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I grew up staunchly against cheating. Becoming an adult was hard. My whole university class cheated on a tough assignment - someone found the solution online a

I grew up staunchly against cheating. Becoming an adult was hard. My whole university class cheated on a tough assignment - someone found the solution online and shared it around. I didn't look at it, took the challenge and gave it a lot of effort. I got a pretty bad mark and the rest of the class got top marks. I also see the same mindset in work. People don't prepare for presentations and then spitball when presenting it. It's not "cheating" but it's skipping the effort and preparation in the same way.

deleted 3y ago
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mach1ne 3y ago
I'm sorry, but I disagree with the analogy. If you can spitball the presentation, your time is likely spent better elsewhere than preparing for the presentation.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gear54rus 3y ago
"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" - No country for old men
fauxpause_ 3y ago
What does spitball mean? I don’t prepare for presentations but I can’t tell how that would be cheating.
- sk5t 3y ago
  It means to extemporize / ramble.
  - fauxpause_ 3y ago
    But that’s not cheating on presenting, that’s just doing a bad job, no? That is, just visible incompetence?
    - hgsgm 3y ago
      It leads to the modern world where "influencers" and "fake news" succeed while creators and contributors fail. It's hard to see this being the basis of a sustainable society.
      - fauxpause_ 3y ago
        I don’t agree that those things are at all related to not preparing for work presentations
      - scarface74 3y ago
        If you are a creator that can’t get your ideas across, you’re just like the literally dozen of people who have approached me with a “great idea” with no go to market strategy.
Spooky23 3y ago
We live in an era of transition. Deals and speed are more important than rigor. When the easier money dries up, that will change.
- tough 3y ago
  Hadn't easy money dried up already ?
praxulus 3y ago
How is spitballing a presentation cheating? It's the equivalent of taking a test without studying, not presenting somebody else's work as your own.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  It's a broken system where effort and performance isn't acknowledged and rewarded and the whole purpose of being there is undermined. At some point the whole enterprise is destructive and should be shut down.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - scarface74 3y ago
    If the outcome is successful with less effort how is that bad? I was just in a joint presentation with a new grad. We both had our parts. They spent hours preparing their parts of a technical demonstration. I just walked through my part of the demo and had an “open discussion”. They put 4x more effort to achieve what I would say was a 20% better result. That’s not meant to be an insult to them, I have much more experience.
  - ausbah 3y ago
    if the end result is the same who cares
  - awesomeMilou 3y ago
    When has "having been there" ever been a measure for reward? In college no one gave a shit if you came to lectures, all that mattered was the exam at the end of the semester. If you learn better with books: great! I'm suprised that so many companies are unable to measure the performance of their employees in an effective manner. This entire discussion comes down to whether management actually wants to own the product and subsequently the product development lifecycle and is then also willing to investigate potential friction, or, as is much more often the case, doesn't really care and just wants to be told what they want to hear. You prioritize a metric (keep management happy) over actualy results. If I can improve that metric by improvising, how am I a cheater?
pavlov 3y ago
You can’t really cheat your way to a better presentation. If the “spitballed” version is good enough for the situation, why expend a lot of effort on preparation? Maybe the problem is that people have low expectations when everyone delivers bad presentations. This kind of cultural thing is often easier to fix by changing the format rather than pushing for everyone to do more — in other words, ask “do we need all these presentations?” instead of “why do you all put so little effort in your presentations.”
- peteradio 3y ago
  If the presentation misrepresents a projects state through vagueness I might call that cheating.
- twic 3y ago
  It probably isn't good enough. But it's hard for the audience to tell. "Any questions?" "How are we going to scale the data storage?" "Oh, we're confident that the data will all fit in a single SQLite instance." "Great." It's only six months later, when it turns out it won't, and there's a lot of stress and panicked re-working, that the lack of preparation will be obvious. And by then, everyone will have forgotten the presentation.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    This is less spitballed presentation and more spitballed design. The latter is much much much worse.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - somsak2 3y ago
