12 ms·

Reading some of the comments in this thread I'm surprised. It seems that a substantial number of people think one of the following: a.) cheating on interviews i

Reading some of the comments in this thread I'm surprised. It seems that a substantial number of people think one of the following: a.) cheating on interviews is ok, because interviews don't reflect the actual job b.) this is acceptable because the promotion process is distinct from the interview process or c.) that the cheaters clearly are skilled after all because of all their success, as evidenced by being promoted, so it's ok. I think that's more or less how I would summarize the sympathetic comments in here, but if I missed something or if I'm being unfair then let me know. I for one think this kind of stuff is pretty shameful, and I don't see how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that. The scariest thing for me is how all that's really changed since university, which was full of cheaters, is how much easier it's become, and I don't just mean in engineering. I mean in every facet of life we're basically awash in never before seen capacity to benefit from dishonesty. I guess the silver lining is there will probably be incredible opportunity down the road to combat this, but nonetheless it's a little sad that it isn't inherent to the discipline of technology itself anymore. Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA, but Computer Science and Engineering were considered too hard to really be worth the effort. Obviously I don't mean to say that there were zero grifters, but on the whole the only people who pursued these disciplines were true, dyed in the wool nerds who simply thought making stuff was cool. As a passing thought I've noticed that there's also sort of like a fierce loyalty to defending LLM's in the forums, often by people who display a certain amount of ignorance as to how they work. I wonder if there's a similar dynamic there as to the people who are justifying the cheaters in the comments?

