4 ms·

"Simultaneously, I quickly Googled ‘how to use bitwise operators in C’ and found this wonderful code snippet on StackOverflow that made the problem easy to solv

"Simultaneously, I quickly Googled ‘how to use bitwise operators in C’ and found this wonderful code snippet on StackOverflow that made the problem easy to solve. I wrote a solution with time to spare, and the interviewer seemed content with my answer." Wow. NB to all interviewers: this guy's a cheat.

hack_edu 14y ago
NB to all interviewers: this girl has knows how to solve problems efficiently, effectively, and in a manner appropriate to their role. I would not be pleased if my employee always tried to re-write what has been solved and perfected decades prior by someone smarter than her.
- mquander 14y ago
  Absolutely. That's why I paid my smart classmates to do all my take-home tests in school; it's an efficient, effective way to get the right answers! I don't know if you interview people, but I do, and it's hard. I try hard to come up with questions that probe people's knowledge in specific ways and help discriminate between large ranges of ability. It's fucked up to try to ruin the information I'm getting by cheating without telling me. If you hold the principled position that looking everything up during an interview is a reasonable way to demonstrate your competence, then you should come out and tell me that's what you're doing, so that I can make a decision which isn't based on lies of omission.
  - hack_edu 14y ago
    Yeah, but I fired the last guy who billed me for that time he needed to re-discover the quadratic equation. An interview should evaluate the skills one needs for the job, not puzzles that make you feel smart. Were I interviewing someone, I would happily accept an answer something along the lines of "that's been solved already, I would use an existing library so I can move on and solve my real problem" with regard to bitwise operators.
    - endtime 14y ago
      The goal is obviously to figure out how good people will be at solving real problems. But it's not realistic, practical, or fair to come up with an unsolved problem for each interview.
  - dfc 14y ago
    Looking up everything during an interview is a principled position? What principle are you standing up for? The right to google?
    - mquander 14y ago
      I'm replying to the parent, who seems to think it's principled in the sense that it is the best way to operate in the real world, therefore he will do it in an interview.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 14y ago
Looking up bit manipulation on Google isn't cheating. Sorry.
- mquander 14y ago
  It's absolutely cheating if you don't tell the interviewer. If a candidate doesn't know X, then just tell me, and I'll explain X! That's quicker than Googling and they'll get a better answer. But the whole point is to figure out which Xs they know, for many values of X.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    If you're asking a question that is effectively, correctly, and decisively addressed by a single Google query made in real time during the interview, the fault is with the question, not with the candidate.
    - mquander 14y ago
      I basically agree (although it sounds like in this case, the candidate only Googled for help on some part of the question, so who knows.) But the fault is still with the candidate. It's unethical to get external help in an interview without telling the interviewer what you're doing, full stop, end of story. It doesn't matter if you don't think much of the question. Doing so screws up the interviewer's ability to actually compare you meaningfully to their other candidates.
      - TheCapn 14y ago
        Further, a technical interview question is rarely designed to have you solve that question but show that you have an understanding of the subset of knowledge to solve that kind of question. If they want you to solve bit manipulation questions they could come up with something terribly obscure and difficult to explain or they could give you one that can be solved by anyone with the basic knowledge of bitwise operators a bit of problem solving. Having to Google this answer either shows failure on your behalf or the inability to actually sit down and address the problem critically before running off to find help from others (who will often be unable to help you on actual problems)
shaufler 14y ago
I would have to disagree that what I did was "cheating". Software engineers are given problems to solve, and their job is to solve these problems efficiently. You don't always have the solution to every problem off of the top of your head. That's why programmers use Google, StackOverflow, and documentation as resources. The primary skill employers are looking for is learning how to learn new things quickly. And I believe I demonstrated that skill in my interview. Also, I declined to mention this in the article, but after I finished that UTF encoding problem in my interview, the interviewer asked where I got the check-bit macro (he saw me paste it in). I told him I got it from StackOverflow. It didn't seem to concern him.
- eta_carinae 14y ago
  It is cheating. Interviewing is different from a real job. You need to show you can do more than look up solutions on the web. I can't blame you for trying to cheat your way into a job and I certainly blame the interviewer for not seeing through your cheat, but make no mistake: you cheated.
  - antoko 14y ago
    Wow! Did you even read the comment above? The interviewer asked for the source and the candidate responded with stackoverflow. in this instance that is absolutely not cheating.
    - esrauch 14y ago
      It is generally considered cheating by Google phone interview standards, the interviewer probably was satisfied by the other answers, plus the fact that the interviewee immediately and casually owned up to it probably indicated that it hadn't been made clear that it was disallowed.
- mquander 14y ago
  Hello, I am an employer, please don't tell me what skill I am looking for in an interview. If I wanted to know how good you are at learning new things quickly, I would ask questions like "what's on your list of cool things to pick up in the next year or two?" or "what's something interesting you found out working on project X?" or "what do you think about new thing Y, where Y is related to thing Z you know about?" (And I do.) If I asked you a question about manipulating Unicode, I am so obviously not looking to find out how quickly you learn things, and you know perfectly well I'm not. I'm finding out what you know about character encoding and string manipulation! (Regarding your addendum, if you're actually honest about it in the interview I don't really take any issue with it. But I hope you would be honest about it before an interviewer has to ask you whether you cheated.)

