leadership, collaboration, self-reflection, and review skills.
  • Changing the criteria for hiring and promotion sends a powerful message to the entire organization about where the company is headed in the AI era.

So how do you do it? Here are the hiring practices I propose for effectively assessing the capabilities AI cannot supply.

First, evaluate communication skills from the very first stage of hiring. Have candidates submit a three-minute self-introduction video and write a short essay, so you can gauge their logical expression and communication ability. The more AI advances, the more important communication becomes — both between people and between people and AI.

Second, introduce an “adaptive business case” exercise to assess strategic thinking. Give the candidate an ambiguous assignment, then abruptly change the situation right before submission. Real business rarely hands you a clearly defined problem. Only by watching someone recalibrate their strategy calmly amid crises and shifting variables can you identify genuine talent.

Third, to assess leadership and collaboration, a “multiplayer mission room” is worth using. Candidates solve a task in a mixed team that includes AI, while you observe how wisely they manage conflict and crisis. Pay attention to who steps up as the leader and how they put AI to use.

Fourth, run deep behavior-based interviews. Question candidates about their past behavior using the STAR method, and probe relentlessly into how they actually acted in difficult situations. That is where authenticity and the capacity for self-reflection come out.

Finally, assess the candidate’s ability to review code and documents, not to produce them. Rather than production ability, check how quickly and accurately they can evaluate work created by other people or by AI. Review capability will emerge as a core competency in the AI era.

These are only proposals; I have not yet put them into practice. But now is the time to change. Some will survive or even thrive amid the change, and others will decline comfortably while doing things the way they always have. A company is a kind of pipeline through which people flow — and in a pipeline, the first stage matters most. Hiring and promotion are the clearest messages a company sends to its people. And that requires a decision from the chief executive. Setting the direction and pace of change is ultimately the CEO’s job. Only with the CEO’s resolve can the whole company catch up with change and get ahead of it.