wootland 3y ago
I'd add d) when all of the gains are captured by execs and investors, if you don't do everything you can to maximize your return and minimize your input, you're being exploited. It's strange to me that anyone would care about people cheating at job interviews and not say CEO pay that's 1,000X the average employee. More power to those who can balance things in their favor against those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
- selcuka 3y ago
  It's interesting that you think the promotion of an engineer would have any effect on the CEOs pay. Someone was going to be promoted anyway, the CEO couldn't care less about who. The problem here is that it should have been supposedly someone else who actually earned it.
  - wootland 3y ago
    I’m saying that it’s pointless to get upset at someone getting a raise when the person in charge makes orders of magnitude the amount of money you do. That is the problem, not labor doing what it can to eke out a microscopic amount of leverage.
    - selcuka 3y ago
      That's whataboutism, though. Why should I focus on some other problem when we are talking about this problem now.
      - wootland 3y ago
        This isn’t a problem. That’s the point.
        CydeWeys 3y ago
        Cheaters getting ahead of honest people is of course a problem and I don't understand how you could possibly say it isn't. Those cheaters are taking away jobs and promotions from people who deserve it more.
        wootland 3y ago
        If by the cheaters you mean the executives and investors who personally capture all of the profit, then I couldn't agree more. The reason that we're suffering from "inflation" and see record high wealth inequality is because the people at the top are hoarding all of the capital and profit leaving little for the vast majority of people.
whitemary 3y ago
[flagged]
- _corvo_ 3y ago
  Even if you disagree with the parent comment, this sort of hostility is uncalled for.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - asimpletune 3y ago
      This kind of stuff doesn't hurt my feelings, but I do have a question. If I'm being a "bootlicker", how does that justify hostility? Wouldn't that be good for you and others who feel the same as you? Like, shouldn't you actually encourage "bootlickers" if you have this kind of devil may cry, realpolitik view of morality? Otherwise I'm just competition right? There are no wrong answers here, I really just want to understand what you think better.
      - whitemary 3y ago
        The "boots on the necks of workers" metaphor has been used over many generations as a reflection of the hostility that working people endure in the capitalist workplace. Complaining about the metaphor itself being "hostile" is just laughable. Sticks and stones, my friend.
- joenot443 3y ago
  It's incredibly strange to make what's very clearly a moral argument into some kind of insulting class argument. I don't think you're going to be converting _anyone_ towards your worldview with that kind of approach. A lot of your comments are of a similar spirit and were rightfully downvoted - > The "free market" is so good at problem solving! I hope the entrepreneur who thought of this made a tremendous profit! > But I was always assured the US has the greatest healthcare system in the universe because it's privately profited from! It's just low-quality stuff, man. Keep it on /r/politics, I'm begging you.
spicyusername 3y ago
I relate heavily to the spirit of your comments. Wouldn't we all be better off if we lived in a society that is built on trust and honesty. However, I think you're being a little naive if you think the days of "yesteryear" were somehow different in man's capacity and willingness to do what he needs to do to survive. I mean in every facet of life we're basically awash in never before seen capacity to benefit from dishonesty. it isn't inherent to the discipline of technology itself anymore. Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA These comments in particular read to me as something you want to be true. Who doesn't want their profession to be the noble, honest one and other professions to be the dishonest ones. The reality is that humans have not fundamentally changed in hundreds of thousands of years. If we're doing it today, you can bet we were doing it yesterday and that we'll be doing it tomorrow.
- asimpletune 3y ago
  Yeah, you're definitely right about that. I wasn't there for the golden era, which I imagine to be something like Jobs and Woz phreaking on the phones and ripping of Xerox as sort of the "noble" form of evil. It's hard to speak quantitatively about qualitative things, but that' something that enters the discussion as soon as words like "more" or "less" are uttered. In any case, you're absolutely correct that I'm definitely naive because I'm limited to just my lifetime.
  - scarface74 3y ago
    You mean the same era where Jobs cheated Woz out of his fair compensation and took credit for the Breakout game?
    - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
      And then Bill Gates ripped off Xerox and beat Apple to the punch on desktop GUIs ;p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmMqMYgswsA&t=609s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmMqMYgswsA&t=609s
l2silver 3y ago
This is gonna be a weak comment because I can't find references, but whatever. I remember listening to a podcast recently that compared boys and girls in school. The takeaway was that girls generally try to do all of the work, whereas boys were far more likely to take short cuts to success. And this was the reason why boys were doing better in university and afterwards. The conclusion of the podcast was that we should be encouraging girls to try to take the same shortcuts as boys. It's a learned skill to know exactly what needs to be done to get what you want. Maybe that's what's going on here. Rules, whether we like it or not, can be broken.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Shortcuts are great, until people get hurt or killed. That's why the phrase cutting corners is largely seen as negative, because it's associated with times when shortcuts caused harm. Regardless of gender it's useful to teach people endurance, prioritization, and how to judge when it's best to do everything vs only some things.
  - scarface74 3y ago
    So who is being harmed by someone not reversing a binary tree by memory for an interview?
    - asimpletune 3y ago
      Just out of curiosity: do you think there's nothing wrong with cheating on an interview, and if so would you do it?
      - passion__desire 3y ago
        What if current interview process heavily favours fast thinkers, memorizers and crammers? Shouldn't slow thinkers figure out a way to beat the system?
      - SkyBelow 3y ago
        When someone asks what your biggest weakness is during an interview, and you don't answer honestly because the honest answer to these sorts of questions are socially unacceptable and isn't what the interviewer is looking for to begin with, is that cheating? Or is it taking into account the context of the question and answering the question the interviewer wanted answer? I could see how both answers are justified, and as such it would need to be clarified to know what is meant by your question.
insane_dreamer 3y ago
I'd probably hire someone based on c) but not because they were promoted, but rather because their strategy shows they know how to solve real life problems creatively rather than have a bunch of test answers memorized, and because as pointed out at the end of the article, the person couldn't just mindlessly copy/paste, they had to understand the question find a relevant answer, digest it, understand both the question and the answer, and respond. That's more or less how many things work in real life (otherwise we can all stop going to StackOverflow now).
- asimpletune 3y ago
  I think that if you want to be a spy the c.) mentality is basically a necessary requirement, just so long as you don't betray your team.
zht 3y ago
This turns us into low trust societies like China or India. Which a lot of the blind demographic are from
- tokai 3y ago
  The US is a low trust society?
  - itsyaboi 3y ago
    It is trending that way.
  - leoqa 3y ago
    It’s not. We have functioning institutions that generally perform well over long periods of time. People respect the rule of law and there is an expectation of justice. Spend time in Honduras or Brazil to see what low trust looks like.
    - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
      >We have functioning institutions that generally perform well over long periods of time So, how long are we waiting...?
    - boondoggle16 3y ago
      > People respect the rule of law and there is an expectation of justice. I'll preface this comment by saying, I recognize that the injustices in Honduras and Brazil are not at all like what we see in the U.S. But my comment is about the perception of justice in the U.S. by common citizens (in my opinion). This is a very privileged take. Vast numbers of people in the United States of America do not believe this to be true. The sides don't matter. Leftists believe that black people can be executed at will. Rightists believe that white people can be imprisoned for life, for doing their job (police) or defending themselves. I'm honestly surprised to hear this take. Up to this point, you may be disagreeing with me, thinking I'm crazy, or whatever. But consider the three letter agencies. CIA, FBI, ATF, doesn't matter how you spell them. They have supranational powers which are not balanced by any civilian or even political oversight whatsoever. People are allowed to inject drugs in the streets (where it's illegal), menace, defecate in the streets, expose themselves, rob, steal, and nothing at all really happens. Americans haven't woken up yet, but the rule of law is already dead.
setgree 3y ago
A resposne comment says: > In business there is no cheating, there is only making money and not making money. This attitude is very common among people I know. You ask "how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that." We muddle through, is the answer.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > > In business there is no cheating, there is only making money and not making money. This is the attitude that turns business from being something that is for the greater benefit of all into something that more like a cancer, harmful to all.
  - scarface74 3y ago
    [dead]
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Business has always been about the greater benefit. Not solely (or primarily, from the business owner's perspective) about that, of course, but that aspect is the entire reason why government puts so much time, effort, and money into supporting business activities. If business is not at least in part about the greater benefit, then we need to stop wasting so many resources supporting it.
      - scarface74 3y ago
        So when was this? When European businesses were exploiting the “new world”? When plantation owners were employing slaves? When robber barons were exploiting people and polluting the environment? The “greed is good” 80s? VCs throwing money at startups that they know will never be profitable waiting for the “greater fool”?
        boondoggle16 3y ago
        Before globalization, even before the industrial revolution. The agriculture revolution has been a disaster for the human race. Or at least the individuals within it.
tokai 3y ago
Sure if they worked with something important like plumbing, teaching, etc.. But anyone drawing money out of Amazon while (presumably) lowering productivity is doing work that is objectively leaving the world better off.
scarface74 3y ago
If people can do there job well enough to get promoted, that does tell you that the interview process is broken and not indicative of how well someone can perform on the job.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  Also, our current society don't respect slow but deliberate thinkers like June Huh and expect them to perform better at a sprint (interview) rather than marathon (job environment). https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh-high-school-dropout-wins-the-fields-medal-20220705/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh-high-school-dropout-... On any given day, Huh does about three hours of focused work.
- wanttocomment 3y ago
  No. In every testing or selection system there will be people who could have made it, but didn't make the cut. Either we can accept some amount of arbitrariness, and that there are plenty of opportunities (try again next year?), or everyone who didn't make it can decide to cheat (they're probably good enough right?) Which of these responses makes sense to you?
ada1981 3y ago
In many respects the world functions as it does because not everyone thinks and acts like that. Anytime there is significant power / resource asymmetry for any period of time, it seems it will eventually be captured by sociopaths / psychopaths.
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  >it seems it will eventually be captured by sociopaths / psychopaths. This Is unfortunately generally true. It generally happens because well intentioned functioning people, allow the sociopaths to take over (because it's unpleasant to confront them) , even in tiny groups. I think this can be stalled by an ever vigilant group. People who are willing to take on the job of constant vigilance in addition to their regular tasks are few and far be in between. Consequently such groups are very few and probably are never even public, hence we never hear of them.
ryandrake 3y ago
I read these comments not as a defense of cheating, but as resignation that "This is just how the world is." Your view is right at home in a Star Trek The Next Generation world where everyone's needs are met and people act ethically, with good intentions and are in return treated fairly. A civilized, meritocratic world that doesn't exist. Like it or not, we live in a zero-sum dog-eat-dog world that pits neighbors against each other for the scraps left over after an elite few take 95% of the world's value. For every fraction of a percent you can grab, that's a fraction of a percent that some ethical moron can't grab. If you try to follow the Star Trek rules in this world, you're not going to get very far. Look at this "personality type" as you call it: People who bullshit their way through life, self-promote, swindle, grift, fake it til they make it, hustle, exploit people's good intentions, take credit for the work of others, and so on... They aren't weirdo sociopaths who simply go get an MBA. They're CEOs, SVPs, business and political leaders, the ultrarich. They're Presidents and Senators. They are the elite, the few who our society is set up to most highly reward. Of course people who want to get ahead are going to emulate this behavior. It's practical. It works in the world that we have set up. I'd love to live in the Star Trek world. I'm one of those naive suckers who thinks hard work in the trenches should be rewarded. At work I often sit there doing the dirty gritty work that needs to get done, while peers write bullshit presentations and get face-time with the execs, and schmooze their way to promotion after promotion, and it sucks. If I was younger and had a lot more ahead of me, I'd probably cheat and grift like the rest of em, and if I could send a message back decades to 20-year-old me it would probably be "lose the ethical spine and take whatever you can."
