1 min lesson
Your fundamentals must be sharp unaided
Take this case and make the call: "A candidate says, 'I haven't written production code in a few years, but my teams ship reliably and I'm great at hiring.' Why is this risky for the Cursor EM loop specifically?"
Step 1 of 2
- The technical screens are hands-on coding and system design, medium-hard, with no AI allowed beyond autocomplete - your fundamentals must be sharp unaided.
- The signature onsite is a paid, multi-hour working session building a real project alongside the team, so credibility as a builder is tested directly, not inferred from a résumé.
- There is still a full people-management and behavioral panel, so coaching ability is graded too - you don't get to be only a builder.
The most common way strong managers fail this loop is leaning entirely on leadership stories and getting caught flat-footed in the coding and design rounds. "I haven't coded much lately, but my teams ship" is a near-automatic miss here. The no-AI screen exists precisely to find people who let their fundamentals atrophy behind a management title.
“I still review the gnarly PRs and I'll take the on-call page myself when the auth path is involved. I lead by being credible in the code, then I spend the rest of my time making the team better than I am at it.”