    If all you need to answer that question is "we're confident that X" then that's still a problem with the asker. Why are they confident? Have we modeled the data needs over time? What data are we even storing? Basic probing questions should either uncover the lack of preparation or show that things will indeed be fine. Just like cheating is a problem for a teacher to solve, a lack of preparation is a problem for the audience to solve.
preommr 3y ago
Ironic then that the real test was to see who has flexible thinking to adjust to a dynamic situation and who mindlessly follows misconstrued advice. If you really wanted to challenge yourself there's nothing stopping you from doing extra excerises outside of class. Yes, your other classmates were wrong for cheating, but you're paying the university and they can't even be bothered to update the their tests because they don't care about the cheating or you getting an education either. There's any number of situtations like this that happen in real life, from school, government, politics, work, etc. Not understanding these rules is much worse than being able to do some assignment in university.
- nequo 3y ago
  Your comment reads as though you were saying that cheating on an assignment is “flexible thinking.” That’s quite a stretch.
  - cmcconomy 3y ago
    he's thinking flexibly
- toss1 3y ago
  While it's unlikely these test results were deliberately leaked as a 'real-world' learning exercise, the principle definitely applies. I had a friend in college friend who was in a Government major program, which was notorious for handing out insanely large reading lists for each class, like literally a ~meter tall stack of books for a term. Being the highly conscientious person she was, she spent the first three years trying to get through it all. She was blown away her senior year when she found out that the professors did NOT expect every book to be read! The professors had worked at the highest levels of govt (including Cabinet level), and knew that the volume of available references in the real role was enormous, and that a key skill was being able to efficiently whittle them down to a usable level without reading every page. So, they were literally recreating the situation for their students. Her senior year went a lot better after learning that...
  - 3y ago
throwawaysleep 3y ago
What is the reward for putting in the presentation effort? If I get my salary if I spitball and I get my salary whether I put in effort, why bother? I don't bother prepare for client support calls, mostly because I don't want to do them and want to be considered incompetent at them so I am not asked to help in the future as much. So at least for me, presentations are nothing but more work.
scaramanga 3y ago
> I didn't look at it, took the challenge and gave it a lot of effort. I got a pretty bad mark and the rest of the class got top marks. I am curious to know what conclusion you draw from the anecdote about the test? Is it that you aren't good enough because you tried your best and failed? Or is it that the test is a fallible instrument, designed by a human being who works within the constraints of an institution and has no choice but to treat education as if it is a magic juice that it's his job to squirt into the students heads and then administer tests to determine if the juice stuck there or leaked out, thereby identifying the defective and leaky craniums? Or is it that you seemed out of touch with what every else intuitively understood? ie. That they're being evaluated and that a negative evaluation can have profound consequences for the rest of their life, regardless of if the testing procedure is fair or not?
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  It was a pretty tough assignment iirc. In my mind an assignments purpose is to learn - which I did from putting in the effort and then reviewing the solution after submitting. You seem to be getting my point though - I would have rather failed than cheat. I learned that people (even smart people - which my peers were) will cheat if its beneficial to them.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
I’m curious how far you are into your career. It sounds a bit like you are treating presentations as a performance, which is natural to fall into but I think it is a bit of a trap time investment wise. If you practice improvising presentations you will eventually get good at improvising presentations which is a valuable skill to have IMO.
midoridensha 3y ago
This is two totally different things. Not preparing for a presentation means you deliver a mediocre-to-bad presentation; you can't cheat by looking up the answer somewhere. So if delivering a lousy presentation is good enough for whoever wanted the presentation, why go to the effort of making a great presentation? Are the rewards for that effort worth the expenditure? Probably not, which is why people are "spitballing" it.
gofreddygo 3y ago
Cheating is a slippery slope. This is the one thing that I always remind myself and my people, whenever the temptation arises. If my cheating works, I could never stop myself from doing it again, bigger, causing much worse damage to me and people around me when I get caught. If my cheating fails, I've lost more than what I could have gained anyway. To me its a lose-lose. I'd rather get up and leave, or find another way than cheat. And I hold that standard for people around me too. If I know they've cheated, even when I'm not involved or affected, that person or group and I are done. Its a hard non-negotiable thing. And I think I'm better for it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mach1ne 3y ago