- scaramanga 3y ago
  The only thing stopping me doing that is the observation that these people don't seem to be very happy. Which makes sense, they have to live their life being that person. Play the politics to get the things you need, by all means. But if life is a jungle then you're better off with a machete and your own skills (which can never be taken away from you) than a heavy bag of looted gold and a head full of fantasies about why you rightly own it.
- asimpletune 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. All I want to respond with is to say though that I don't know if the "personality type" that we mentioned is really all that better off. I'm skeptical at least. I think it's more than likely that they've spent their whole lives trying to accumulate power without ever having cultivated the sense of how to use it. Sort of how in so many places all around the world people of less means seem to be so happy. Obviously there are exceptions abound and I'm not trying to present a quantitative argument one way or another. Just that the people who live well aren't always the ones who are living "well", if you take my meaning. I obviously can't be the judge of them and say "all the people I know that are like _that_ are fundamentally unfulfilled", but I can say about myself that the times where I had acted in that way didn't make me any happier, if I were to be honest with myself.
scaramanga 3y ago
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jagtstronaut 3y ago
Maybe the commenters had a different take, but I the OP's post as, "The system is broken and this is proof." Not necessarily condoning cheating itself. I certainly agree though that cheating is a sad thing to build your life on, regardless of whether the system is broken or not. Obviously there are exceptions to this as things get more extreme, but a strong desire to work at amazon is not what I would call extreme lol.
- alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
  Yes, this is roughly my take. The cheating is bad and should not be condoned. That said, it looks like a serious indictment of the interview process if someone couldn't pass it without cheating and but then goes on to excel at the actual job. It means the interview filter process is selecting the wrong things and needs to be scrapped and replaced*. Of course, what to replace it with is a huge question on its own too. *In fairness an alternative explanation is that the promotion process is also broken and rewarding the wrong things.
spamizbad 3y ago
I would say the pro-cheating attitude is pretty widespread among young adults tracking into white collar careers, and computer science is no different. It usually starts in school - and these interview quizzes track this behavior pretty closely. Even without the cheating, you can pass an interview "honestly" by putting in the time to cram for it. That does not justify cheating in any way, though. The fact that people can just cheat in these interviews and not get PIP'd within 6 months, at an organization notorious for PIPing its under-performers, does illustrate how bad the screening process it. Not only do they need to shift back to in-person interviews, they also need to fix their process to actually test skills.
- tristor 3y ago
  > they also need to fix their process to actually test skills. If we're being honest, LC style interviews aren't even about testing skills, it's trying to proxy for testing raw intelligence (or at least the ability to remember and regurgitate lots of facts). If companies could just IQ test people and hire by IQ, there'd be a lot less weirdness in interviews, but that's illegal (and probably rightly so).
  - voakbasda 3y ago
    If a LC interview effectively serves as a proxy for an IQ test, then I think the courts might treat it the same as a literal IQ test. I wonder if we will see lawsuits testing this hypothesis.
    - throw9away6 3y ago
      Good luck suing them
    - everforward 3y ago
      The precedent for the illegality of IQ tests for employment is Griggs v Duke Power Co. [1] if I'm not mistaken. The court ruled: > The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination, but also practices that are > fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business > necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot > be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited. (apologies for the dated and offensive language, starring it out seemed like it would imply a different and more offensive term so I left it as is) My reading of it is that IQ tests aren't broadly illegal, but the employer would have to demonstrate that it's somehow related to job performance. E.g. one employer refused to hire people with too high of an IQ, and the courts ruled that was a reasonable (if unwise) justification [2]. I'm doubtful any case challenging LeetCode tests on the same grounds would succeed. I think it would be exceptionally difficult to convince a court that solving coding problems is unrelated to a programmer's job performance. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. 2: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...
byyyy 3y ago
>As a passing thought I've noticed that there's also sort of like a fierce loyalty to defending LLM's in the forums, often by people who display a certain amount of ignorance as to how they work. I wonder if there's a similar dynamic there as to the people who are justifying the cheaters in the comments? No it's the other way around. Hinton, basically the father of "AI" and other real experts who are involved in the creation of LLMs are massively divided about the future. Hinton even says the AI actually understands you. The fact that there's division among the real experts (ie not you or me) shows theirs legitimacy in the defense. There's a fierce artificial downplaying of AI when it comes to programming. A lot of people say that it's not remotely close to replacing programmers. I think this is the delusional group. It's not replacing us yet, but it's obviously close and the trendline is unmistakable. I think it occurs because a lot of people's identity rests on their actual ability to program. They think they're superior programmers and the fact that a machine is on track to trivialize the skills they take so much pride in causes them to dismiss the technology in the face of actual experts who fear and question it. There's bias on both extremes and one Hallmark of bias is when one fails to address the division and actual controversy. You have failed to address the controversy instead you categorize people who "defend" AI as people who don't "understand" it and you imply it's some psychological quirk or bias people have. I agree somewhat, but clearly not all who "defend" AI are like this as their are preeminent experts who are on the "defence" side. Instead I think your behavior is an exhibition of other common psychological defensive quirks and biases. I think you don't realize how it's a dog eat dog world out there and people will do anything to succeed. Maybe your born with talent, so you worship and defend that talent with calls to uphold "integrity." Others, however, will do anything in their power to stay afloat in the face of your "talent." It's more about survival for humans then it is about integrity. Do people really want to live a shitty life getting sub 100k salaries only letting people like you take up all the high paying jobs in the name of "integrity"? No. No one does... not even you, but you have the luxury of talent or ability to master those interviews... that is the only differentiator. I bet if you couldn't pass those interviews you would be in the same boat. You defend integrity not because you are a stand up person, but because you have the ability to succeed without violating your integrity. That's all. One thing to note about people is often their truth strangely aligns with their circumstance in life. Why? Most people do not seek actual truth. Instead they construct the truth as a scaffold to support themselves and the weight of their sins. You are no different. I'm pretty sure you are quite good at the technical interview and That strange alignment with your philosophy on interview integrity is Not a coincidence. Personally I'm unique in this regard. I'm good at interviewing but in my quest in seeking the objective truth of the world... I have, to my own detriment, constructed a life where my truth is not in alignment with what I am in actuality.
casey2 3y ago
You don't actually offer any argument other than saying it's bad cause it's bad. If everyone who cheated and passed performed so well that they got promotions then the world would be a much better place than reality where most cheaters fail hilariously. If you can't even be bothered to give employees a real interview you don't care about the company and at that point the company is already bloated. What kind of person are you that when reading a story and seeing 100 wrong things you pick out the one thing that is arguable and die on that hill? An VLLM sycophant?
- asimpletune 3y ago
  Does VLLM stand for very LLM?
2devnull 3y ago
Sadly it seems tech hiring wants to optimize for cheating by putting a lot of importance on tests and credentials. Deemphasize these, and assess candidates more holistically, and cheating is no longer a factor. It’s easy to cheat on a test, or get a credential you don’t deserve, but these are amazingly treated as the solution rather than the cause of cheating.
- wombatpm 3y ago
  Credentials and test were seen as a way to remove interview bias from the process. So instead of cheaters you would end up with nothing but code bros
- wanttocomment 3y ago
  It's the opposite. Credentials and testing are a substitute for trust since people will lie about experience and competence.
tarsinge 3y ago
Yeah I don't believe trying to contain cheating and dishonesty to specific contexts can last, from my limited experience for people who do this it inevitably starts to leak to other aspects of their life. Shielding behind organized structures is an illusions (also the root of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_evil), in the end you are deceiving other human beings.
paulcole 3y ago
Like Canada Bill Jones said, "It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money." This is work we're talking about. If somebody will pay $250,000 because somebody else can answer a trivia question, people will figure out how to answer that trivia question correctly. I don't have any problem with it. If your business is getting suckered by people with some 2-laptop scheme, it's on you to fix it. Or if the 2-laptop people end up being good enough at the job, who cares?
sodapopcan 3y ago
I'm against cheating and have never done it and probably never will, but I have an equal amount of disgust for leetcode in an interview process.
artyom 3y ago
Yeah I'm more surprised about the comments than the actual story. Specially with people thinking that the interview process is broken, but somehow the promotion process is pristine and unhackable.
bumby 3y ago
>Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA One nuance that may help explain how the change happened is how the status of CS has changed in the last 20 years. Maybe its just my age bias, but there seems to be a perceptible change of how CS majors are viewed by society and that changes the type of people attracted to that curriculum. It used to be that CS and engineering majors were the nerds who, as you say, "simply thought making stuff was cool." Nowadays, though, as CS commands a disproportionately large salary, it has higher status. This tends to attract more people who are in it the reasons of status and money, rather than for a fascination with the work. Anecdotally, when I ask people why they got into CS a surprising number now say something along the lines of "because it pays well." It's my opinion that change in perspective can bias how one views cheating. If the curriculum is just a means to an end (i.e., if school is just a means to a degree, which is just a gateway to a job/paycheck), it seems to make cheating more palatable.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Anecdotally, when I ask people why they got into CS a surprising number now say something along the lines of "because it pays well." Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's utterly depressing.
- asimpletune 3y ago
  I don't know the history of the bar exam, but I could imagine something like that one day being instituted to protect our repetitional interest. Even though we're both talking about SWE, whereas CS is a different thing altogether.
  - bumby 3y ago
    NCEES has tried to create a Professional Engineer license related to CS. It died out from a lack of interest.
- randcraw 3y ago
  I think computing in the 1980s was a very different enterprise than it is today. Back then it was about exploring a new world whose horizons were expanding fast, as processor speed and O/S capability grew seemingly without bound. IMHO it was the transition of the cutting edge away from technical to social after the web arose that changed the tenor of computing. Devices became secondary to connected apps, and the focus among the players shifted from love of innovative hacks to fascination for megabuck payouts, meanwhile 'coolness' described _using_ computers rather than making them dance.
ihateyouall123 3y ago
This is why I left the tech industry. Nothing but losers with no skills getting hired. No sympathy for anyone fired
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  No sympathy for someone losing their livelihood, because they're "too weak"? That's pretty dark.
kamaal 3y ago
>>promotion process is distinct from the interview process Promotions often have nothing to do with merit. It takes a lot of political manoeuvring, back room dealing, negotiations, packet building, documentation, positions trading, making allies to building support/consensus etc etc. People who cheat are exactly the kind of people who are likely to win big in these processes.
giantg2 3y ago
"were true, dyed in the wool nerds who simply thought making stuff was cool." Now we're in 2023 - where making money is cool and building things is just a necessary evil to achieve that.
austin-cheney 3y ago
