3 ms·

I don’t think cheating prevention is in scope for a tool like this and neither should be. Any decent employer puts the new hire on a trial period first. During

I don’t think cheating prevention is in scope for a tool like this and neither should be. Any decent employer puts the new hire on a trial period first. During the trial period, the employer should task them with real work. When the candidate doesn’t deliver, the employer can let them go. When they do deliver, the employer can keep them. In both cases, does it really matter if they cheated their way in or not? No. Preventing cheating is the wrong place to optimize. While we’re here, dumb memorization of LeetCode style Q&As instead of deep understanding of underlying principles can be seen as cheating just as well. Doing actual work is better in every way. And many employers already do exactly this coding work already, just manually. They make up a problem themselves, and give you a time limit to commit a solution without checking if you’re cheating or not. Litebulb just automates this, by taking over the creation of the problem and the analysis of the solution. There’s lots of advantages of the centralization of this, like creating more problems, fixing and updating existing ones, etc. Provided the problems and the analysis are as good as advertised, I think Litebulb has a great value proposition. I wish them success and hope they can have a lasting impact on the hiring process for software developers.

garyjlin 5y ago
Really appreciate the support here and you make some excellent points! We're trying to make something that already exists just a bit better. :)
visarga 5y ago
> During the trial period, the employer should task them with real work. When the candidate doesn’t deliver, the employer can let them go. That would mean you waste a few months for every bad trial hire, especially if you're looking to fill just one or two positions.
- justshowpost 5y ago
  If your company takes months to figure out if someone does good work or not then it has some serious problems. If you have expertise in a field you can normally guess pretty quickly when someone bullshits their way through or actually knows what they’re talking about. But your hiring staff usually don’t have any or deep enough expertise for the field they’re hiring for, which only gets worse the bigger and more advanced your company gets. But your employees with which the new hire will be working with should have this expertise (or again your company has a problem). So they will find out pretty quickly if the hire is a fraud or not. Cheating surely creates costs but not as much as you suggest. And as others have mentioned above it is surely not as widespread as you suggest, limiting the cost further.
  - visarga 5y ago
    You have a point, maybe the bad hires can be detected in weeks instead of months, but you still waste the same amount of time on the HR side. And if you only have one position on your team to fill that year, you may be cautious how you assign it.
    - justshowpost 5y ago
      Well, you’re not forced to straight-up hire the candidate just from Litebulb, right? A score in a report should not be assumed to reflect the entirety of a person, which unfortunately is a common mistake (e.g. school, college or university diploma). You’d most likely want to still sit down and talk with your candidates and evaluate them individually, which you'd have to do anyways if you want too see if they fit your individual company. Litebulb just replaces what would otherwise be stupid LeetCode Q&As or old unmaintained home-rolled coding problems, not the rest of the hiring process. Specifically, Litebulb does not offer “the magic button” to find the perfect hire for your specific company.

garyjlin 5y ago

Really appreciate the support here and you make some excellent points! We're trying to make something that already exists just a bit better. :)

visarga 5y ago

> During the trial period, the employer should task them with real work. When the candidate doesn’t deliver, the employer can let them go. That would mean you waste a few months for every bad trial hire, especially if you're looking to fill just one or two positions.

justshowpost 5y ago
If your company takes months to figure out if someone does good work or not then it has some serious problems. If you have expertise in a field you can normally guess pretty quickly when someone bullshits their way through or actually knows what they’re talking about. But your hiring staff usually don’t have any or deep enough expertise for the field they’re hiring for, which only gets worse the bigger and more advanced your company gets. But your employees with which the new hire will be working with should have this expertise (or again your company has a problem). So they will find out pretty quickly if the hire is a fraud or not. Cheating surely creates costs but not as much as you suggest. And as others have mentioned above it is surely not as widespread as you suggest, limiting the cost further.
- visarga 5y ago
  You have a point, maybe the bad hires can be detected in weeks instead of months, but you still waste the same amount of time on the HR side. And if you only have one position on your team to fill that year, you may be cautious how you assign it.
  - justshowpost 5y ago
    Well, you’re not forced to straight-up hire the candidate just from Litebulb, right? A score in a report should not be assumed to reflect the entirety of a person, which unfortunately is a common mistake (e.g. school, college or university diploma). You’d most likely want to still sit down and talk with your candidates and evaluate them individually, which you'd have to do anyways if you want too see if they fit your individual company. Litebulb just replaces what would otherwise be stupid LeetCode Q&As or old unmaintained home-rolled coding problems, not the rest of the hiring process. Specifically, Litebulb does not offer “the magic button” to find the perfect hire for your specific company.