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> I don't, I'm honest in my CV and during interviews When I first started interviewing people I assumed everyone wrote their resumes just like me: Honest, accu

> I don't, I'm honest in my CV and during interviews When I first started interviewing people I assumed everyone wrote their resumes just like me: Honest, accurate, erring on the side of humble, avoiding exaggeration of my abilities. I learned the hard way that you can’t really trust what people put on their resumes. A lot of people are accurate and honest. Many people are actually too humble or often just bad at selling themselves, so you have to read between the lines and dig for their biggest achievements. But unfortunately, a large number of people will exaggerate their accomplishments far beyond anything that could be considered reasonable. Claiming proficiency in programming languages they couldn’t begin to even talk about. Writing about projects they didn’t actually work on. Making up unrealistic numbers for how effective or profitable their work was. The worst was when I receive a resume for a former coworker who hadn’t performed all that well when we worked together. The resume included some of my achievements, which the person hadn’t been involved with nor was even capable of. It was a shock to my naive system to see someone brazenly claim so much in hopes that they could slip past the interviewer and land a well-paid job where they presumably tried to blend in while dodging responsibility and accountability as much as possible. And that is why we all have to go through onerous tech interviews, despite listing our experience on our resumes.

dijit 4y ago
Not to discount this fact much, but there’s a reason that I optimise my interviews for weeding out liars. Tech tests on DS&A are fine, I guess, but usually you can sus a person out if you’re technical enough after 30 minutes of talking about previous projects and their level of involvement. Typically I ask more and more questions about it until they can’t answer, if they try to BS me once they’ve reached their level of incompetence then they're immediately disqualified no matter how good they are in other areas. I’d rather take a weaker person who doesn’t try to masquerade than a strong person who will.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zarzavat 4y ago
  That’s fair enough, but from a candidate’s perspective most interviewers just want people who can BS effectively. They don’t want to train new hires in their particular stack. They want a ready-made candidate who already has “experience” in X Y Z W A B C. Call it tragedy of the commons, but being honest is not an optimal way to play the game.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    I wouldn't like to work in a place where most people lied to get a job. May be if I would be desperate to find a job, I'd lie as well, but software developer is a hot place now and it shouldn't be too hard to find adequate people IMO.
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      It’s not good for anybody, but it is some kind of game theoretic equilibrium whereby the hiring machinery is incentivized to find candidates who are good fits for a company’s stack, and candidates are incentivized to present themselves to be such. The way to solve it is to make the hiring process independent of experience with a particular stack and just hire engineers with good fundamentals, which is what FAANGs do by necessity (because their stack is proprietary), but others don’t want to do because they are afraid it would be too expensive. I should probably say that I’m in Europe. Things may be different in SV.
    - Jiro 4y ago
      >I wouldn't like to work in a place where most people lied to get a job. "A place where most people lied to get a (tech) job", is the world. And the world is the only place that has jobs.
    - bradlys 4y ago
      Software is hot only in the sense that there are “jobs” available. Whether or not those jobs are good or pay well is another factor. Do you really think everyone has a spot at FAANG-etc? They don’t - I know because I work at them and we reject so many people at the on-site stage.
dilyevsky 4y ago
Reading coworkers resume or promo packet (more awkward) and finding stuff that you worked on is an instant classic I feel everybody goes through at least once
brailsafe 4y ago
I'm kind of in a middle ground. I'm honest about what's on there, but what is truth one person is a lie from another. For example, I didn't have specific numbers for what my ICs were, but people like to see context, so I mentioned I did x and y for a company that did such and such in revenue that year, and that on the outside, my code seems to still be powering some of those sales. But honestly, if a colleague at that company asked why I lied about x, I'd just say "Really? My bad, what was I mistaking that for?" because quite frankly I don't remember acutely what specific component I wrote JavaScript for in a huge complex system 6 years ago. It's not that important to begin with, and I only keep the high level details archived in memory. For example, I might remember working on it, but maybe what I actually did at the time was tested it extensively, or investigated a performance issue, or even collaborated on solving some problem in that specific bit. If I look at the code, I couldn't tell you what my code looked like at that time. There no evidence aside from commits that I did or didn't work on it, and so there's a good chance that either of us are right. Either way, I don't care, it's a trite issue. I got fired from that job anyway and list it on my resume as experience, which it was, but I don't say anything about what I stopped working there. Doesn't make it invalid and it's none of an interviewers business.
jackblemming 4y ago
>And that is why we all have to go through onerous tech interviews, despite listing our experience on our resumes. I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but these type of people have no problem studying leetcode for a few weeks. Sorry to say.
- akhmatova 4y ago
  In fact, these are the exactly the kind of people that the LC process is designed to filter for.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  How is studying programming considered cheating?