It sounds like you find cheating shameful for vague moralistic reasons that you have not disclosed. Software is full of cheating. I am really convinced that maybe 85% (that's actually being generous) of developers have no idea what they are doing. They know enough to complete some tiny agile tasks and push a few lines into a pull request. These people are either suffering from imposter syndrome, deliberately cheating, or just don't care. All the real decisions are made by that last 15%. That's why almost nobody can write software anymore without a plethora of open source software delivering most of their product for them. In my mind if you aren't part of that last 15% you are cheating whether or not its deliberate. Everybody wants to get paid. If you want to reduce the amount of cheating in software then the industry must be willing to impose minimal standards of acceptable practice. The industry is not willing to do so. There are a couple of reasons why such prolific cheating is allowed (and even encouraged): * Developers are not taught to plan. I take this for granted being a military guy, but seriously I have seen many children with a greater planning ability than many developers tasked with a new product effort. Its like the abstractness of software completely destroys any capability to put simple steps in order. This is why many businesses will offload this to business analysts and project managers. * Developers are not taught to write. Although many of these people have bachelor's degrees so many cannot put their thoughts into even a simple bullet list. * There are no ethics in software. The closest thing for most developers might be something like an NDA at initial on boarding. Otherwise, ethics is entirely off loaded to a legal team who mandate areas of compliance. * The goals of hiring/employment often do not align to the skills required to perform product delivery. This indicates employers have completely lost faith in candidate preparation and/or candidate availability and are just willing to take what they can get. Typically that means dumbing things down to widen the pool of availability. * Many developers are grossly entitled. The most important word for most developers: easiness. Comparatively nothing else matters, and they will fight you to death on this. Edit: two grammar corrections.
- asimpletune 3y ago
  I think you're being unfairly downvoted here, and you bring up a lot of good points. > It sounds like you find cheating shameful for vague moralistic reasons that you have not disclosed. That's absolutely right. I didn't elaborate at all. > That's why almost nobody can writing software anymore Honestly though I think that writing software is just hard. > must be willing to impose minimal standards of acceptable practice Yeah this is an interesting idea. Like how attorneys have to pass a bar. I don't really know how it would go, but I do believe that the industry already has a hard enough of a time hiring and this would just make things that much harder. Some organizations though seem to have a knack for improving their new hires by a lot, so it's not like all these organizations are evil, just most are probably incompetent. Again, software is hard. > The goals of hiring/employment often do not align to the skills required to perform product delivery. Yeah, I would say in general that bad incentives are abound. I think a lot of the points you brought up are products of strange market dynamics. For so long companies haven't really felt the weight of gravity and have had so much investor money that it feels like a lot of what one could consider fundamentals have been tossed out the window in favor of other things. This is where perverse incentives start to manifest in my view.
stronglikedan 3y ago
> that it isn't inherent to the discipline of technology itself anymore Sorry to say, but it never was. Anti-cheaters have always been the extreme minority in every profession since the dawn of man.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  OP out here trying to say Pets.com wasn't cheating.
ksaun 3y ago
> "there will probably be incredible opportunity down the road to combat this," I am curious to hear more about what you mean by this. I crave living in a high trust society. I've attempted to act as though I do (though not with complete success), but reality often rebuffs me. I am discouraged by the high (and seemingly increasing) "capacity to benefit from dishonesty," especially as I feel powerless to meaningfully affect this trend/condition. It sounds like you see ways in which society can shift to be higher trust. Can you elaborate?
mistrial9 3y ago
at a "top five" USA public University a couple of decades ago, it was indeed shocking to see calculated, methodical cheating on exams and study material.. for example a group would keep the significant test material from previous years with corrections, or coordinate homework assignments between a group and distribute the work load.. one person does one homework and gets five other homeworks for 'filter' classes handed to them.. I could easily say "ethnic Chinese" and be accurate, but what about the mid-IQ Frat guys from the "fly-over" states? all pale skins.. So I thought about it at the time and it seemed like sports teams, fraternities, strong social ties with a lot at stake.. those groups, not ethnicity, were a common theme. In my own wanderings, since travelling internationally and gaining some maturity, I believe that calling out an ethnicity is indeed racist in a mild way. I agree with both "lots of students from India cheated" and "I am concerned about ethnic stereotype" .. both have some basis in reality.. We as animals are wired to see "us" and "other" .. so.. you have to choose to apply some sense and mercy, or not.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
> I for one think this kind of stuff is pretty shameful, and I don't see how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that. It functions because the premise, that interviews actually work as filters to choose the best candidates, is false. It also works because finding the answers for a question is a skill, likely more valuable at work than memorizing a dozen of algorithm implementations. The current interview culture is a joke.
guenthert 3y ago
> c.) that the cheaters clearly are skilled after all because of all their success, as evidenced by being promoted, so it's ok. Quite possibly that some commentators think that way, but I doubt that cheaters suddenly stop cheating after the interview, particularly not if it worked out so well for them. I rather think they'll continue their path of alternative facts; blaming others for failures, mis-attributing successes, mis-charecterizing their contributions, lying, gas-lighting, bullying and even squeezing their colleagues out of their job. There might be work environments where this is a net positive for the organization, but I can't think of one right now.
tpoacher 3y ago
I dont think anyone's claiming this isn't shameful; they're just saying it works. And when real people are faced with a broken system which penalises honesty and rewards cheating, many will choose pragmatically rather than idealistically.
chinchilla2020 3y ago
It's the world we live in. * Candidates now lie about experience. * promotions are given for loyalty, not contribution. * Companies cheat on hiring using false job descriptions and fake career carrots. * Your performance at work does not matter. Advance your career by interview prep, not excelling at your role. * Prestige (ex-FAANG, Ivy league degree) matter more than hard work. I've noticed that tech companies are now filled with people who have zero interest in computer software. Management at tech companies is comprised of non-technical people.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  > Management at tech companies is comprised of non-technical people. Sometimes there's good reasons for this
otikik 3y ago
Be careful, you are starting to sound like an old person. https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/ https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...
dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
I'll add d) Cheating is okay because most interview processes is BS to start with. In most cases the interview itself is a dog and pony show, often reflecting the outright incompetence of the interviewers or organizations that are hiring. > I guess the silver lining is there will probably be incredible opportunity down the road to combat this, You are being naive here. Many people value honesty in principle, but are not willing to enforce it in practice. For example if they catch a close, likable colleague or friend in the act of cheating, they will not fire them.
inconceivable 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals#List_of_biggest_accounting_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals#List_of_bi... check out the flags at the top of the list.
hedora 3y ago
As companies grow, they have to have a promotion process. I've never encountered a company where that promotion process accurately assessed contribution to the business or technical competence. At best, the two are weakly correlated. So, what happens when a company succeeds is that the competent people eventually either get tenured, or they get forced out by bozos (I'm using this as a term of art. Look up the bozo effect.) Eventually, the bozos win, and the company becomes unable to do anything other than extract monopoly rent. Then, some technology or regulatory shift arrives, and the incumbent gets forced out by a startup, or they somehow shed their bozos for a while. So, if you are competent and honest, you have three choices: - Learn how to be productive despite the promotion criteria. This is the path to tears and burn out, because most of your colleagues will only be good at gaming interviews / promotions, and your attention will be split between that and doing your job (and probably their jobs), placing you at a significant disadvantage. - Somehow become the tenured engineer on top of this mess, and try to create pockets of competence in the organization. Ruthlessly detect + fire the bozos. This isn't fun either. - Leave for a startup that's targeting a weak and foolish incumbent, and then leave when the startup grows up and becomes the weak and foolish incumbent (a good sign that this is happening is that the founding engineering team is leaving, or that your boss's boss is incompetent.) Note that the last option is the lowest stress one for technically strong engineers. It is very hard to fake your way through knowing what you are doing when the entire company has direct visibility into your work. If you can somehow solve the above problem then you can build a company larger than any of the FAANGs.
strangattractor 3y ago
Makes you wonder just what type of people end up in manager roles:)
georgeecollins 3y ago
>> Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA It seems like you are implying that a person who gets an MBA is the type of person who would cheat on a test. This fits with a ubiquitous contempt for MBAs and also project managers that comes up a lot on this site. There is a lot of room for criticism of business schools and middle managers in tech. But if you really think of people like that as more likely to be dishonest you are being irrational.
- boondoggle16 3y ago
  Respectfully, I disagree. At it's core, business school is the study of making money. How to make power and social status numbers go up. The business domain is interesting, and intellectually deep and rewarding, but without the money, all interest goes away. The money is the point. With tech, there are complicated technical mechanisms. They still exist to make money, but, there are many layers of translation in between. And it seems easier for humans to be interested in computers in a more pure way, because of these layers between. Kinda like how a gift card "feels" more personal than cash even though it's a strictly worse gift. So I think business school attracts many more "ends justifies the means" types of people because of these inherent properties.
  - georgeecollins 3y ago
    That's a good argument, honestly. Where I would disagree with at its core an MBA studies how to manage and administer an organization. It's in the name. That's also how schools see themselves, right or wrong. In the US we associate business and management with money, so maybe you are right. I tend to think people are people and you get "ends justify the means" types in managers, entrepreneurs and even engineers.
mock-possum 3y ago
every liar justifies it to themselves somehow. committing to dealing honestly with other people is a very serious undertaking, it's a struggle against nurture and nature that lasts a lifetime. some people don't see the value of it - some people see the value, but don't think it's worth the risk.
Raptor22 3y ago
Look, I agree with your fundamental sentiment. But I think you're being incredibly naive too. > I don't see how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that My brother in Christ, the world barely functions as it is right now. We have a war going on because of one man's misguided attempt at recapturing his country's former glory as an empire, we've had planes fall out of the sky because of boneheaded engineering decisions demanded by MBA types (737 Max), we had a massive train derailment / chemical spill in Ohio caused by other MBA types not wanting to properly maintain the trains and tracks, we are maybe a few weeks away from the most economically powerful country on Earth defaulting because our moronic leadership can't agree to pay our debts (NOT because of an inherent inability to pay)... I could go on. The world is chaos, and it's pretty much always been that way. > there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA, but Computer Science and Engineering were considered too hard to really be worth the effort. This part of your reply really, really grinds my gears, because to me it's sort of saying that MBA's can cheat all they want, but CS and Engineering grads should be 'chaste' and not cheat... because reasons. NO. The MBA's took over the technical companies and fucked everything up, but we're just supposed to keep doing the 'right' thing? NO. Fuck them, we should get ours. Is it sad that this is the current state of affairs? Absolutely. Would the world be an immensely better place if NO ONE was unethical, and no one cheated? Hell yes. But that world doesn't exist. And the people who have the power to bring such a world into existence are not entry level engineers.
- corinroyal 3y ago
  > The MBA's took over the technical companies and fucked everything up, but we're just supposed to keep doing the 'right' thing? NO. Fuck them, we should get ours. Yes. That's what Christ teaches. We live in an unjust world and we make it better by holding our moral ground despite the enormous pressures to sell out.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
I'll even go a step further. In some cases cheaters are doing better, because that kind of behavior is what's expected of them in "the real world", just don't get caught. People with integrity get run over.

