[HN Gopher] My friends who cheated in interviews are getting pro...
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My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)
Author : luu
Score : 329 points
Date : 2023-05-10 09:26 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.teamblind.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.teamblind.com)
| euix wrote:
| I remember failing a Facebook SWE interview a couple years back
| after a few months of studying "Cracking the Code" and some other
| textbooks - I blanked out on a rather basic question in
| retrospect ("reverse a linked list in place). It never really
| occurred to me to cheat, at the time I just figured Facebook had
| a high precision and low acceptance method of hiring - I could
| probably do the job pretty well but I didn't show high enough
| "precision" in the interview so -\\_(tsu)_/-.
|
| I can tell an anecdote - when I took my qualifying exams in
| graduate school, every year there would be a different exam
| committee drawn from the faculty staff and their job was to come
| up with new questions. When I studied I looked at past exams
| going back 20 years and there was only a single question that was
| somewhat similar to a prior one - so cheating was quite
| impossible in the situation. People also underestimate the time
| and effort it takes to setup and design testing that is difficult
| to cheat. It's effort on the part of the testers and very hard to
| scale.
|
| I used to design and interview for DS positions at my old job and
| I only had a question bank of 2-3 long form problems, in a case
| study style that I would use on all the candidates. The
| interviews are exhausting and it's a lot work because I have to
| personally "escort" each candidate through the problem and assess
| them qualitatively.
| welder wrote:
| I'm curious do they get promoted from cheating or really doing
| the work. There are those people who get stuff done by getting
| others to help them do it. Not sure how the manager would find
| out though, without the peers who help telling.
|
| Nice to see UT Dallas represented here, even if it's in this
| context.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I noticed during the years that the people that cheat in the
| interviews are not afraid to lie on results or steal
| colleagues' work and pretend it is theirs. When enough managers
| are fine with that, it becomes an internal open secret on how
| promotions work. When you also have targets for promotions and
| you have to bend the rules (pretty bad) to meet these targets,
| the entire evaluation and promotion system becomes a joke.
| jzig wrote:
| And here I am refusing to do whiteboarding, stuck doing menial
| API plumbing because all of the SMBs think they should interview
| like FAANG without the respective compensation. Maybe I should
| start cheating.
| rhyme-boss wrote:
| The standard process at tech companies for interviewing and
| assessing candidates is completely ludicrous. I like writing
| software but I've given up on the industry because of attitudes
| around hiring and advancement within companies. It just sucks
| dick everywhere I've worked.
| sarkhan wrote:
| Let's not forget the "Fake it until you make it". It's driving
| force of any software related project.
| brudgers wrote:
| One person's cheating-in-an-interview is another person's giving-
| the-gatekeeper-the-answer-they-want.
|
| Your manager wants you to have a second laptop open when they ask
| you for information.
|
| The goal of interviews is to determine if the candidate has
| useful skills.
|
| Integrity is determined by a background check and the bar is
| typically low and subject to removal for-the-right-candidate.
|
| In the end, people fetishizing integrity to their own detriment
| are a risk to people further up the org-chart who approach the
| business more pragmatically.
|
| Business ethics are utilitarian not deontological and using a
| laptop to pass an interview is not contrary to a categorical
| imperative.
|
| It's just business. People at the top of the org chart want to
| work with people like them. People who treat passing the
| interview as the job at hand and are able to succeed.
| badpun wrote:
| These guys took the "fake it till you make it" startup hustler
| "ethos" to heart.
| nawgz wrote:
| Oh, you mean capitalist society cares more about results than
| morals, and often being able to bend and sacrifice morals
| actually makes you a better capitalist (pawn)? What an unexpected
| result.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I saw someone who was recently hired as a coworker get fired as
| soon as it was found out that he lied on his resume.
|
| For those who try to be honest, it's good to occasionally see
| justice in this world.
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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?
| tpoacher wrote:
| 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.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| 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.
| zht wrote:
| This turns us into low trust societies like China or India.
|
| Which a lot of the blind demographic are from
| tokai wrote:
| The US is a low trust society?
| leoqa wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >We have functioning institutions that generally perform
| well over long periods of time
|
| So, how long are we waiting...?
| boondoggle16 wrote:
| > 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.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| It is trending that way.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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."
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of that may be true, but the world is not zero-sum,
| definitely not zero-sum at all levels.
|
| If you go buy some wood and build a piece of furniture, you
| have created something of value that is more than what it was
| before, and the elite have nothing to say or benefit from it.
|
| And if buying is a bridge too far, you can go into the woods,
| cut down a tree, and drag it home and fashion it into
| something.
|
| Yes, entropy means everything will eventually slump into the
| heat-death of the universe, but here and now we can fight
| entropy and make our world, even if just the local world of
| where we live, a bit better.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| If I was younger, I would take the same path.
|
| Ethics mean an entirely thing when you are older and you have
| loved ones that need to be cared. A little dishonesty can
| mean the difference between opportunities for your children
| or sending your children to a community college.
| amadvance wrote:
| Kirk cheated in the Kobayashi Maru ;)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I never thought kirk was someone to look up to. Picard
| though....
| scaramanga wrote:
| 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.
| lytefm wrote:
| > I read these comments not as a defense of cheating, but as
| resignation that "This is just how the world is."