  - eertami 4y ago
    Their point is that just because someone can do leetcode does not mean they can program well, and they may too just be faking it to get a job they aren't qualified for.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      I don't know how one can study leetcode and fail to learn to program better. After all, I learned chemistry, physics, math, mechanics, thermodynamics, etc., by working problem sets.
      - tester756 4y ago
        In my opinion "program better" (or actually better at system modeling) requires way more time, way more examples, way more code written. I believe that in order to be "somewhat decent" at leetcode (not top level competitor) you just need to learn theory, techniques, tricks and get some practice. Meanwhile in order to get better at system modeling you need to model a lot of systems from scratch, change them and see how your initial design supported that refactor part You need to be aware of various approaches / architectures, yada yada And generally spend a lot of time thinking about how it'll affect readability or easiness to get into the project for new ppl, scalability, extensibility, etc. So, in generally I believe that leetcode is just learn theory, practice everything you learned and go ahead and do 50 / 100 tasks If you fail, then you can check answers and learn from them meanwhile there are no correct answers for system modeling. Additionally for leetcode you have sets with tasks to practice, meanwhile the "real" system modeling experience comes from real projects where requirements are being thrown and changed by somebody else whenever he/she wants ____________ >I don't know how one can study leetcode and fail to learn to program better. I don't see how even hundreds of hours on leetcode would make you better at OOP, system modeling, building abstractions.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
> I learned the hard way that you can’t really trust what people put on their resumes. A lot of people are accurate and honest. Many people are actually too humble or often just bad at selling themselves, so you have to read between the lines and dig for their biggest achievements. What exactly separates accurate/honest from humble/bad at selling oneself according to you?
lovich 4y ago
We don’t have to do it, companies are just gun shy about bad hires. They could easily accept everyone resume unread and remove people only if they failed to live up to expectations for an example of an alternative
- WalterBright 4y ago
  When a company is going to invest half a million bucks in a new hire, they're going to do what they can to determine in advance if the hire is going to work out.
  - lovich 4y ago
    Most likely, but we still shouldn't assume its a property of the universe. Its a choice they are making and so the consequences good or bad should be attributed to them
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      When you are investing $500,000 of your own money, are you going to check it out thoroughly first?
      - lovich 4y ago
        When they invest $500,000 of their own money and it makes millions, do they decline the profit? Their behavior is perfectly rational, but still ultimately a choice they make, and both the good and bad are a result of that. Unless you are going to argue that they aren't rational adults with agency of their own, in which case I would question letting them decide anything at all
        WalterBright 4y ago
        I don't see what that has to do with what I wrote.
b20000 4y ago
no, you go through them so they can pay you less, and you are the tool used to accomplish this. also, you should never assume people lie on their resume. before you know it you will carry that bias into every interview. if i was your manager and i knew what you just wrote, i would find someone else to interview people.
devnulll 4y ago
> When I first started interviewing people I assumed everyone > wrote their resumes just like me: Honest, accurate, erring > on the side of humble, avoiding exaggeration of my abilities. You may be missing the point of a resume. There are really two goals: 1. Get you through the door, so you can get an Informational with the Hiring Manager. This means passing the Recruiter and (usually) the Hiring Manager's 30-60 second screen while looking at 50 candidates. Often an email or a Linked In Message is more effective than a CV at this. 2. Sufficiently and credibly explain your background to the interviewers who will be reading it 5 minutes before the interview. The CV needs to present well and be credible.
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  I think you are missing the point of the GP post. Yes, a resume/CV is a marketing document designed to get you past an initial screen, and to tell an interviewer what you are about. But, ideally (and it's certainly not too much to ask), such a document should also be accurate. "Marketing" and "lies" should theoretically be disjoint sets. Unfortunately, the fact that so many people outright lie on their resumes means that people who don't are at a disadvantage.
  - toast0 4y ago
    Resume truth isn't the same as spoken truth. I worked at FedEx ground for two weeks in college, but one week was in June and the next was in July, so while that was relevant experience, it went on my resume with June-July and it may have looked like I worked there for two months. It's common to only list the final position one held, so someone who was in the mailroom for 5 years, somehow got into a deskjob for two weeks and then left is going to show 5 years at the company, deskjob (unless they're looking for a new mailroom gig). It's true, but misleading. Of course, some people go beyond that and claim things they didn't actually do, etc. After a certain point of interviewing candidates, I stopped reading their resumes. All of the interesting stuff I would ask about never had details behind it, because it was fluffed up, but never enough to disqualify a candidate either.
rusticpenn 4y ago
I am on the humble side in my resume and I have landed a job that pays well, but for which I am completely overqualified for.