wootland 3y ago

I'd add d) when all of the gains are captured by execs and investors, if you don't do everything you can to maximize your return and minimize your input, you're being exploited. It's strange to me that anyone would care about people cheating at job interviews and not say CEO pay that's 1,000X the average employee. More power to those who can balance things in their favor against those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

selcuka 3y ago
It's interesting that you think the promotion of an engineer would have any effect on the CEOs pay. Someone was going to be promoted anyway, the CEO couldn't care less about who. The problem here is that it should have been supposedly someone else who actually earned it.
- wootland 3y ago
  I’m saying that it’s pointless to get upset at someone getting a raise when the person in charge makes orders of magnitude the amount of money you do. That is the problem, not labor doing what it can to eke out a microscopic amount of leverage.
  - selcuka 3y ago
    That's whataboutism, though. Why should I focus on some other problem when we are talking about this problem now.
    - wootland 3y ago
      This isn’t a problem. That’s the point.
      - CydeWeys 3y ago
        Cheaters getting ahead of honest people is of course a problem and I don't understand how you could possibly say it isn't. Those cheaters are taking away jobs and promotions from people who deserve it more.
        wootland 3y ago
        If by the cheaters you mean the executives and investors who personally capture all of the profit, then I couldn't agree more. The reason that we're suffering from "inflation" and see record high wealth inequality is because the people at the top are hoarding all of the capital and profit leaving little for the vast majority of people.

whitemary 3y ago

[flagged]

_corvo_ 3y ago
Even if you disagree with the parent comment, this sort of hostility is uncalled for.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - asimpletune 3y ago
    This kind of stuff doesn't hurt my feelings, but I do have a question. If I'm being a "bootlicker", how does that justify hostility? Wouldn't that be good for you and others who feel the same as you? Like, shouldn't you actually encourage "bootlickers" if you have this kind of devil may cry, realpolitik view of morality? Otherwise I'm just competition right? There are no wrong answers here, I really just want to understand what you think better.
    - whitemary 3y ago
      The "boots on the necks of workers" metaphor has been used over many generations as a reflection of the hostility that working people endure in the capitalist workplace. Complaining about the metaphor itself being "hostile" is just laughable. Sticks and stones, my friend.
joenot443 3y ago
It's incredibly strange to make what's very clearly a moral argument into some kind of insulting class argument. I don't think you're going to be converting _anyone_ towards your worldview with that kind of approach. A lot of your comments are of a similar spirit and were rightfully downvoted - > The "free market" is so good at problem solving! I hope the entrepreneur who thought of this made a tremendous profit! > But I was always assured the US has the greatest healthcare system in the universe because it's privately profited from! It's just low-quality stuff, man. Keep it on /r/politics, I'm begging you.

spicyusername 3y ago

I relate heavily to the spirit of your comments. Wouldn't we all be better off if we lived in a society that is built on trust and honesty. However, I think you're being a little naive if you think the days of "yesteryear" were somehow different in man's capacity and willingness to do what he needs to do to survive. I mean in every facet of life we're basically awash in never before seen capacity to benefit from dishonesty. it isn't inherent to the discipline of technology itself anymore. Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA These comments in particular read to me as something you want to be true. Who doesn't want their profession to be the noble, honest one and other professions to be the dishonest ones. The reality is that humans have not fundamentally changed in hundreds of thousands of years. If we're doing it today, you can bet we were doing it yesterday and that we'll be doing it tomorrow.

asimpletune 3y ago
Yeah, you're definitely right about that. I wasn't there for the golden era, which I imagine to be something like Jobs and Woz phreaking on the phones and ripping of Xerox as sort of the "noble" form of evil. It's hard to speak quantitatively about qualitative things, but that' something that enters the discussion as soon as words like "more" or "less" are uttered. In any case, you're absolutely correct that I'm definitely naive because I'm limited to just my lifetime.
- scarface74 3y ago
  You mean the same era where Jobs cheated Woz out of his fair compensation and took credit for the Breakout game?
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    And then Bill Gates ripped off Xerox and beat Apple to the punch on desktop GUIs ;p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmMqMYgswsA&t=609s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmMqMYgswsA&t=609s

l2silver 3y ago

This is gonna be a weak comment because I can't find references, but whatever. I remember listening to a podcast recently that compared boys and girls in school. The takeaway was that girls generally try to do all of the work, whereas boys were far more likely to take short cuts to success. And this was the reason why boys were doing better in university and afterwards. The conclusion of the podcast was that we should be encouraging girls to try to take the same shortcuts as boys. It's a learned skill to know exactly what needs to be done to get what you want. Maybe that's what's going on here. Rules, whether we like it or not, can be broken.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Shortcuts are great, until people get hurt or killed. That's why the phrase cutting corners is largely seen as negative, because it's associated with times when shortcuts caused harm. Regardless of gender it's useful to teach people endurance, prioritization, and how to judge when it's best to do everything vs only some things.
- scarface74 3y ago
  So who is being harmed by someone not reversing a binary tree by memory for an interview?
  - asimpletune 3y ago
    Just out of curiosity: do you think there's nothing wrong with cheating on an interview, and if so would you do it?
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      What if current interview process heavily favours fast thinkers, memorizers and crammers? Shouldn't slow thinkers figure out a way to beat the system?
    - SkyBelow 3y ago
      When someone asks what your biggest weakness is during an interview, and you don't answer honestly because the honest answer to these sorts of questions are socially unacceptable and isn't what the interviewer is looking for to begin with, is that cheating? Or is it taking into account the context of the question and answering the question the interviewer wanted answer? I could see how both answers are justified, and as such it would need to be clarified to know what is meant by your question.

insane_dreamer 3y ago

I'd probably hire someone based on c) but not because they were promoted, but rather because their strategy shows they know how to solve real life problems creatively rather than have a bunch of test answers memorized, and because as pointed out at the end of the article, the person couldn't just mindlessly copy/paste, they had to understand the question find a relevant answer, digest it, understand both the question and the answer, and respond. That's more or less how many things work in real life (otherwise we can all stop going to StackOverflow now).

asimpletune 3y ago
I think that if you want to be a spy the c.) mentality is basically a necessary requirement, just so long as you don't betray your team.

zht 3y ago

This turns us into low trust societies like China or India. Which a lot of the blind demographic are from

tokai 3y ago
The US is a low trust society?
- itsyaboi 3y ago
  It is trending that way.
- leoqa 3y ago
  It’s not. We have functioning institutions that generally perform well over long periods of time. People respect the rule of law and there is an expectation of justice. Spend time in Honduras or Brazil to see what low trust looks like.
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    >We have functioning institutions that generally perform well over long periods of time So, how long are we waiting...?
  - boondoggle16 3y ago
    > People respect the rule of law and there is an expectation of justice. I'll preface this comment by saying, I recognize that the injustices in Honduras and Brazil are not at all like what we see in the U.S. But my comment is about the perception of justice in the U.S. by common citizens (in my opinion). This is a very privileged take. Vast numbers of people in the United States of America do not believe this to be true. The sides don't matter. Leftists believe that black people can be executed at will. Rightists believe that white people can be imprisoned for life, for doing their job (police) or defending themselves. I'm honestly surprised to hear this take. Up to this point, you may be disagreeing with me, thinking I'm crazy, or whatever. But consider the three letter agencies. CIA, FBI, ATF, doesn't matter how you spell them. They have supranational powers which are not balanced by any civilian or even political oversight whatsoever. People are allowed to inject drugs in the streets (where it's illegal), menace, defecate in the streets, expose themselves, rob, steal, and nothing at all really happens. Americans haven't woken up yet, but the rule of law is already dead.

setgree 3y ago

A resposne comment says: > In business there is no cheating, there is only making money and not making money. This attitude is very common among people I know. You ask "how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that." We muddle through, is the answer.