|
| I'm also sympathetic with the cheaters. Everyone knows that
| these leetcode interviews are pretty dumb. Most people
| probably pass by memorizing everything and forgetting the
| stuff right afterwards. It's testing willingness to grind
| rather than ad hoc problem solving capabilities. If someone
| is capable of doing the job and just figuring out a way to
| get through the gatekeeping, I don't care. I know many people
| that cheated on exams at some point but are pretty legit
| otherwise.
|
| > 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.
|
| There are a lot of psychological and societal mechanism that
| tend to punish this behavior. I'd rather be financially well
| enough off but honest rather than a super rich asshole.
|
| > 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.
|
| For myself, I decided that the best way is to be competent
| and do the hard work, but also to set boundaries, to ensure
| that my work is visible, to communicate ideas and feedback
| with execs and to fight against the fakers. You won't get
| anything if you don't ask for it. Taking down obvious fakes
| can take a while if the execs are too gullible, but it's
| worth doing.
|
| If your execs are idiot assholes rather than competent people
| with some integrity, you should probably look for a job
| elsewhere.
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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.
| ada1981 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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.
| spamizbad wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Good luck suing them
| rdtsc wrote:
| 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.
| everforward wrote:
| 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.
|
| 2: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-
| cops/st...
| passion__desire wrote:
| https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
| pseudoscientific-...
|
| IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle by Nassim Nicholas
| Taleb
| stale2002 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| We know for a fact that it is IQ that is driving SES and
| not the other way around.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What evidence do you have for this claim? You are
| suggesting SES is a meritocracy around IQ.
| _dain_ wrote:
| identical twins reared together vs apart, their IQs
| correlate more with their twin's than with the SES of the
| adoptive family.
|
| high quality studies have found that the additive
| heritability of IQ is somewhere around 0.8-0.9, that's
| just totally incompatible with parental SES as the
| primary upstream cause. it's simply not debatable. and it
| wasn't debatable ten or twenty or fifty years ago either;
| it is one of the most well-established facts in human
| quantitative genetics.
|
| ironically one of the things having a high IQ is bad for
| is having accurate beliefs about IQ; ask anyone who
| didn't go to college and odds are they'll correctly tell
| you that smartness runs in families.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| IQ is imperfect and has many issues that haven't been
| accounted for, nor should it be extended to represent all
| of intelligence, and many tests claiming to test IQ are
| completely pseudoscience, if even that, but the general
| concept isn't pseudoscience. A standardized IQ test has
| correlation with a number of other indicators of
| intelligence. It isn't a prefect test and popular culture
| has greatly oversold its importance, but our society
| misusing the science, and even scientists historically
| misusing the science, isn't reason enough to call it
| pseudoscience.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| ...and I fully support cheating on IQ and LC tests. If you
| successfully cheat, that means the interviewing company
| failed the test.
| setgree wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > > 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 wrote:
| [dead]
| JohnFen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You mean when there was mass starvation, low life
| expectancy and mostly on the backs of people colonized by
| Europeans?
| lesuorac wrote:
| I mean didn't the greater European community as a whole
| benefit greatly by access to the materials found in the
| "new world" (and also Asia)?
|
| Plantations is a bit vague but to assume Cotton; people
| benefited tremendously from cheaper clothes. A lot of the
| early industrial revolution was weaving machines which
| wouldn't be possible without a lot of cotton.
|
| Robber barons is a bit vague but to assume railroads;
| people benefited tremendously from trade. Our cities are
| built with a lot of materials that aren't locally
| sourced.
|
| ---
|
| Things have trade-offs but to say there were nothing
| positive about something that has negatives is very
| dishonest.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > mean didn't the greater European community as a whole
| benefit greatly by access to the materials found in the
| "new world" (and also Asia)?
|
| At the expense of killing millions?
|
| < Plantations is a bit vague but to assume Cotton; people
| benefited tremendously from cheaper clothes. A lot of the
| early industrial revolution was weaving machines which
| wouldn't be possible without a lot of cotton.
|
| At the expense of killing and enslaving millions?
| lesuorac wrote:
| It would really help if you could identify a specific
| business to talk about.
|
| Columbus wasn't a business but if you take a look at why
| he got funding [1] you'll see its very clearly for the
| greater good (of the crown). Of course, the inhabitants
| of the land being colonized are not taken into
| consideration but they're also not the one giving
| Columbus his funding.
|
| I think you need to think a bit longer about this. If
| slavery wasn't useful economically why did so many
| civilizations engage in it?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher
| _Columbu...
| scarface74 wrote:
| It didn't help the slaves or the people being
| colonized...
| psychlops wrote:
| The government tolerates business because the alternative
| is so much worse.
| gumby wrote:
| The only reason businesses are tolerated is for the
| greater benefit.
|
| If a paint company is dumping waste in the river we get
| them to stop. They push back and say "if you stop you
| won't have paint" and we work out a tradeoff.
|
| Some businesses have hacked the system. For example
| finance is a service business but some people who just
| use it for self-enrichment have managed to persuade
| others that _that_ is for the public good. That won 't
| last forever, but certainly will take a long time (many
| more human lifespans I suspect, unfortunately) to damp
| out.
