The LLM Dependency Test: A New Way to Interview Software Engineers in the Age of AI

The LLM Dependency Test: A New Way to Interview Software Engineers in the Age of AI Tags: ai, career, security, productivity The Pentagon recently discovered that it could not comply with its own Secretary of Defense's direct order to remove an AI tool from its weapons targeting system. Not because the order was classified. Not because of a bureaucratic delay. Because the targeting workflows were so deeply embedded in that single commercial AI that the military — with a $900 billion annual budget and the entire US defense industrial base behind it — literally could not finish the job without it. The same week, Pentagon staff resorted to Microsoft Excel to handle tasks previously managed by the AI. This is not a story about the Pentagon. This is a story about every software team that has quietly built itself into the same trap — just at a smaller scale and with lower stakes. The Problem Nobody Is Naming There is a growing and largely unacknowledged skill crisis forming underneath the su