{"slug": "your-interview-questions-assume-candidates-can-afford-claude-code-max", "title": "Your interview questions assume candidates can afford Claude Code Max", "summary": "James Lowman, engineering team lead at trade infrastructure company Starboard, now asks candidates about the last three Claude Code skills they wrote, making access to leading agentic coding tools a hiring filter. The divide is not only about money; unpaid time to practice matters just as much, and early access compounds fast.", "body_md": "Estimated reading time: 7 minutes\n\n**Key takeaways:**\n\n- Access to\n**leading agentic coding tools** is becoming a**hiring filter**. **The divide isn’t only about money.** Unpaid time to practice matters just as much.- Early access compounds fast. Current fixes are a start, but they’re small.\n\nAmid the shift to [agentic coding](https://leaddev.com/ai/addictive-agentic-coding-has-developers-losing-sleep), James Lowman, engineering team lead at trade infrastructure company Starboard, started asking candidates to tell him about the last three [Claude Code](https://leaddev.com/ai/why-microsoft-engineers-are-using-claude-code) skills they wrote. It seemed like an effective way to evaluate their fluency with [AI agents](https://leaddev.com/technical-direction/how-to-prepare-for-ai-agents), and it quickly became his go-to question.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-interview-questions-assume-candidates-can-afford-claude-code-max", "canonical_source": "https://leaddev.com/ai/your-interview-questions-assume-candidates-can-afford-claude-code-max?utm_source=leaddev&utm_medium=RSS", "published_at": "2026-08-12 08:16:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-12 08:35:03.629718+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["James Lowman", "Starboard", "Claude Code"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-interview-questions-assume-candidates-can-afford-claude-code-max", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-interview-questions-assume-candidates-can-afford-claude-code-max.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-interview-questions-assume-candidates-can-afford-claude-code-max.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/your-interview-questions-assume-candidates-can-afford-claude-code-max.jsonld"}}