| scarface74 wrote:
| We see it now with fracking, if it only hurts the local
| population and benefits others, they are ignored. That's
| not even to mention conflict minerals and the horrible
| working conditions in other countries.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or
| flamebait comments and taking HN further into generic
| ideological battle? Regardless of how right you are or
| feel you are, it's not what this site is for, and
| destroys what it is for.
|
| Fortunately it doesn't look like your comments have been
| dominated by this, but still, we've had to ask you this
| several times in the past. If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23863318 (July 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618278 (Nov 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158037 (June 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19539635 (April
| 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018671 (Sept 2018)
| ksaun wrote:
| > "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?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > 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.
| scaramanga wrote:
| [dead]
| bumby wrote:
| > _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.
| bradlys wrote:
| If you want people to take on jobs purely for non-
| socioeconomic reasons then you might need to fix the
| underlying socioeconomic problems. (e.g. cost of housing)
|
| I don't see any real movement from older generations to do
| anything about that. They just keep complaining about the
| youth chasing money instead of some "passion." (Which ignores
| that the material conditions have completely changed in the
| last 20 years)
| bumby wrote:
| I don't think this dichotomous thinking accurately captures
| the nuance and may just show a personal (and
| understandable) axe to grind. It's definitely not an
| either-or choice.
|
| Somebody can still quite easily work in CS and find
| affordable and high quality living. But maybe not in SV.
| I'd even argue you can work on more interesting problems.
| But people overwhelmingly want to work in SV because of the
| status it confers.
| randcraw wrote:
| 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.
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| NCEES has tried to create a Professional Engineer license
| related to CS. It died out from a lack of interest.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > 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.
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| This is why I left the tech industry. Nothing but losers with
| no skills getting hired. No sympathy for anyone fired
| Raptor22 wrote:
| 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.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| >> 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tarsinge wrote:
| 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), in the end you
| are deceiving other human beings.
| byyyy wrote:
| >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.
| guhidalg wrote:
| > I think you don't realize how it's a dog eat dog world out
| there and people will do anything to succeed.
|
| The grifters and cheaters of our world are an opportunity
| cost. Who knows how much more productive or fair the world
| would be if we didn't tolerate them? By allowing them to
| succeed, we deny a world where they wouldn't need to exist.
| boondoggle16 wrote:
| Where would we be, if we didn't tolerate those that drag us
| down?
|
| Careful, this kind of thinking leads to ideas which are
| unacceptable in the current world :)
| asimpletune wrote:
| There's a lot of great stuff in this comment.
|
| > There's a fierce artificial downplaying of AI when it comes
| to programming. [...] I think this is the delusional group.
|
| This could definitely be the case. I personally wouldn't bet
| against AI as in _all_ of AI. I, like many, think it 's a
| matter of time and technology, but I do think _this
| particular_ moment in time, and _this particular_ technology
| is over hyped. I 'll just be candid about that. Still, one
| day? Yeah you bet, although it appears that we're at least
| one fundamental breakthrough short, so the technology will be
| different. Today's tech will still nonetheless be fundamental
| though.
|
| > I think it occurs because a lot of people's identity rests
| on their actual ability to program. They think your they're
| superior programmers [...] causes them to dismiss the
| technology in the face of actual experts who fear and
| question it.
|
| I can't speak to the first part, with respect to what one
| side's biases are, as I don't really know what they're
| thinking, but you're almost certainly right that there's bias
| on both the bear and bull cases for AI. Sometimes I think
| it's a simple as the "line goes up" thinking in crypto just
| for programming and that's all that people need. I just read
| a lot of comments that at times feel kind of desperate to
| defend LLMs and so I added that last part to my original
| comment to see if anyone felt like adding to that thought,
| which you have so thanks.
|
| > 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
|
| Well, in all fairness I didn't want to make my already very
| long comment any longer than it already was, however in my
| defense, with respect to defining the controversy vs.
| implying there's a psychological quirk - I have seen what you
| can call some very strange gymnastics around what is learning
| or what is intelligence in, again, sort of desperate efforts
| to make LLMs just something that they're not. It's in those
| situations that I was referring to the people clearly not
| understanding how they work. That being said, I also did
| imply there was a psychological quirk but that was just
| because I didn't have the space nor the ability to really
| articulate what else might be going there. I think in parts
| of your response though you conveyed a valid viewpoint.
|
| > Maybe your born with talent, so you worship and defend that
| talent with calls to uphold "integrity."
|
| First, thank you, but second I don't think this was the case.
| I am one of those people who actually thinks talent is
| usually overrated, as "good enough" + perseverance does at
| least the same job for less in most cases. If anything, I
| think talent is kind of a scapegoat whenever some great goal
| proves to be elusive.
|
| > 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.
|
| I think I would just respond by saying that nobody is
| guaranteed something just because they want it, but all of
| those people have the same access as anyone else to leetcode
| and the internet or whatever else they need to do the work to
| pass the interview. Bearing that in mind, cheating is
| obviously understandable, but just because I understand it
| doesn't mean I would do it, personally. I definitely don't
| think that it's a good thing either, but I don't think I'm
| high and mighty about it either. Ultimately we all act the
| way that we do because we don't know any better. If I knew
| how to be smarter I would, but I don't so I'm kind of stuck
| where I'm at just like the rest of the world. I make mistakes
| and at times I can also be dishonest too. It's life. That
| said, it's not like I wholly embrace the moments in my life
| where my actions demonstrated my limitations, at least not
| when it became painfully obvious to me.
