4 ms·

I do a lot of interviews and I am pretty sure that quite a few students are cheating to get high grades. There is no way that I get a student who has a A avera

I do a lot of interviews and I am pretty sure that quite a few students are cheating to get high grades. There is no way that I get a student who has a A average in computer science and then I ask them to do some simple coding and they outright fail. The some people cheap right in the interview, I step out of the office and then quick come back and I see they have their cell phone out to copy from. I am sure cheating is partially responsible for grade inflation.

s-shellfish 8y ago
I had a 3.98 GPA for my MSc computer science but honestly it took me a long time to be able to learn how to demonstrate that ability face to face. Some people just crumple under other people, brain shorts out, whatever you want to call it. That doesn't make us bad developers or computer scientists, just makes us humans who prefer figuring stuff out at a computer, and gradually growing trust with how to solve problems with others in a face to face setting. When you run through so many interviews it can feel like, a double bind dilemma. Give away information that might be the perfect solution to a company's code problem, rinse and repeat, all for free, and what you are supposed to take away is gaining experience dealing with bosses, managers, hierarchies of organizations. But some people just suck at having social skills, like myself. I wouldn't want to be in the position of an interviewer. Prefer open source, developers talking to other developers. When you hire someone you want to do all your thinking up front about your expectations of who you are hiring. But developers and computer scientists know, real world code and real world problem solving doesn't always get done that way. I've seen some companies have job listings that state "you don't need to know all these technologies, but having an eagerness to learn and an interest is ideal" and that takes a lot of the pressure off, because it shows a company is willing to work with you instead of just drain you until you burn out with your most precious resource, your mind, completely depleted. That statement also comes across to me as "we expect you to work 80 hours / week and have no life besides your job" but honestly, that's fine to me as long as everyone around me is aware that we're all in this together. I'm gonna forget some stuff, so will you. That's just what happens when you have to program so much stuff. Load new problem, new program into memory, and forget what you were last doing. This happens over and over to coders. Does it happen to hiring managers?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Load new problem, new program into memory, and forget what you were last doing. I used to say that being a great programmer was being a professional forgetter -- in that you had to know how to forget vital details without getting yourself hurt. So, like a professional tumbler, or a stunt-person specializing in falls. It isn't about the falling. Anyone can fall. It's the expert who can fall without getting hurt. If you structure code correctly, you can forget about all the details you need to know to keep from getting hurt, but rediscover those things quickly when you need them. This is a great way to talk about program design in a nutshell, but it's also a terrible way, since it's prone to make people with short attention spans think you're nuts!
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    I agree with this. I wouldn't call it people with short attention spans though. People have to arrive at their own understanding independently in order to be able to know that understanding is their own. But that's also a problem, because once you get there, how do you check it's the right understanding? Check with other people, check with code. And then, it loops - argue with people to prove distinction - code distinctly, come to awareness independently - 'perfect' program, check with other people, check with code... Code & computer science, etc. It is all insanity. Structured insanity, but insanity nevertheless.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      People have to arrive at their own understanding independently in order to be able to know that understanding is their own. Far too many managers in the 90's and early 2000's simply thought they needed to hire super-memorizers who just knew everything, like they're characters out of a movie. I'm not so sure this has changed in 2018. Work smarter, not harder.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - 8y ago
carlob 8y ago
What if this was due to the fact that a big portion of their grades are based on the assignments they complete at home (with whatever aid) rather than exams? Edit: which is the flip side of what s-shellfish is saying
jurassic 8y ago
Definitely. When I was taking 6.001 there was a person in my dorm who wanted to “work together” which ended up meaning “copy my work” because they couldn’t handle fizzbuzz-level problems much less tricky recursion and other material of the class. I don’t know who they attached themself to after me but they did well in the class and they went on to a very swanky job after graduation. I feel bad for the companies being defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by people like this. Whenever people say “fire fast” I think of that person. Other techniques in use by these people: go to recitation sections and harass TAs for homework answers week after week. Trying to litigate every point marked off on an exam. Erasing incorrect answers before requesting a regrade. Etc. I ocassionally get in the mood to go back for a masters degree. And then I remember how much fake bullshit is going on in university settings because the credentialist incentives are so perverse. I’d rather just read some books and tinker than deal with all that.
tracer4201 8y ago
As someone who has interviewed and been rejected several times, I don't think cheating is why someone with good grades would do poorly at a coding interview. Some people are good test takers on paper. Ask me to whiteboard some code, and I genuinely get stuck on trivial problems because whiteboarding coding questions is not what I am great at. I've worked at Amazon and now I am at Google - after alot if stress, anxiety, and prep, I was able to get through and get hired. Microsoft outright rejected me. One other thing - CS degrees don't teach people to code. They reach computer science. It just so happens that labs and assignments may require coding, but spending half a day or a day to do a project and getting an A has very little relationship with being forced to quickly hash out code in a 45 min interview. IMO, at both companies I have been at, the majority of new hires are fresh grads. The barrier to entry whose been out of school is extremely high... but I digress.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  I agree. I did decently in my algorithms class - got an A, but I feel like my intuition is still lacking even though I have the pre-requisite knowledge. The class also wasn't inordinately tough like it would be at UWash/UT/UM/HYPSM, so its possible my fundamentals aren't as good as I would have hoped.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  > whiteboarding coding questions Ah, you haven't figured out the trick. When somebody asks you to whiteboard something, write down all the nouns they said, draw boxes around each noun, and draw lines randomly between the boxes. Keep talking and pointing at the boxes and the lines, and then draw circles around some of the boxes (but keep talking - this is important). Point emphatically at some of the boxes, underline some of the words, and redraw some of the lines - bonus points if you can use different colored markers. As long as you keep talking, the interviewer will get bored, assume you drew something smart, and offer you a six figure salary.
  - tastyface 8y ago
    You jest, but this is exactly the feeling I got when I was reading up on how to do better at system design questions: https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer

s-shellfish 8y ago

I had a 3.98 GPA for my MSc computer science but honestly it took me a long time to be able to learn how to demonstrate that ability face to face. Some people just crumple under other people, brain shorts out, whatever you want to call it. That doesn't make us bad developers or computer scientists, just makes us humans who prefer figuring stuff out at a computer, and gradually growing trust with how to solve problems with others in a face to face setting. When you run through so many interviews it can feel like, a double bind dilemma. Give away information that might be the perfect solution to a company's code problem, rinse and repeat, all for free, and what you are supposed to take away is gaining experience dealing with bosses, managers, hierarchies of organizations. But some people just suck at having social skills, like myself. I wouldn't want to be in the position of an interviewer. Prefer open source, developers talking to other developers. When you hire someone you want to do all your thinking up front about your expectations of who you are hiring. But developers and computer scientists know, real world code and real world problem solving doesn't always get done that way. I've seen some companies have job listings that state "you don't need to know all these technologies, but having an eagerness to learn and an interest is ideal" and that takes a lot of the pressure off, because it shows a company is willing to work with you instead of just drain you until you burn out with your most precious resource, your mind, completely depleted. That statement also comes across to me as "we expect you to work 80 hours / week and have no life besides your job" but honestly, that's fine to me as long as everyone around me is aware that we're all in this together. I'm gonna forget some stuff, so will you. That's just what happens when you have to program so much stuff. Load new problem, new program into memory, and forget what you were last doing. This happens over and over to coders. Does it happen to hiring managers?

stcredzero 8y ago
Load new problem, new program into memory, and forget what you were last doing. I used to say that being a great programmer was being a professional forgetter -- in that you had to know how to forget vital details without getting yourself hurt. So, like a professional tumbler, or a stunt-person specializing in falls. It isn't about the falling. Anyone can fall. It's the expert who can fall without getting hurt. If you structure code correctly, you can forget about all the details you need to know to keep from getting hurt, but rediscover those things quickly when you need them. This is a great way to talk about program design in a nutshell, but it's also a terrible way, since it's prone to make people with short attention spans think you're nuts!
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  I agree with this. I wouldn't call it people with short attention spans though. People have to arrive at their own understanding independently in order to be able to know that understanding is their own. But that's also a problem, because once you get there, how do you check it's the right understanding? Check with other people, check with code. And then, it loops - argue with people to prove distinction - code distinctly, come to awareness independently - 'perfect' program, check with other people, check with code... Code & computer science, etc. It is all insanity. Structured insanity, but insanity nevertheless.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    People have to arrive at their own understanding independently in order to be able to know that understanding is their own. Far too many managers in the 90's and early 2000's simply thought they needed to hire super-memorizers who just knew everything, like they're characters out of a movie. I'm not so sure this has changed in 2018. Work smarter, not harder.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- 8y ago

carlob 8y ago

What if this was due to the fact that a big portion of their grades are based on the assignments they complete at home (with whatever aid) rather than exams? Edit: which is the flip side of what s-shellfish is saying

jurassic 8y ago

Definitely. When I was taking 6.001 there was a person in my dorm who wanted to “work together” which ended up meaning “copy my work” because they couldn’t handle fizzbuzz-level problems much less tricky recursion and other material of the class. I don’t know who they attached themself to after me but they did well in the class and they went on to a very swanky job after graduation. I feel bad for the companies being defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by people like this. Whenever people say “fire fast” I think of that person. Other techniques in use by these people: go to recitation sections and harass TAs for homework answers week after week. Trying to litigate every point marked off on an exam. Erasing incorrect answers before requesting a regrade. Etc. I ocassionally get in the mood to go back for a masters degree. And then I remember how much fake bullshit is going on in university settings because the credentialist incentives are so perverse. I’d rather just read some books and tinker than deal with all that.

tracer4201 8y ago

As someone who has interviewed and been rejected several times, I don't think cheating is why someone with good grades would do poorly at a coding interview. Some people are good test takers on paper. Ask me to whiteboard some code, and I genuinely get stuck on trivial problems because whiteboarding coding questions is not what I am great at. I've worked at Amazon and now I am at Google - after alot if stress, anxiety, and prep, I was able to get through and get hired. Microsoft outright rejected me. One other thing - CS degrees don't teach people to code. They reach computer science. It just so happens that labs and assignments may require coding, but spending half a day or a day to do a project and getting an A has very little relationship with being forced to quickly hash out code in a 45 min interview. IMO, at both companies I have been at, the majority of new hires are fresh grads. The barrier to entry whose been out of school is extremely high... but I digress.

akhilcacharya 8y ago
I agree. I did decently in my algorithms class - got an A, but I feel like my intuition is still lacking even though I have the pre-requisite knowledge. The class also wasn't inordinately tough like it would be at UWash/UT/UM/HYPSM, so its possible my fundamentals aren't as good as I would have hoped.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> whiteboarding coding questions Ah, you haven't figured out the trick. When somebody asks you to whiteboard something, write down all the nouns they said, draw boxes around each noun, and draw lines randomly between the boxes. Keep talking and pointing at the boxes and the lines, and then draw circles around some of the boxes (but keep talking - this is important). Point emphatically at some of the boxes, underline some of the words, and redraw some of the lines - bonus points if you can use different colored markers. As long as you keep talking, the interviewer will get bored, assume you drew something smart, and offer you a six figure salary.
- tastyface 8y ago
  You jest, but this is exactly the feeling I got when I was reading up on how to do better at system design questions: https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer