11 ms·

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 usual

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...
  - rdtsc 3y ago
    If they can proven to be so. What employees do is then build a proxy for IQ tests that has some job related stuff. Math or logic puzzles could be used if they relate to CS topics. It's not just "find the next element in the pattern" but "find the next sorted item in a list" and so on. They could argue that "Well the employee could in principle be inverting binary trees all day at their job..." I bet many involved in designing and setting the requirements know exactly how it works but they'd use veiled language and never put anything down in written communication.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  - stale2002 3y ago
    IQ scores are highly correlated with actual success, undeniably so. Maybe IQ doesn't exactly track "intelligence", or whatever that is, but it is certainly tracking something that is correlated to success.
    - spamizbad 3y ago
      Sure, but is that causal? For example, maybe there's some other factor (like SES) that's driving both. And switching to IQ tests doesn't really solve the problem, as your avenues for cheating on that are identical to LC. You could probably screen candidates based on the question "Did any of your parents go to college? And if so, did they study or work in a STEM field?" and be roughly as predictable. (This is terrible and you shouldn't do this)
      - throw9away6 3y ago
        Yeah but hiring companies don’t care. Same as these interviews that they do have some correlation to success maybe no better than iq
      - peterfirefly 3y ago
        We know for a fact that it is IQ that is driving SES and not the other way around.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        What evidence do you have for this claim? You are suggesting SES is a meritocracy around IQ.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  …and I fully support cheating on IQ and LC tests. If you successfully cheat, that means the interviewing company failed the test.

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...
- rdtsc 3y ago
  If they can proven to be so. What employees do is then build a proxy for IQ tests that has some job related stuff. Math or logic puzzles could be used if they relate to CS topics. It's not just "find the next element in the pattern" but "find the next sorted item in a list" and so on. They could argue that "Well the employee could in principle be inverting binary trees all day at their job..." I bet many involved in designing and setting the requirements know exactly how it works but they'd use veiled language and never put anything down in written communication.
passion__desire 3y ago
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- stale2002 3y ago
  IQ scores are highly correlated with actual success, undeniably so. Maybe IQ doesn't exactly track "intelligence", or whatever that is, but it is certainly tracking something that is correlated to success.
  - spamizbad 3y ago
    Sure, but is that causal? For example, maybe there's some other factor (like SES) that's driving both. And switching to IQ tests doesn't really solve the problem, as your avenues for cheating on that are identical to LC. You could probably screen candidates based on the question "Did any of your parents go to college? And if so, did they study or work in a STEM field?" and be roughly as predictable. (This is terrible and you shouldn't do this)
    - throw9away6 3y ago
      Yeah but hiring companies don’t care. Same as these interviews that they do have some correlation to success maybe no better than iq
    - peterfirefly 3y ago
      We know for a fact that it is IQ that is driving SES and not the other way around.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        What evidence do you have for this claim? You are suggesting SES is a meritocracy around IQ.
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
…and I fully support cheating on IQ and LC tests. If you successfully cheat, that means the interviewing company failed the test.