|
| > You defend integrity not because you are a stand up person,
| but because you have the ability to succeed without violating
| your integrity
|
| I appreciate your honesty about this and I don't think
| there's really anyway I can disagree with it. Maybe in
| another life, if I were in another person's shoes, I would
| act differently. I mean, that makes sense to me. I can't
| prove otherwise. That said, knowing what I know in this life,
| I stand by what I said.
|
| The last thing I'll say is why I believe we should still make
| our best efforts to be good, at least within our ability.
| That is because living for the sake of accumulating power, at
| the cost of doing what you believe is right, is just not in
| one's own best interest. In the absence of understanding what
| is right and what is wrong, the power that we accumulate has
| the same opportunity to cause tremendous harm as it does joy.
|
| Just think about why people always love really down to earth
| celebrities. We see them and think that despite all their
| money, power, and fame, they're happy and there's something
| comforting about that. Can the same really be said for the
| contrary? I know it's a silly argument because you kind have
| to keep an open mind to agree with me, but it's not as
| undeniable as 2+2=4. Still, that's what I truly believe and
| you don't know me or where I've been or what I've done.
| However, I wouldn't think this if I wasn't sincere about it.
| I have had my own mistakes and there have been times in my
| life, like anyone, where I've been immoral and I honestly
| came out the other end thinking the means didn't justify the
| ends. But it's up to you to believe me.
|
| Anyways, apologies to everyone for the massive response. I
| wish I knew how to be more succinct in response.
| boondoggle16 wrote:
| Greed is not in our own best interest emotionally... but it
| is probably in our own best interest materially.
|
| Nature doesn't require that we be happy, only that we
| procreate. Excess resources often make us feel comfortable
| enough to procreate, despite any unhappiness we may feel.
|
| I think you've nailed a sad reality.
| naasking wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Exactly. Every time I push back on people who dismiss LLMs as
| not understanding, they but don't seem to realize _how little
| we know about the brain and what "understanding" actually
| means_, mechanistically. So even with perfect understanding
| of how LLMs function, that tells us nothing about whether
| they actually understand.
|
| If defined operationally as being able to reliably and
| coherently converse about topics, make connections, solve
| problems and respond in novel or surprising ways, LLMs these
| days are at or slightly above the average human. Way above in
| some respects, but still below in others. It won't be long
| before their capabilities undeniably surpass the average.
| casey2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Does VLLM stand for very LLM?
| tokai wrote:
| 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.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "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.
| 2devnull wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| austin-cheney wrote:
| 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.
| guenthert wrote:
| > There are a couple of reasons why such prolific cheating is
| allowed (and even encouraged):
|
| Not sure how the listed points would be mitigated by
| cheating.
|
| Further:
|
| > There are no ethics in software.
|
| Well, speak for yourself, but obviously many developers are
| greatly concerned about the license of their product as well
| as of the tools they use.
|
| > 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.
|
| Well, many might be, but insisting on easiness might have
| another reason: it's always more difficult than it seems in
| the beginning and if a project ought to have a chance of
| becoming successful it ought to seem easy. That's just
| speaking from experience. If you want to get to the moon, you
| better plan for an Apollo-size budget and a few explosions.
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| "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." This is 100% true
| and it's frustrating. I think it applies to almost everybody
| though, not just developers.
|
| I think an alternative to higher standards would be lower
| pay. I am convinced that would weed out many of the people
| who don't actually care about software engineering. IMO, the
| majority of software development is not that difficult and
| lots of companies are overpaying for people who are just
| plumbing data from point A to point B and using libraries
| they didn't develop and have a weak understanding of.
| wootland wrote:
| 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.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I think more people are waking up to the fact that the
| corporate ladder is a joke. Hence all the whining about WFH,
| quiet quitting, and GenZ not being subservient enough.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| It's not true that all of the gains are captured by
| investors.
|
| Alphabet's CEO makes about 1000x the average googler, but
| that's only about 1% of salaries. What I mean is that for
| every $100 a Googler makes, about $1 goes to the CEO. It's
| not like top executives are claiming ing most of the value
| for themselves, the majority of the value a worker generates
| is returned to them in their compensation.
| wootland wrote:
| There are reasons beyond direct redistribution of the CEO's
| salary to take issue with the vast inequality represented
| by that 1,000X. The board and CEO will place all of their
| network in the executive ranks, cutting off access to rank
| and file employees. These people also use their out-sized
| reward to have a huge impact on society at large _outside_
| of the company. The negative externalities created by exec
| compensation are borne by the public.
| selcuka wrote:
| 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.
| AaronM wrote:
| Is there any evidence, other than these people using
| unethical methods to get hired on initiall at companies,
| that they didn't earn the raises they received?
| wootland wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's whataboutism, though. Why should I focus on some
| other problem when we are talking about this problem now.
| wootland wrote:
| This isn't a problem. That's the point.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| On a meta note, trying to engage with you seriously is
| annoying because every single one of your comments is
| whataboutism.
