Are we hiring developers who can build, or developers who can prompt?

A developer who recently interviewed fresh graduates observed that while their resumes featured impressive AI-powered projects, many struggled to explain their architecture, challenges, and scaling decisions. The developer argues that AI has lowered the barrier to building software, but hiring should focus on fundamentals, problem-solving, and ownership rather than just project demos.

I recently interviewed some fresh graduates and noticed an interesting pattern. The projects on their resumes looked impressive: - Beautiful UI - Modern tech stacks - AI-powered features - Clean GitHub repositories - At first glance, they looked like strong candidates. But when we started discussing their projects: - Why did you choose this architecture? - How does this API work? - What challenges did you face? - How would you scale this? - What happens if this component fails? - Many struggled to explain their own work. This made me think: AI has lowered the barrier to building software, which is great. But are we changing how we evaluate developers? Maybe a project demo is no longer enough. The real evaluation should focus on: - Understanding of fundamentals - Problem-solving approach - Ability to explain decisions - Debugging skills - Ownership of the work - AI will help developers build faster, but understanding what they are building and why still matters. Curious to hear from hiring managers and developers: How are you evaluating fresh graduates in the AI era?