I'm sorry, but I disagree with the analogy. If you can spitball the presentation, your time is likely spent better elsewhere than preparing for the presentation.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gear54rus 3y ago

"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" - No country for old men

fauxpause_ 3y ago

What does spitball mean? I don’t prepare for presentations but I can’t tell how that would be cheating.

sk5t 3y ago
It means to extemporize / ramble.
- fauxpause_ 3y ago
  But that’s not cheating on presenting, that’s just doing a bad job, no? That is, just visible incompetence?
  - hgsgm 3y ago
    It leads to the modern world where "influencers" and "fake news" succeed while creators and contributors fail. It's hard to see this being the basis of a sustainable society.
    - fauxpause_ 3y ago
      I don’t agree that those things are at all related to not preparing for work presentations
    - scarface74 3y ago
      If you are a creator that can’t get your ideas across, you’re just like the literally dozen of people who have approached me with a “great idea” with no go to market strategy.

Spooky23 3y ago

We live in an era of transition. Deals and speed are more important than rigor. When the easier money dries up, that will change.

tough 3y ago
Hadn't easy money dried up already ?

praxulus 3y ago

How is spitballing a presentation cheating? It's the equivalent of taking a test without studying, not presenting somebody else's work as your own.

hgsgm 3y ago
It's a broken system where effort and performance isn't acknowledged and rewarded and the whole purpose of being there is undermined. At some point the whole enterprise is destructive and should be shut down.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- scarface74 3y ago
  If the outcome is successful with less effort how is that bad? I was just in a joint presentation with a new grad. We both had our parts. They spent hours preparing their parts of a technical demonstration. I just walked through my part of the demo and had an “open discussion”. They put 4x more effort to achieve what I would say was a 20% better result. That’s not meant to be an insult to them, I have much more experience.
- ausbah 3y ago
  if the end result is the same who cares
- awesomeMilou 3y ago
  When has "having been there" ever been a measure for reward? In college no one gave a shit if you came to lectures, all that mattered was the exam at the end of the semester. If you learn better with books: great! I'm suprised that so many companies are unable to measure the performance of their employees in an effective manner. This entire discussion comes down to whether management actually wants to own the product and subsequently the product development lifecycle and is then also willing to investigate potential friction, or, as is much more often the case, doesn't really care and just wants to be told what they want to hear. You prioritize a metric (keep management happy) over actualy results. If I can improve that metric by improvising, how am I a cheater?

pavlov 3y ago

You can’t really cheat your way to a better presentation. If the “spitballed” version is good enough for the situation, why expend a lot of effort on preparation? Maybe the problem is that people have low expectations when everyone delivers bad presentations. This kind of cultural thing is often easier to fix by changing the format rather than pushing for everyone to do more — in other words, ask “do we need all these presentations?” instead of “why do you all put so little effort in your presentations.”

peteradio 3y ago
If the presentation misrepresents a projects state through vagueness I might call that cheating.
twic 3y ago
It probably isn't good enough. But it's hard for the audience to tell. "Any questions?" "How are we going to scale the data storage?" "Oh, we're confident that the data will all fit in a single SQLite instance." "Great." It's only six months later, when it turns out it won't, and there's a lot of stress and panicked re-working, that the lack of preparation will be obvious. And by then, everyone will have forgotten the presentation.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  This is less spitballed presentation and more spitballed design. The latter is much much much worse.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- somsak2 3y ago
  If all you need to answer that question is "we're confident that X" then that's still a problem with the asker. Why are they confident? Have we modeled the data needs over time? What data are we even storing? Basic probing questions should either uncover the lack of preparation or show that things will indeed be fine. Just like cheating is a problem for a teacher to solve, a lack of preparation is a problem for the audience to solve.