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Yes and that's bad but kevin over there cheating his way
| up the corporate ladder to be one of those execs is PART
| OF THAT PROBLEM
| [deleted]
| antihero wrote:
| It's not about impacting the CEO's pay, it's about
| exceeding maximum value from a job that is exploiting you
| in order for them to get that pay and benefit shareholders.
| Other than a few SMEs run by genuinely good people,
| capitalism puts us in adversarial position because if we
| don't take one we'll be hugely taken advantage of.
| otikik wrote:
| Be careful, you are starting to sound like an old person.
|
| https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...
| kamaal wrote:
| >>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.
| hedora wrote:
| 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.
| scarface74 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-...
|
| On any given day, Huh does about three hours of focused work.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| OP out here trying to say Pets.com wasn't cheating.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| whitemary wrote:
| [flagged]
| bloqs wrote:
| Please consider revising your future comments to not flame
| people. This is an emotional response to what the poster
| said, and frankly validates some of his point about the
| fierce loyalty to LLMs despite lacking understanding. You can
| happily challenge that in a dignified manner.
| joenot443 wrote:
| 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.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The notion that morality and class are not directly
| connected is exactly how structural oppression and mass
| inequality are justified. The OP comment is one of the few
| ethical people in a fundamental unethical world. Get off
| your high horse and stop defending the boot on your face
| lnsru wrote:
| Rude tone. But that's my thinking today going home. Animal
| farm everywhere I see. Full back to the office, bet somebody
| can still work from home. Bad economy, work time and salary
| decrease, but somebody is more important and can keep work
| time and salary. Lying and cheating for benefit is absolutely
| normal. Staff engineer forcing engineer to do impossible to
| keep him away from high visibility project. Lying and
| stabbing everywhere, it takes time to notice. But that's how
| it works.
| _corvo_ wrote:
| Even if you disagree with the parent comment, this sort of
| hostility is uncalled for.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| [flagged]
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Makes you wonder just what type of people end up in manager
| roles:)
| paulcole wrote:
| 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?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| 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.
| jagtstronaut wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mock-possum wrote:
| 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.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| 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.
| spicyusername wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| You mean the same era where Jobs cheated Woz out of his
| fair compensation and took credit for the Breakout game?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Putting a permanent dent into their friendship.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| You can always throw the argument "it has always been like
| that" to any discussion, but that's never going to be a
| meaningful response to anyone who cares to think critically
| about whether the status quo is how things _should_ be.
| spicyusername wrote:
| I'm saying that's how things have been, are, and will
| continue to be.
|
| Any policy, technology, process, etc must take that into
| account.
|
| I definitely wish that's not how it was, and I don't think
| that's how it should be, but we have to work with what we
| have to work with.
|
| There are plenty of ways to get people to rise to their
| best selves, rather than sink to their worst selves, as
| they are in this context while competing for high paying
| jobs, and we should always try to induce the best outcomes
| possible.
|
| I think this what you're getting at by suggesting we don't
| just give up, despite knowing what we know about human
| nature. But we also shouldn't deny the hard truth that
| humans won't anyways behave the way we wish they did.
| kristianbrigman wrote:
| Two fundamental truths:
|
| - nature is inherently competitive. - civilization and
| culture temper this but requires vigilance to maintain.
|
| The second implies that some cultures may be more effective
| at tempering nature's excesses than others... and also that
| it can change in a way in which it becomes less or more
| effective, or at least effective for different things...
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >vigilance to maintain.
|
| I think this part is a crucial part, that many comments
| here miss. Honesty is not useful if it's not rewarded,
| consequently if cheating can be rewarding, because of non-
| vigilance. We see this not only among humans but also in
| animals/birds, and in general nature.
| p0pcult wrote:
| >what he needs to do to survive
|
| Robbing a loaf of bread so your children can eat is very
| different from cheating on a test/interview for a job with a
| kingly salary. One is doing what one needs to do to survive,
| and morally justifiable. The other is pathetic and craven.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Not really any different. Nobody was hurt in the latter
| case.
| fnimick wrote:
| > Nobody was hurt in the latter case.
|
| Except the honest competitor who was passed over for the
| position, or the promotion?
| p0pcult wrote:
| I find it amusing that you are using a throwaway account
| for comments on this topic. It's as good as an admission
| that you know the behavior is wrong.
| camel_gopher wrote:
| Sure; but which is which will vary from person to person.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Yes, I am aware that sociopaths exist.
| inconceivable wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals#List_of_bi...
|
| check out the flags at the top of the list.
| guenthert wrote:
| > 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.
| l2silver wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So who is being harmed by someone not reversing a binary
| tree by memory for an interview?