hack_edu 14y ago

NB to all interviewers: this girl has knows how to solve problems efficiently, effectively, and in a manner appropriate to their role. I would not be pleased if my employee always tried to re-write what has been solved and perfected decades prior by someone smarter than her.

mquander 14y ago
Absolutely. That's why I paid my smart classmates to do all my take-home tests in school; it's an efficient, effective way to get the right answers! I don't know if you interview people, but I do, and it's hard. I try hard to come up with questions that probe people's knowledge in specific ways and help discriminate between large ranges of ability. It's fucked up to try to ruin the information I'm getting by cheating without telling me. If you hold the principled position that looking everything up during an interview is a reasonable way to demonstrate your competence, then you should come out and tell me that's what you're doing, so that I can make a decision which isn't based on lies of omission.
- hack_edu 14y ago
  Yeah, but I fired the last guy who billed me for that time he needed to re-discover the quadratic equation. An interview should evaluate the skills one needs for the job, not puzzles that make you feel smart. Were I interviewing someone, I would happily accept an answer something along the lines of "that's been solved already, I would use an existing library so I can move on and solve my real problem" with regard to bitwise operators.
  - endtime 14y ago
    The goal is obviously to figure out how good people will be at solving real problems. But it's not realistic, practical, or fair to come up with an unsolved problem for each interview.
- dfc 14y ago
  Looking up everything during an interview is a principled position? What principle are you standing up for? The right to google?
  - mquander 14y ago
    I'm replying to the parent, who seems to think it's principled in the sense that it is the best way to operate in the real world, therefore he will do it in an interview.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 14y ago

Looking up bit manipulation on Google isn't cheating. Sorry.

mquander 14y ago
It's absolutely cheating if you don't tell the interviewer. If a candidate doesn't know X, then just tell me, and I'll explain X! That's quicker than Googling and they'll get a better answer. But the whole point is to figure out which Xs they know, for many values of X.
- tptacek 14y ago
  If you're asking a question that is effectively, correctly, and decisively addressed by a single Google query made in real time during the interview, the fault is with the question, not with the candidate.
  - mquander 14y ago
    I basically agree (although it sounds like in this case, the candidate only Googled for help on some part of the question, so who knows.) But the fault is still with the candidate. It's unethical to get external help in an interview without telling the interviewer what you're doing, full stop, end of story. It doesn't matter if you don't think much of the question. Doing so screws up the interviewer's ability to actually compare you meaningfully to their other candidates.
    - TheCapn 14y ago
      Further, a technical interview question is rarely designed to have you solve that question but show that you have an understanding of the subset of knowledge to solve that kind of question. If they want you to solve bit manipulation questions they could come up with something terribly obscure and difficult to explain or they could give you one that can be solved by anyone with the basic knowledge of bitwise operators a bit of problem solving. Having to Google this answer either shows failure on your behalf or the inability to actually sit down and address the problem critically before running off to find help from others (who will often be unable to help you on actual problems)

shaufler 14y ago

I would have to disagree that what I did was "cheating". Software engineers are given problems to solve, and their job is to solve these problems efficiently. You don't always have the solution to every problem off of the top of your head. That's why programmers use Google, StackOverflow, and documentation as resources. The primary skill employers are looking for is learning how to learn new things quickly. And I believe I demonstrated that skill in my interview. Also, I declined to mention this in the article, but after I finished that UTF encoding problem in my interview, the interviewer asked where I got the check-bit macro (he saw me paste it in). I told him I got it from StackOverflow. It didn't seem to concern him.

eta_carinae 14y ago
It is cheating. Interviewing is different from a real job. You need to show you can do more than look up solutions on the web. I can't blame you for trying to cheat your way into a job and I certainly blame the interviewer for not seeing through your cheat, but make no mistake: you cheated.
- antoko 14y ago
  Wow! Did you even read the comment above? The interviewer asked for the source and the candidate responded with stackoverflow. in this instance that is absolutely not cheating.
  - esrauch 14y ago
    It is generally considered cheating by Google phone interview standards, the interviewer probably was satisfied by the other answers, plus the fact that the interviewee immediately and casually owned up to it probably indicated that it hadn't been made clear that it was disallowed.
mquander 14y ago
Hello, I am an employer, please don't tell me what skill I am looking for in an interview. If I wanted to know how good you are at learning new things quickly, I would ask questions like "what's on your list of cool things to pick up in the next year or two?" or "what's something interesting you found out working on project X?" or "what do you think about new thing Y, where Y is related to thing Z you know about?" (And I do.) If I asked you a question about manipulating Unicode, I am so obviously not looking to find out how quickly you learn things, and you know perfectly well I'm not. I'm finding out what you know about character encoding and string manipulation! (Regarding your addendum, if you're actually honest about it in the interview I don't really take any issue with it. But I hope you would be honest about it before an interviewer has to ask you whether you cheated.)