JohnFen 3y ago
> > In business there is no cheating, there is only making money and not making money. This is the attitude that turns business from being something that is for the greater benefit of all into something that more like a cancer, harmful to all.
- scarface74 3y ago
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  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Business has always been about the greater benefit. Not solely (or primarily, from the business owner's perspective) about that, of course, but that aspect is the entire reason why government puts so much time, effort, and money into supporting business activities. If business is not at least in part about the greater benefit, then we need to stop wasting so many resources supporting it.
    - scarface74 3y ago
      So when was this? When European businesses were exploiting the “new world”? When plantation owners were employing slaves? When robber barons were exploiting people and polluting the environment? The “greed is good” 80s? VCs throwing money at startups that they know will never be profitable waiting for the “greater fool”?
      - boondoggle16 3y ago
        Before globalization, even before the industrial revolution. The agriculture revolution has been a disaster for the human race. Or at least the individuals within it.

tokai 3y ago

Sure if they worked with something important like plumbing, teaching, etc.. But anyone drawing money out of Amazon while (presumably) lowering productivity is doing work that is objectively leaving the world better off.

scarface74 3y ago

If people can do there job well enough to get promoted, that does tell you that the interview process is broken and not indicative of how well someone can perform on the job.

passion__desire 3y ago
Also, our current society don't respect slow but deliberate thinkers like June Huh and expect them to perform better at a sprint (interview) rather than marathon (job environment). https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh-high-school-dropout-wins-the-fields-medal-20220705/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh-high-school-dropout-... On any given day, Huh does about three hours of focused work.
wanttocomment 3y ago
No. In every testing or selection system there will be people who could have made it, but didn't make the cut. Either we can accept some amount of arbitrariness, and that there are plenty of opportunities (try again next year?), or everyone who didn't make it can decide to cheat (they're probably good enough right?) Which of these responses makes sense to you?

ada1981 3y ago

In many respects the world functions as it does because not everyone thinks and acts like that. Anytime there is significant power / resource asymmetry for any period of time, it seems it will eventually be captured by sociopaths / psychopaths.

dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
>it seems it will eventually be captured by sociopaths / psychopaths. This Is unfortunately generally true. It generally happens because well intentioned functioning people, allow the sociopaths to take over (because it's unpleasant to confront them) , even in tiny groups. I think this can be stalled by an ever vigilant group. People who are willing to take on the job of constant vigilance in addition to their regular tasks are few and far be in between. Consequently such groups are very few and probably are never even public, hence we never hear of them.

ryandrake 3y ago

I read these comments not as a defense of cheating, but as resignation that "This is just how the world is." Your view is right at home in a Star Trek The Next Generation world where everyone's needs are met and people act ethically, with good intentions and are in return treated fairly. A civilized, meritocratic world that doesn't exist. Like it or not, we live in a zero-sum dog-eat-dog world that pits neighbors against each other for the scraps left over after an elite few take 95% of the world's value. For every fraction of a percent you can grab, that's a fraction of a percent that some ethical moron can't grab. If you try to follow the Star Trek rules in this world, you're not going to get very far. Look at this "personality type" as you call it: People who bullshit their way through life, self-promote, swindle, grift, fake it til they make it, hustle, exploit people's good intentions, take credit for the work of others, and so on... They aren't weirdo sociopaths who simply go get an MBA. They're CEOs, SVPs, business and political leaders, the ultrarich. They're Presidents and Senators. They are the elite, the few who our society is set up to most highly reward. Of course people who want to get ahead are going to emulate this behavior. It's practical. It works in the world that we have set up. I'd love to live in the Star Trek world. I'm one of those naive suckers who thinks hard work in the trenches should be rewarded. At work I often sit there doing the dirty gritty work that needs to get done, while peers write bullshit presentations and get face-time with the execs, and schmooze their way to promotion after promotion, and it sucks. If I was younger and had a lot more ahead of me, I'd probably cheat and grift like the rest of em, and if I could send a message back decades to 20-year-old me it would probably be "lose the ethical spine and take whatever you can."

scaramanga 3y ago
The only thing stopping me doing that is the observation that these people don't seem to be very happy. Which makes sense, they have to live their life being that person. Play the politics to get the things you need, by all means. But if life is a jungle then you're better off with a machete and your own skills (which can never be taken away from you) than a heavy bag of looted gold and a head full of fantasies about why you rightly own it.
asimpletune 3y ago
Thanks for sharing this. All I want to respond with is to say though that I don't know if the "personality type" that we mentioned is really all that better off. I'm skeptical at least. I think it's more than likely that they've spent their whole lives trying to accumulate power without ever having cultivated the sense of how to use it. Sort of how in so many places all around the world people of less means seem to be so happy. Obviously there are exceptions abound and I'm not trying to present a quantitative argument one way or another. Just that the people who live well aren't always the ones who are living "well", if you take my meaning. I obviously can't be the judge of them and say "all the people I know that are like _that_ are fundamentally unfulfilled", but I can say about myself that the times where I had acted in that way didn't make me any happier, if I were to be honest with myself.

scaramanga 3y ago

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jagtstronaut 3y ago

Maybe the commenters had a different take, but I the OP's post as, "The system is broken and this is proof." Not necessarily condoning cheating itself. I certainly agree though that cheating is a sad thing to build your life on, regardless of whether the system is broken or not. Obviously there are exceptions to this as things get more extreme, but a strong desire to work at amazon is not what I would call extreme lol.

alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
Yes, this is roughly my take. The cheating is bad and should not be condoned. That said, it looks like a serious indictment of the interview process if someone couldn't pass it without cheating and but then goes on to excel at the actual job. It means the interview filter process is selecting the wrong things and needs to be scrapped and replaced*. Of course, what to replace it with is a huge question on its own too. *In fairness an alternative explanation is that the promotion process is also broken and rewarding the wrong things.

spamizbad 3y ago

I would say the pro-cheating attitude is pretty widespread among young adults tracking into white collar careers, and computer science is no different. It usually starts in school - and these interview quizzes track this behavior pretty closely. Even without the cheating, you can pass an interview "honestly" by putting in the time to cram for it. That does not justify cheating in any way, though. The fact that people can just cheat in these interviews and not get PIP'd within 6 months, at an organization notorious for PIPing its under-performers, does illustrate how bad the screening process it. Not only do they need to shift back to in-person interviews, they also need to fix their process to actually test skills.

tristor 3y ago
> they also need to fix their process to actually test skills. If we're being honest, LC style interviews aren't even about testing skills, it's trying to proxy for testing raw intelligence (or at least the ability to remember and regurgitate lots of facts). If companies could just IQ test people and hire by IQ, there'd be a lot less weirdness in interviews, but that's illegal (and probably rightly so).
- voakbasda 3y ago
  If a LC interview effectively serves as a proxy for an IQ test, then I think the courts might treat it the same as a literal IQ test. I wonder if we will see lawsuits testing this hypothesis.
  - throw9away6 3y ago
    Good luck suing them
  - everforward 3y ago
    The precedent for the illegality of IQ tests for employment is Griggs v Duke Power Co. [1] if I'm not mistaken. The court ruled: > The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination, but also practices that are > fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business > necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot > be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited. (apologies for the dated and offensive language, starring it out seemed like it would imply a different and more offensive term so I left it as is) My reading of it is that IQ tests aren't broadly illegal, but the employer would have to demonstrate that it's somehow related to job performance. E.g. one employer refused to hire people with too high of an IQ, and the courts ruled that was a reasonable (if unwise) justification [2]. I'm doubtful any case challenging LeetCode tests on the same grounds would succeed. I think it would be exceptionally difficult to convince a court that solving coding problems is unrelated to a programmer's job performance. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. 2: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