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| boondoggle16 wrote:
| I just want to point out that this is an amazing comment.
| These gray areas are everywhere, and cognizance of them
| betrays intellectual rigor and honesty. I salute you good
| sir.
|
| edit: I just realized there's a great irony here. I
| salute you, while recognizing that honesty and
| intellectual rigor is not valued in the world. I guess
| that's why it's valued so highly by people like me?
| asimpletune wrote:
| I actually don't really disagree at all with the "Rules can
| be broken" part, but I can't say I agree with the conclusion
| that the people in the podcast drew. I don't mean to say
| though that they're bad people though, but more like these
| are complex issues and I don't think their analysis was right
| in the end.
|
| This is just my personal take, but I like the Plato way of
| thinking about this. If we were to invent an evil person who
| succeeds at everything, including being perceived as good by
| their peers, and also invent a good person who fails at
| everything and is unfairly or coincidentally perceived as
| evil by everyone, the "good person" still wins.
|
| He argues that's because to be "good" requires to know
| separate it from bad, and that essentially knowing good from
| bad is what wisdom is. This, he argues, comes from having
| some kind of access to the truth, and the truth is the end-
| all-be-all. He believes that truth is more powerful, than
| power itself.
|
| Finally, he argues that truth is more powerful than power
| because with power alone you only have the ability to achieve
| your aims but not the ability to know if they're good for you
| or bad for you. So finally he says this is why tyrants are
| always such sad people.
|
| I don't know if we can fix a broken system in the sense that
| the wise people will always have the power, but I do find his
| argument persuasive and I know which of the two I prioritize.
| That's why when people act out in these ways, like cheating
| on interviews but also other things, I just accept it as you
| laid out earlier. Rules can be broken. It's not ideal, but
| it's fine.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| we need to face the reality that in capitalism, anything you can
| get someone else to do* for cheaper than your own price should be
| outsourced. Hiring cheaters does select for someone who can take
| other's work and apply it for their own situation, whilst
| capturing the value difference (essentially capitalism).
|
| Love it or hate it, it's actually a selected for skill perhaps
| immorally applied.
|
| Additionally companies create their promotable skill set (both
| explicitly and implicitly), if their system is selecting for
| something, its not incumbent on you to break yourself against
| that system, play the game the way it's set up and allow the
| Executive class to reap the pros/cons of their setup.
|
| Edit: One more thought is that when you look at an evolutionary
| style thought system, there's no "playing fair" in nature. Yes
| relationships and such have value, but being hired vs not being
| hired is a sort of reproductive event where whatever gets you
| hired means you get the experience/resume item and your
| competitors do not.
|
| * do at a sufficient substitution equivalence
| heelix wrote:
| I've done a lot of screening interviews and cheating does happen.
| Some of my favorites:
|
| * developer attempts to pass something off as video lag, as he
| attempts to lip sync someone else's answer.
|
| * developer had printed all the 'common' answers on the wall
| behind his computer, and would look up to them for reference as
| we were talking. Then the tape came off and covered him in a a
| paper stack overflow.
|
| * the glorious mechanical keyboard, as they google for an answer.
|
| * interviewed one person and had a different one show up.
| prox wrote:
| I lol'ed at the Paper Stack Overflow error.
| harshalizee wrote:
| I don't understand how #2 and #3 would be considered cheating?
|
| If they can still answer the question and show evidence that
| they understand it, what's wrong with reference materials and
| googling?
| ketralnis wrote:
| There are different issues of "is this an honest
| interviewee?" and "is this a _good interview_? " and you're
| welcome to argue the latter all you like but the solution to
| a bad interviewer isn't just to cheat because you don't like
| it.
|
| Context matters. If you're looking to see "have you really
| done security stuff?" by mentioning some OWASP Top 10 vulns
| and asking for a quick description, for somebody that has
| indeed done any security at all that will be trivially easy
| and anybody else will need to google it. Can they skim google
| and get you an intelligeable answer? Maybe but that's not
| what you're looking for, the question itself is a proxy for
| something else.
|
| For most of my interviews I tell folk up front to google
| whatever they need to. But at the very very earliest stage of
| the interview loop we do a quick "programmer is a big field,
| what kind are you?" round so we know how to place people and
| the questions we use for it are all trivially easy for
| somebody even remotely familiar with the fields we're looking
| at and also trivially googleable for anybody else. The goal
| with that piece isn't to challenge people it's just to round
| their skillset to the nearest role that we have. I've caught
| people retyping code, pretending to be inventing it, from
| what's clearly the first article they found when they googled
| the keywords. It was never intended to be a hard problem,
| just something to quickly tell an infrastructure from a
| frontend engineer. It was more or less bitwise identical to
| the article they were retyping from and they couldn't explain
| the code or modify it. That doesn't even accomplish what they
| want, even if it worked we'd then go on to interview them for
| a job they couldn't do.
|
| Again you can argue about whether that's a good practise or
| not but it's still not licence to simply cheat on it. You're
| conflating these and and I think it's not the right thing to
| do.
| lbrito wrote:
| >interviewed one person and had a different one show up
|
| I'm always amazed at the extent people go to to cheat. It gets
| to the point that you're putting in more effort than you would
| have to be successful without cheating.
|
| I sometimes feel some people simply enjoy cheating too much.
| Its not about accomplishing a goal by any means necessary, its
| something about doing something wrong that certain people seem
| to enjoy.
| isanjay wrote:
| In the pandemic when hiring was remote this was very
| prevalent in my country.
|
| This became kind of a business where a person sells his
| services to help you cheat by appearing instead of you in the
| video interview and also helps you with the work after you
| got the job.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Tangentially related...
|
| Life insurance companies (in the USA 20 years ago when I sold
| it) would require a medical exam for every life insurance
| application. If the applicant commits fraud by having someone
| else take the examination (usually a blood draw, height and
| weight measurement, and maybe a heart EKG for bigger policies),
| the policy is considered valid after two years. Even if the
| insurance company finds out fraud was committed, the benefit
| payout is guaranteed after two years.