preommr 3y ago

Ironic then that the real test was to see who has flexible thinking to adjust to a dynamic situation and who mindlessly follows misconstrued advice. If you really wanted to challenge yourself there's nothing stopping you from doing extra excerises outside of class. Yes, your other classmates were wrong for cheating, but you're paying the university and they can't even be bothered to update the their tests because they don't care about the cheating or you getting an education either. There's any number of situtations like this that happen in real life, from school, government, politics, work, etc. Not understanding these rules is much worse than being able to do some assignment in university.

nequo 3y ago
Your comment reads as though you were saying that cheating on an assignment is “flexible thinking.” That’s quite a stretch.
- cmcconomy 3y ago
  he's thinking flexibly
toss1 3y ago
While it's unlikely these test results were deliberately leaked as a 'real-world' learning exercise, the principle definitely applies. I had a friend in college friend who was in a Government major program, which was notorious for handing out insanely large reading lists for each class, like literally a ~meter tall stack of books for a term. Being the highly conscientious person she was, she spent the first three years trying to get through it all. She was blown away her senior year when she found out that the professors did NOT expect every book to be read! The professors had worked at the highest levels of govt (including Cabinet level), and knew that the volume of available references in the real role was enormous, and that a key skill was being able to efficiently whittle them down to a usable level without reading every page. So, they were literally recreating the situation for their students. Her senior year went a lot better after learning that...
- 3y ago

throwawaysleep 3y ago

What is the reward for putting in the presentation effort? If I get my salary if I spitball and I get my salary whether I put in effort, why bother? I don't bother prepare for client support calls, mostly because I don't want to do them and want to be considered incompetent at them so I am not asked to help in the future as much. So at least for me, presentations are nothing but more work.

scaramanga 3y ago

> I didn't look at it, took the challenge and gave it a lot of effort. I got a pretty bad mark and the rest of the class got top marks. I am curious to know what conclusion you draw from the anecdote about the test? Is it that you aren't good enough because you tried your best and failed? Or is it that the test is a fallible instrument, designed by a human being who works within the constraints of an institution and has no choice but to treat education as if it is a magic juice that it's his job to squirt into the students heads and then administer tests to determine if the juice stuck there or leaked out, thereby identifying the defective and leaky craniums? Or is it that you seemed out of touch with what every else intuitively understood? ie. That they're being evaluated and that a negative evaluation can have profound consequences for the rest of their life, regardless of if the testing procedure is fair or not?

gardenhedge 3y ago
It was a pretty tough assignment iirc. In my mind an assignments purpose is to learn - which I did from putting in the effort and then reviewing the solution after submitting. You seem to be getting my point though - I would have rather failed than cheat. I learned that people (even smart people - which my peers were) will cheat if its beneficial to them.

pfannkuchen 3y ago

I’m curious how far you are into your career. It sounds a bit like you are treating presentations as a performance, which is natural to fall into but I think it is a bit of a trap time investment wise. If you practice improvising presentations you will eventually get good at improvising presentations which is a valuable skill to have IMO.

midoridensha 3y ago

This is two totally different things. Not preparing for a presentation means you deliver a mediocre-to-bad presentation; you can't cheat by looking up the answer somewhere. So if delivering a lousy presentation is good enough for whoever wanted the presentation, why go to the effort of making a great presentation? Are the rewards for that effort worth the expenditure? Probably not, which is why people are "spitballing" it.

gofreddygo 3y ago

Cheating is a slippery slope. This is the one thing that I always remind myself and my people, whenever the temptation arises. If my cheating works, I could never stop myself from doing it again, bigger, causing much worse damage to me and people around me when I get caught. If my cheating fails, I've lost more than what I could have gained anyway. To me its a lose-lose. I'd rather get up and leave, or find another way than cheat. And I hold that standard for people around me too. If I know they've cheated, even when I'm not involved or affected, that person or group and I are done. Its a hard non-negotiable thing. And I think I'm better for it.