byyyy 3y ago

>As a passing thought I've noticed that there's also sort of like a fierce loyalty to defending LLM's in the forums, often by people who display a certain amount of ignorance as to how they work. I wonder if there's a similar dynamic there as to the people who are justifying the cheaters in the comments? No it's the other way around. Hinton, basically the father of "AI" and other real experts who are involved in the creation of LLMs are massively divided about the future. Hinton even says the AI actually understands you. The fact that there's division among the real experts (ie not you or me) shows theirs legitimacy in the defense. There's a fierce artificial downplaying of AI when it comes to programming. A lot of people say that it's not remotely close to replacing programmers. I think this is the delusional group. It's not replacing us yet, but it's obviously close and the trendline is unmistakable. I think it occurs because a lot of people's identity rests on their actual ability to program. They think they're superior programmers and the fact that a machine is on track to trivialize the skills they take so much pride in causes them to dismiss the technology in the face of actual experts who fear and question it. There's bias on both extremes and one Hallmark of bias is when one fails to address the division and actual controversy. You have failed to address the controversy instead you categorize people who "defend" AI as people who don't "understand" it and you imply it's some psychological quirk or bias people have. I agree somewhat, but clearly not all who "defend" AI are like this as their are preeminent experts who are on the "defence" side. Instead I think your behavior is an exhibition of other common psychological defensive quirks and biases. I think you don't realize how it's a dog eat dog world out there and people will do anything to succeed. Maybe your born with talent, so you worship and defend that talent with calls to uphold "integrity." Others, however, will do anything in their power to stay afloat in the face of your "talent." It's more about survival for humans then it is about integrity. Do people really want to live a shitty life getting sub 100k salaries only letting people like you take up all the high paying jobs in the name of "integrity"? No. No one does... not even you, but you have the luxury of talent or ability to master those interviews... that is the only differentiator. I bet if you couldn't pass those interviews you would be in the same boat. You defend integrity not because you are a stand up person, but because you have the ability to succeed without violating your integrity. That's all. One thing to note about people is often their truth strangely aligns with their circumstance in life. Why? Most people do not seek actual truth. Instead they construct the truth as a scaffold to support themselves and the weight of their sins. You are no different. I'm pretty sure you are quite good at the technical interview and That strange alignment with your philosophy on interview integrity is Not a coincidence. Personally I'm unique in this regard. I'm good at interviewing but in my quest in seeking the objective truth of the world... I have, to my own detriment, constructed a life where my truth is not in alignment with what I am in actuality.

casey2 3y ago

You don't actually offer any argument other than saying it's bad cause it's bad. If everyone who cheated and passed performed so well that they got promotions then the world would be a much better place than reality where most cheaters fail hilariously. If you can't even be bothered to give employees a real interview you don't care about the company and at that point the company is already bloated. What kind of person are you that when reading a story and seeing 100 wrong things you pick out the one thing that is arguable and die on that hill? An VLLM sycophant?

asimpletune 3y ago
Does VLLM stand for very LLM?

2devnull 3y ago

Sadly it seems tech hiring wants to optimize for cheating by putting a lot of importance on tests and credentials. Deemphasize these, and assess candidates more holistically, and cheating is no longer a factor. It’s easy to cheat on a test, or get a credential you don’t deserve, but these are amazingly treated as the solution rather than the cause of cheating.

wombatpm 3y ago
Credentials and test were seen as a way to remove interview bias from the process. So instead of cheaters you would end up with nothing but code bros
wanttocomment 3y ago
It's the opposite. Credentials and testing are a substitute for trust since people will lie about experience and competence.

tarsinge 3y ago

Yeah I don't believe trying to contain cheating and dishonesty to specific contexts can last, from my limited experience for people who do this it inevitably starts to leak to other aspects of their life. Shielding behind organized structures is an illusions (also the root of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_evil), in the end you are deceiving other human beings.

paulcole 3y ago

Like Canada Bill Jones said, "It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money." This is work we're talking about. If somebody will pay $250,000 because somebody else can answer a trivia question, people will figure out how to answer that trivia question correctly. I don't have any problem with it. If your business is getting suckered by people with some 2-laptop scheme, it's on you to fix it. Or if the 2-laptop people end up being good enough at the job, who cares?

sodapopcan 3y ago

I'm against cheating and have never done it and probably never will, but I have an equal amount of disgust for leetcode in an interview process.

artyom 3y ago

Yeah I'm more surprised about the comments than the actual story. Specially with people thinking that the interview process is broken, but somehow the promotion process is pristine and unhackable.

bumby 3y ago

>Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA One nuance that may help explain how the change happened is how the status of CS has changed in the last 20 years. Maybe its just my age bias, but there seems to be a perceptible change of how CS majors are viewed by society and that changes the type of people attracted to that curriculum. It used to be that CS and engineering majors were the nerds who, as you say, "simply thought making stuff was cool." Nowadays, though, as CS commands a disproportionately large salary, it has higher status. This tends to attract more people who are in it the reasons of status and money, rather than for a fascination with the work. Anecdotally, when I ask people why they got into CS a surprising number now say something along the lines of "because it pays well." It's my opinion that change in perspective can bias how one views cheating. If the curriculum is just a means to an end (i.e., if school is just a means to a degree, which is just a gateway to a job/paycheck), it seems to make cheating more palatable.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Anecdotally, when I ask people why they got into CS a surprising number now say something along the lines of "because it pays well." Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's utterly depressing.
asimpletune 3y ago
I don't know the history of the bar exam, but I could imagine something like that one day being instituted to protect our repetitional interest. Even though we're both talking about SWE, whereas CS is a different thing altogether.
- bumby 3y ago
  NCEES has tried to create a Professional Engineer license related to CS. It died out from a lack of interest.
randcraw 3y ago
I think computing in the 1980s was a very different enterprise than it is today. Back then it was about exploring a new world whose horizons were expanding fast, as processor speed and O/S capability grew seemingly without bound. IMHO it was the transition of the cutting edge away from technical to social after the web arose that changed the tenor of computing. Devices became secondary to connected apps, and the focus among the players shifted from love of innovative hacks to fascination for megabuck payouts, meanwhile 'coolness' described _using_ computers rather than making them dance.

ihateyouall123 3y ago

This is why I left the tech industry. Nothing but losers with no skills getting hired. No sympathy for anyone fired

P_I_Staker 3y ago
No sympathy for someone losing their livelihood, because they're "too weak"? That's pretty dark.

kamaal 3y ago

>>promotion process is distinct from the interview process Promotions often have nothing to do with merit. It takes a lot of political manoeuvring, back room dealing, negotiations, packet building, documentation, positions trading, making allies to building support/consensus etc etc. People who cheat are exactly the kind of people who are likely to win big in these processes.

giantg2 3y ago

"were true, dyed in the wool nerds who simply thought making stuff was cool." Now we're in 2023 - where making money is cool and building things is just a necessary evil to achieve that.

austin-cheney 3y ago

It sounds like you find cheating shameful for vague moralistic reasons that you have not disclosed. Software is full of cheating. I am really convinced that maybe 85% (that's actually being generous) of developers have no idea what they are doing. They know enough to complete some tiny agile tasks and push a few lines into a pull request. These people are either suffering from imposter syndrome, deliberately cheating, or just don't care. All the real decisions are made by that last 15%. That's why almost nobody can write software anymore without a plethora of open source software delivering most of their product for them. In my mind if you aren't part of that last 15% you are cheating whether or not its deliberate. Everybody wants to get paid. If you want to reduce the amount of cheating in software then the industry must be willing to impose minimal standards of acceptable practice. The industry is not willing to do so. There are a couple of reasons why such prolific cheating is allowed (and even encouraged): * Developers are not taught to plan. I take this for granted being a military guy, but seriously I have seen many children with a greater planning ability than many developers tasked with a new product effort. Its like the abstractness of software completely destroys any capability to put simple steps in order. This is why many businesses will offload this to business analysts and project managers. * Developers are not taught to write. Although many of these people have bachelor's degrees so many cannot put their thoughts into even a simple bullet list. * There are no ethics in software. The closest thing for most developers might be something like an NDA at initial on boarding. Otherwise, ethics is entirely off loaded to a legal team who mandate areas of compliance. * The goals of hiring/employment often do not align to the skills required to perform product delivery. This indicates employers have completely lost faith in candidate preparation and/or candidate availability and are just willing to take what they can get. Typically that means dumbing things down to widen the pool of availability. * Many developers are grossly entitled. The most important word for most developers: easiness. Comparatively nothing else matters, and they will fight you to death on this. Edit: two grammar corrections.

asimpletune 3y ago
I think you're being unfairly downvoted here, and you bring up a lot of good points. > It sounds like you find cheating shameful for vague moralistic reasons that you have not disclosed. That's absolutely right. I didn't elaborate at all. > That's why almost nobody can writing software anymore Honestly though I think that writing software is just hard. > must be willing to impose minimal standards of acceptable practice Yeah this is an interesting idea. Like how attorneys have to pass a bar. I don't really know how it would go, but I do believe that the industry already has a hard enough of a time hiring and this would just make things that much harder. Some organizations though seem to have a knack for improving their new hires by a lot, so it's not like all these organizations are evil, just most are probably incompetent. Again, software is hard. > The goals of hiring/employment often do not align to the skills required to perform product delivery. Yeah, I would say in general that bad incentives are abound. I think a lot of the points you brought up are products of strange market dynamics. For so long companies haven't really felt the weight of gravity and have had so much investor money that it feels like a lot of what one could consider fundamentals have been tossed out the window in favor of other things. This is where perverse incentives start to manifest in my view.

stronglikedan 3y ago

> that it isn't inherent to the discipline of technology itself anymore Sorry to say, but it never was. Anti-cheaters have always been the extreme minority in every profession since the dawn of man.

mrguyorama 3y ago
OP out here trying to say Pets.com wasn't cheating.

ksaun 3y ago

> "there will probably be incredible opportunity down the road to combat this," I am curious to hear more about what you mean by this. I crave living in a high trust society. I've attempted to act as though I do (though not with complete success), but reality often rebuffs me. I am discouraged by the high (and seemingly increasing) "capacity to benefit from dishonesty," especially as I feel powerless to meaningfully affect this trend/condition. It sounds like you see ways in which society can shift to be higher trust. Can you elaborate?

mistrial9 3y ago

at a "top five" USA public University a couple of decades ago, it was indeed shocking to see calculated, methodical cheating on exams and study material.. for example a group would keep the significant test material from previous years with corrections, or coordinate homework assignments between a group and distribute the work load.. one person does one homework and gets five other homeworks for 'filter' classes handed to them.. I could easily say "ethnic Chinese" and be accurate, but what about the mid-IQ Frat guys from the "fly-over" states? all pale skins.. So I thought about it at the time and it seemed like sports teams, fraternities, strong social ties with a lot at stake.. those groups, not ethnicity, were a common theme. In my own wanderings, since travelling internationally and gaining some maturity, I believe that calling out an ethnicity is indeed racist in a mild way. I agree with both "lots of students from India cheated" and "I am concerned about ethnic stereotype" .. both have some basis in reality.. We as animals are wired to see "us" and "other" .. so.. you have to choose to apply some sense and mercy, or not.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

> I for one think this kind of stuff is pretty shameful, and I don't see how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that. It functions because the premise, that interviews actually work as filters to choose the best candidates, is false. It also works because finding the answers for a question is a skill, likely more valuable at work than memorizing a dozen of algorithm implementations. The current interview culture is a joke.

guenthert 3y ago

> c.) that the cheaters clearly are skilled after all because of all their success, as evidenced by being promoted, so it's ok. Quite possibly that some commentators think that way, but I doubt that cheaters suddenly stop cheating after the interview, particularly not if it worked out so well for them. I rather think they'll continue their path of alternative facts; blaming others for failures, mis-attributing successes, mis-charecterizing their contributions, lying, gas-lighting, bullying and even squeezing their colleagues out of their job. There might be work environments where this is a net positive for the organization, but I can't think of one right now.

tpoacher 3y ago

I dont think anyone's claiming this isn't shameful; they're just saying it works. And when real people are faced with a broken system which penalises honesty and rewards cheating, many will choose pragmatically rather than idealistically.

chinchilla2020 3y ago

It's the world we live in. * Candidates now lie about experience. * promotions are given for loyalty, not contribution. * Companies cheat on hiring using false job descriptions and fake career carrots. * Your performance at work does not matter. Advance your career by interview prep, not excelling at your role. * Prestige (ex-FAANG, Ivy league degree) matter more than hard work. I've noticed that tech companies are now filled with people who have zero interest in computer software. Management at tech companies is comprised of non-technical people.

P_I_Staker 3y ago
> Management at tech companies is comprised of non-technical people. Sometimes there's good reasons for this

otikik 3y ago

Be careful, you are starting to sound like an old person. https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/ https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...

dennis_jeeves1 3y ago

I'll add d) Cheating is okay because most interview processes is BS to start with. In most cases the interview itself is a dog and pony show, often reflecting the outright incompetence of the interviewers or organizations that are hiring. > I guess the silver lining is there will probably be incredible opportunity down the road to combat this, You are being naive here. Many people value honesty in principle, but are not willing to enforce it in practice. For example if they catch a close, likable colleague or friend in the act of cheating, they will not fire them.

inconceivable 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals#List_of_biggest_accounting_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals#List_of_bi... check out the flags at the top of the list.

hedora 3y ago

As companies grow, they have to have a promotion process. I've never encountered a company where that promotion process accurately assessed contribution to the business or technical competence. At best, the two are weakly correlated. So, what happens when a company succeeds is that the competent people eventually either get tenured, or they get forced out by bozos (I'm using this as a term of art. Look up the bozo effect.) Eventually, the bozos win, and the company becomes unable to do anything other than extract monopoly rent. Then, some technology or regulatory shift arrives, and the incumbent gets forced out by a startup, or they somehow shed their bozos for a while. So, if you are competent and honest, you have three choices: - Learn how to be productive despite the promotion criteria. This is the path to tears and burn out, because most of your colleagues will only be good at gaming interviews / promotions, and your attention will be split between that and doing your job (and probably their jobs), placing you at a significant disadvantage. - Somehow become the tenured engineer on top of this mess, and try to create pockets of competence in the organization. Ruthlessly detect + fire the bozos. This isn't fun either. - Leave for a startup that's targeting a weak and foolish incumbent, and then leave when the startup grows up and becomes the weak and foolish incumbent (a good sign that this is happening is that the founding engineering team is leaving, or that your boss's boss is incompetent.) Note that the last option is the lowest stress one for technically strong engineers. It is very hard to fake your way through knowing what you are doing when the entire company has direct visibility into your work. If you can somehow solve the above problem then you can build a company larger than any of the FAANGs.

strangattractor 3y ago

Makes you wonder just what type of people end up in manager roles:)

georgeecollins 3y ago

>> Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA It seems like you are implying that a person who gets an MBA is the type of person who would cheat on a test. This fits with a ubiquitous contempt for MBAs and also project managers that comes up a lot on this site. There is a lot of room for criticism of business schools and middle managers in tech. But if you really think of people like that as more likely to be dishonest you are being irrational.

boondoggle16 3y ago
Respectfully, I disagree. At it's core, business school is the study of making money. How to make power and social status numbers go up. The business domain is interesting, and intellectually deep and rewarding, but without the money, all interest goes away. The money is the point. With tech, there are complicated technical mechanisms. They still exist to make money, but, there are many layers of translation in between. And it seems easier for humans to be interested in computers in a more pure way, because of these layers between. Kinda like how a gift card "feels" more personal than cash even though it's a strictly worse gift. So I think business school attracts many more "ends justifies the means" types of people because of these inherent properties.
- georgeecollins 3y ago
  That's a good argument, honestly. Where I would disagree with at its core an MBA studies how to manage and administer an organization. It's in the name. That's also how schools see themselves, right or wrong. In the US we associate business and management with money, so maybe you are right. I tend to think people are people and you get "ends justify the means" types in managers, entrepreneurs and even engineers.

mock-possum 3y ago

every liar justifies it to themselves somehow. committing to dealing honestly with other people is a very serious undertaking, it's a struggle against nurture and nature that lasts a lifetime. some people don't see the value of it - some people see the value, but don't think it's worth the risk.

Raptor22 3y ago

Look, I agree with your fundamental sentiment. But I think you're being incredibly naive too. > I don't see how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that My brother in Christ, the world barely functions as it is right now. We have a war going on because of one man's misguided attempt at recapturing his country's former glory as an empire, we've had planes fall out of the sky because of boneheaded engineering decisions demanded by MBA types (737 Max), we had a massive train derailment / chemical spill in Ohio caused by other MBA types not wanting to properly maintain the trains and tracks, we are maybe a few weeks away from the most economically powerful country on Earth defaulting because our moronic leadership can't agree to pay our debts (NOT because of an inherent inability to pay)... I could go on. The world is chaos, and it's pretty much always been that way. > there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA, but Computer Science and Engineering were considered too hard to really be worth the effort. This part of your reply really, really grinds my gears, because to me it's sort of saying that MBA's can cheat all they want, but CS and Engineering grads should be 'chaste' and not cheat... because reasons. NO. The MBA's took over the technical companies and fucked everything up, but we're just supposed to keep doing the 'right' thing? NO. Fuck them, we should get ours. Is it sad that this is the current state of affairs? Absolutely. Would the world be an immensely better place if NO ONE was unethical, and no one cheated? Hell yes. But that world doesn't exist. And the people who have the power to bring such a world into existence are not entry level engineers.

corinroyal 3y ago
> The MBA's took over the technical companies and fucked everything up, but we're just supposed to keep doing the 'right' thing? NO. Fuck them, we should get ours. Yes. That's what Christ teaches. We live in an unjust world and we make it better by holding our moral ground despite the enormous pressures to sell out.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

I'll even go a step further. In some cases cheaters are doing better, because that kind of behavior is what's expected of them in "the real world", just don't get caught. People with integrity get run over.