Wu: Cognition lets engineering candidates use unlimited AI during interviews
Scott Wu · How AI Agents Are Creating 12X Productivity Gains · Joe Lonsdale · Mar 27, 2026 · at 51:01
Cognition co-founder Scott Wu details how the AI coding company evaluates engineering talent.
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“For us, and this has always been the case for us, you know, our interview process has always been, you can use as much AI as you want to use. You know, it's just like, we're going to give you a few hours, just build, build your whole own product surface, right? And build, build your own a lot of these are projects that frankly is like, if you were trying to do this by hand, you would not be able to get done in a few hours. So you kind of have to use AI for this, right? But in reality, what we actually want to test is in addition to it, to kind of how familiar you are with these tools, what we actually want to test is, is What do you think is the right thing to build? Or how do you make these product decisions? How do you make these trade offs? How do you decide or collect information about what you should be doing?”
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