| Null-Set wrote:
| The implication being that after 2 years the immediate risk
| of death the insurance company wants to protect itself
| against did not come to pass, so the policy holder should not
| have the risk of losing their policy to a post mortem
| determination of fraud from the insurer despite believing
| they were insured.
|
| Taken back to the fraud in interviews, you could make the
| same argument that after some time working on the job and not
| gettimg fired, the risk of getting someone not actually
| qualified did not come to pass, so its more useful to look at
| the employees current performance than their original
| fraudulent interview.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| But the bar for firing is below the bar for hiring.
|
| This is true not only because of status quo bias, sunk cost
| etc., but also because employers will often try really hard
| and be very patient, in the hope that an employee's
| performance will improve.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sounds similar to how (most? all?) life insurance policies
| will pay out for suicide _after a two-year waiting period_ -
| the idea being that those who are dedicated enough to plan
| out that far in advance don 't actually end up going through
| with it, or it's a rounding error.
|
| So perhaps the medical exam stuff should be swapped around;
| everyone can get life insurance, but if you want payout for
| certain things to kick in _before_ two years, you get a
| medical and pass.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I think any insurance company would have a lifelong suicide
| exclusion if they could. I'm pretty sure they are legally
| obligated to pay after two years, as it's be too easy for
| nearly any insurance company to claim most deaths were
| possibly a suicide. The main point being that you can't pay
| the mortgage on your house, which may be the sole reason
| you got life insurance, if the benefits aren't being paid
| out.
|
| Also, there are some policies that do have limited benefits
| the first two years. This is especially common for any type
| of insurance that doesn't require a medical exam. They tend
| to be very expensive for the amount of insurance they
| provide, but maybe have a manageable monthly payment
| because the amount of coverage is relatively low. This type
| of insurance is usually "I can't qualify for anything else"
| coverage, or it's for a very specific purpose, like paying
| for funeral expenses when for some reason the person didn't
| have the desire to just save that money in the bank.
| philsnow wrote:
| > I think any insurance company would have a lifelong
| suicide exclusion if they could
|
| I suspect you're right.
|
| There certainly are desperate people who go to Vegas,
| lose their entire savings, and choose to end their life
| because they're not willing to put in the work to
| continue trying to survive for another, say, 40 years,
| starting with zero assets.
|
| There are also people with severe mental illness (poor/no
| executive function, prone to psychotic episodes,
| imbalances in their brain chemistry) who make poor
| choices or don't even consciously make choices but their
| body is nonetheless doing things, who end up also
| choosing to end their lives.
|
| There is overlap between these two groups. How could an
| insurance company decide which is which? If cancer can
| kill you and they pay out for that, why would they not
| pay out for deaths due to mental illness? _Because they
| can._ We 're becoming more willing to talk about mental
| health, but there's still a ways to go.
|
| There's a ton of stuff that can go wrong with the mind
| and I couldn't hazard a guess at what proportion of
| people are 100% okay.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem for the industry with the "no questions
| asked" plans is the _only_ people who sign up for them
| are the ones who have no other option, which makes them
| more expensive, which makes the only people who sign up
| for them ... etc etc etc.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Yes. There's a few factors:
|
| - higher premiums for everyone because the pool of
| applicants aren't that healthy
|
| - the super sick people simply die in the first two years
|
| - the semi sick people can hang on for years, but weak
| health may me limited ability to pay because of limited
| employment prospects
|
| - the not sick people will find better prices or simply
| realize the insurance is overpriced and cancel it
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| What I don't understand is... these are pre-screening
| interviews at companies that get tons of applicants, right?
|
| What happens during the actual in-person interview that follows
| ??
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| A lot of 'on sites' were remote during the pandemic, and a
| lot of roles now are remote, so may not have an 'on site' at
| all.
| sgerenser wrote:
| All the big tech companies I've spoke with over the past
| several months were still doing virtual "on site" interview
| loops.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Not even at the local branches ??
| dariusj18 wrote:
| I let any of my interviewees know that it is ok to use google,
| I just want to know what they searched for. I'm not running a
| trivia contest, so if they forgot the name of something or need
| a little refresh, that's fine.
| ajcp wrote:
| I _expect_ my interviewees to use Google and am disappointed
| if they don 't. It's more important to me that they know how
| to _find_ the right answer than it is that they just know it
| off the top of their head. 90% of their time is going to be
| spent figuring out how to solve all the known-unknowns they
| 're going to come across.
| Miner49er wrote:
| As long as you tell them they can, that seems great. I
| think it's normal for people being interviewed to assume
| they can't use any outside assistance.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Ditto, 20 years on and I research and read articles when I
| start any new project because in one year there can be
| entire paradigm shifts in tooling and best practices.
| mirkules wrote:
| The way I combat this is by asking questions about their
| current jobs, then diving deep into the technical problems
| they faced. It requires a lot more preparation for each
| candidate, but it ensures it's not a trivia test but a
| discussion.