dijit 4y ago

Not to discount this fact much, but there’s a reason that I optimise my interviews for weeding out liars. Tech tests on DS&A are fine, I guess, but usually you can sus a person out if you’re technical enough after 30 minutes of talking about previous projects and their level of involvement. Typically I ask more and more questions about it until they can’t answer, if they try to BS me once they’ve reached their level of incompetence then they're immediately disqualified no matter how good they are in other areas. I’d rather take a weaker person who doesn’t try to masquerade than a strong person who will.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zarzavat 4y ago
That’s fair enough, but from a candidate’s perspective most interviewers just want people who can BS effectively. They don’t want to train new hires in their particular stack. They want a ready-made candidate who already has “experience” in X Y Z W A B C. Call it tragedy of the commons, but being honest is not an optimal way to play the game.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  I wouldn't like to work in a place where most people lied to get a job. May be if I would be desperate to find a job, I'd lie as well, but software developer is a hot place now and it shouldn't be too hard to find adequate people IMO.
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    It’s not good for anybody, but it is some kind of game theoretic equilibrium whereby the hiring machinery is incentivized to find candidates who are good fits for a company’s stack, and candidates are incentivized to present themselves to be such. The way to solve it is to make the hiring process independent of experience with a particular stack and just hire engineers with good fundamentals, which is what FAANGs do by necessity (because their stack is proprietary), but others don’t want to do because they are afraid it would be too expensive. I should probably say that I’m in Europe. Things may be different in SV.
  - Jiro 4y ago
    >I wouldn't like to work in a place where most people lied to get a job. "A place where most people lied to get a (tech) job", is the world. And the world is the only place that has jobs.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    Software is hot only in the sense that there are “jobs” available. Whether or not those jobs are good or pay well is another factor. Do you really think everyone has a spot at FAANG-etc? They don’t - I know because I work at them and we reject so many people at the on-site stage.

dilyevsky 4y ago

Reading coworkers resume or promo packet (more awkward) and finding stuff that you worked on is an instant classic I feel everybody goes through at least once

brailsafe 4y ago

I'm kind of in a middle ground. I'm honest about what's on there, but what is truth one person is a lie from another. For example, I didn't have specific numbers for what my ICs were, but people like to see context, so I mentioned I did x and y for a company that did such and such in revenue that year, and that on the outside, my code seems to still be powering some of those sales. But honestly, if a colleague at that company asked why I lied about x, I'd just say "Really? My bad, what was I mistaking that for?" because quite frankly I don't remember acutely what specific component I wrote JavaScript for in a huge complex system 6 years ago. It's not that important to begin with, and I only keep the high level details archived in memory. For example, I might remember working on it, but maybe what I actually did at the time was tested it extensively, or investigated a performance issue, or even collaborated on solving some problem in that specific bit. If I look at the code, I couldn't tell you what my code looked like at that time. There no evidence aside from commits that I did or didn't work on it, and so there's a good chance that either of us are right. Either way, I don't care, it's a trite issue. I got fired from that job anyway and list it on my resume as experience, which it was, but I don't say anything about what I stopped working there. Doesn't make it invalid and it's none of an interviewers business.

jackblemming 4y ago

>And that is why we all have to go through onerous tech interviews, despite listing our experience on our resumes. I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but these type of people have no problem studying leetcode for a few weeks. Sorry to say.

akhmatova 4y ago
In fact, these are the exactly the kind of people that the LC process is designed to filter for.
WalterBright 4y ago
How is studying programming considered cheating?
- eertami 4y ago
  Their point is that just because someone can do leetcode does not mean they can program well, and they may too just be faking it to get a job they aren't qualified for.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I don't know how one can study leetcode and fail to learn to program better. After all, I learned chemistry, physics, math, mechanics, thermodynamics, etc., by working problem sets.
    - tester756 4y ago
      In my opinion "program better" (or actually better at system modeling) requires way more time, way more examples, way more code written. I believe that in order to be "somewhat decent" at leetcode (not top level competitor) you just need to learn theory, techniques, tricks and get some practice. Meanwhile in order to get better at system modeling you need to model a lot of systems from scratch, change them and see how your initial design supported that refactor part You need to be aware of various approaches / architectures, yada yada And generally spend a lot of time thinking about how it'll affect readability or easiness to get into the project for new ppl, scalability, extensibility, etc. So, in generally I believe that leetcode is just learn theory, practice everything you learned and go ahead and do 50 / 100 tasks If you fail, then you can check answers and learn from them meanwhile there are no correct answers for system modeling. Additionally for leetcode you have sets with tasks to practice, meanwhile the "real" system modeling experience comes from real projects where requirements are being thrown and changed by somebody else whenever he/she wants ____________ >I don't know how one can study leetcode and fail to learn to program better. I don't see how even hundreds of hours on leetcode would make you better at OOP, system modeling, building abstractions.

Dracophoenix 4y ago

> I learned the hard way that you can’t really trust what people put on their resumes. A lot of people are accurate and honest. Many people are actually too humble or often just bad at selling themselves, so you have to read between the lines and dig for their biggest achievements. What exactly separates accurate/honest from humble/bad at selling oneself according to you?

lovich 4y ago

We don’t have to do it, companies are just gun shy about bad hires. They could easily accept everyone resume unread and remove people only if they failed to live up to expectations for an example of an alternative

WalterBright 4y ago
When a company is going to invest half a million bucks in a new hire, they're going to do what they can to determine in advance if the hire is going to work out.
- lovich 4y ago
  Most likely, but we still shouldn't assume its a property of the universe. Its a choice they are making and so the consequences good or bad should be attributed to them
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    When you are investing $500,000 of your own money, are you going to check it out thoroughly first?
    - lovich 4y ago
      When they invest $500,000 of their own money and it makes millions, do they decline the profit? Their behavior is perfectly rational, but still ultimately a choice they make, and both the good and bad are a result of that. Unless you are going to argue that they aren't rational adults with agency of their own, in which case I would question letting them decide anything at all
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        I don't see what that has to do with what I wrote.

b20000 4y ago

no, you go through them so they can pay you less, and you are the tool used to accomplish this. also, you should never assume people lie on their resume. before you know it you will carry that bias into every interview. if i was your manager and i knew what you just wrote, i would find someone else to interview people.

devnulll 4y ago

> When I first started interviewing people I assumed everyone > wrote their resumes just like me: Honest, accurate, erring > on the side of humble, avoiding exaggeration of my abilities. You may be missing the point of a resume. There are really two goals: 1. Get you through the door, so you can get an Informational with the Hiring Manager. This means passing the Recruiter and (usually) the Hiring Manager's 30-60 second screen while looking at 50 candidates. Often an email or a Linked In Message is more effective than a CV at this. 2. Sufficiently and credibly explain your background to the interviewers who will be reading it 5 minutes before the interview. The CV needs to present well and be credible.

actually_a_dog 4y ago
I think you are missing the point of the GP post. Yes, a resume/CV is a marketing document designed to get you past an initial screen, and to tell an interviewer what you are about. But, ideally (and it's certainly not too much to ask), such a document should also be accurate. "Marketing" and "lies" should theoretically be disjoint sets. Unfortunately, the fact that so many people outright lie on their resumes means that people who don't are at a disadvantage.
- toast0 4y ago
  Resume truth isn't the same as spoken truth. I worked at FedEx ground for two weeks in college, but one week was in June and the next was in July, so while that was relevant experience, it went on my resume with June-July and it may have looked like I worked there for two months. It's common to only list the final position one held, so someone who was in the mailroom for 5 years, somehow got into a deskjob for two weeks and then left is going to show 5 years at the company, deskjob (unless they're looking for a new mailroom gig). It's true, but misleading. Of course, some people go beyond that and claim things they didn't actually do, etc. After a certain point of interviewing candidates, I stopped reading their resumes. All of the interesting stuff I would ask about never had details behind it, because it was fluffed up, but never enough to disqualify a candidate either.

rusticpenn 4y ago

I am on the humble side in my resume and I have landed a job that pays well, but for which I am completely overqualified for.