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What is cheating in this situation? When we are talking about university exams - yes, you can cheat by using materials you are not allowed to. As a software de

by konart 10y ago

What is cheating in this situation? When we are talking about university exams - yes, you can cheat by using materials you are not allowed to. As a software developer - I alwasy kind of cheat. I use Stackoverflow and infinite google search abilities :)

FungalRaincloud 10y ago
I consider cheating to be part of my job. I look up things I've done a dozen times before, if I haven't done them in a few weeks. I'll often ask google how to do something, then while it's loading the results, start writing the code that does that thing. A more valuable test, in my eyes, is how well someone CAN cheat in the interview. I want to hear someone say "you know, I've never actually heard that question before, let me see if anyone's talking about it on StackOverflow." Admitting you don't know the answer, and coming up with a way to get the answer is far more important a skill, to me, than blind recall. I've said "I don't know" in an interview, and while getting the words out took some effort, it showed the interviewer that I could admit to not knowing, and started a dialog between me and the interviewer, which gave him an idea of how I think about new problems.
nkozyra 10y ago
You can consider this tantamount to a blackboard exercise. In all likelihood they're looking for basic algorithm stuff. In that instance, in your daily job you wouldn't even cheat by looking it up, you'd just use a library. I would assume that they value people who understand how these things work rather than just being able to implement it. After all, you can teach someone basic Python and how to use Scipy in a couple of hours, but does that make them a data scientist? Anyway my point is lots of companies have programming exercises/tests, and I'm not aware of too many that let you just look stuff up while you're doing them. Debate the merits of that, but it's common enough that seeing it in this platform shouldn't feel totally shocking.

by konart 10y ago

FungalRaincloud 10y ago

I consider cheating to be part of my job. I look up things I've done a dozen times before, if I haven't done them in a few weeks. I'll often ask google how to do something, then while it's loading the results, start writing the code that does that thing. A more valuable test, in my eyes, is how well someone CAN cheat in the interview. I want to hear someone say "you know, I've never actually heard that question before, let me see if anyone's talking about it on StackOverflow." Admitting you don't know the answer, and coming up with a way to get the answer is far more important a skill, to me, than blind recall. I've said "I don't know" in an interview, and while getting the words out took some effort, it showed the interviewer that I could admit to not knowing, and started a dialog between me and the interviewer, which gave him an idea of how I think about new problems.

nkozyra 10y ago

You can consider this tantamount to a blackboard exercise. In all likelihood they're looking for basic algorithm stuff. In that instance, in your daily job you wouldn't even cheat by looking it up, you'd just use a library. I would assume that they value people who understand how these things work rather than just being able to implement it. After all, you can teach someone basic Python and how to use Scipy in a couple of hours, but does that make them a data scientist? Anyway my point is lots of companies have programming exercises/tests, and I'm not aware of too many that let you just look stuff up while you're doing them. Debate the merits of that, but it's common enough that seeing it in this platform shouldn't feel totally shocking.