|
| One of my favorite interviews (as an interviewer) was when a
| SDET candidate provided a link to their website. When I
| visited it there was an issue loading some page. So I asked
| him about it and how he would troubleshoot, then asked him to
| come back on Monday with a solution. On Monday, the site was
| fixed, and he explained to me what happened in AWS, how he
| figured it out, etc. So he was hired, going on 2 years now
| and doing very well.
|
| I don't need robots who can recite what a b-tree is (ChatGPT
| can do that). I need people who will work hard, can
| understand the big picture and how to approach problems,
| while being a good personality on the team.
| TheCapn wrote:
| I've only ever had to hire one person to work beneath me,
| but that sounds like how I ran the interview.
|
| We were hiring students for a temp position. We're a
| Controls Engineering company, but my department is dealing
| with more traditional languages for supporting applications
| and needed extra help for a bigger project. I _know_ the
| tech we use isn 't standard in the university so the
| interview was asking students about how they approached
| their major projects and their methodology for learning new
| tools/languages.
|
| The first guy who straight up said "I already know enough
| of C++ and Java, I suppose I'd just google _how to do x in
| c#_ and branch from there " got the job. Because...yeah,
| that's about it. We talked about a 4th year project and
| what his responsibilities in the team where, problems
| faced, solutions found, etc.
| everforward wrote:
| This.
|
| My other favorite is very open-ended questions. I mostly do
| ops-y interviews, and my favorite question is "what happens
| when you type 'curl https://google.com' in a terminal and
| hit enter?"
|
| The question is so broad there isn't a "correct" answer to
| Google, and it crosses enough domains that any article they
| find is going to be too long to skim. Then I ask them to
| really zero in on some aspect of it they feel comfortable
| with and give detail. What syscalls happen to start up
| curl? How does the OS know how to communicate with the
| local router? What's the entire flow to translate
| "google.com" to an IP?
|
| It's also just fascinating to see which parts candidates
| latch on to. I had one person spend like 30 minutes just
| talking about TLS and PKI. Another person delved into
| kernel packet handling for a while.
| kmarc wrote:
| That's what I do (instead of curl, with a browser).
|
| MANY super cool convos spun out of this question
| (interviewed around 60 people). One of them never
| actually got to the network request part bc we went DEEP
| into event handlers in a GUI etc. Another candidate was
| all over the place with key exchange protocols and what
| and how can go wrong.
|
| I usually don't ask further questions to "corner" them,
| let them go into any of the details they want.
|
| Ah, I am so happy I am not the only one who invented this
| interview method :-)
| godelski wrote:
| This is how I was interviewed when I was a
| scientist/engineer and how I got interviewed at gov labs
| when I switched to programming. I still refreshed material
| for my interviews but they were focused on the actual job
| areas. I was really shocked that this was not common in the
| software world and feels weird that as an AI research
| people are asking me about leet code and not about
| mathematical formulas, limitations, and analysis of
| architectures or my own research. PhD scientist interviews
| (at labs and universities) are essentially a short form of
| people's discretions with a focus on Q&A. It's always
| appeared successful to me and I figured that the leet code
| was always because 1) momentum and 2) there's so many
| applications that an arbitrary filter has no realistic
| effect on outcomes other than reducing the number of
| candidates (due to the difficulties of measuring merit).
| (Similar to university admissions) But I think we all have
| to admit that meritocracy is not realistic and act under
| this belief. It's fine to have arbitrary filters if we
| recognize them as arbitrary but not if we go around and
| tout superiority for passing these. But I guess that's a
| corollary to Goodhart's Law
| mock-possum wrote:
| yeah same. it's not a recitation / memorization challenge,
| it's an honest "if you ran into X at work, show me what would
| you do" exercise. It's hard to imagine an answer that _doesn
| 't_ start with "I'd probably google it." How do you evaluate
| the quality of the search results? How would you scan a page
| to quickly find the salient details? How would you test what
| you'd found to determine whether it was an effective
| solution? etc.
| tgv wrote:
| I always gave open book exams to my students. They don't need
| to memorize details, but show understanding. Questions would
| range between "find the page in the book" to "can't answer it
| if you don't understand the subject matter."
|
| Interviewing is a bit different, since there's no book, but
| when we looked for a junior dev, the applicants got a laptop
| with VS Code, the common browsers, internet access and an
| empty (macOS guest) account, and a few (short!) tasks to show
| if they understood the questions and were able to start
| formulating an answer. We also looked for a personality match
| (we're a small company) and signs of general intelligence.
| Worked out reasonably well.
|
| I really dislike the more extreme approaches to interviewing
| that one sometimes comes across, like leet code scores.
| That's just too disconnected from the actual work. Unless you
| need your employee to grind leet code questions, of course.
| washywashy wrote:
| The problem is no matter how much training or systems a
| company has for its interviewing process, employees won't
| read it and will inconsistently interview candidates
| (couldn't remember List method == red flag; another
| interviewer rightly wouldn't ding someone for this). I think
| interviewers really need to develop their critical thinking
| skills in how they judge talent. I'd rather have someone who
| wasn't able to solve part three of an interview problem but
| high leveled some decent approaches that indicate, given more
| time, they'd be able to solve it. It's interesting to me that
| we place this artificial time barrier on many interviews when
| in reality work is not chunked out that way and often takes
| quite a bit of thinking to come up with good solutions to
| things. On the other hand, I don't think take home tests are
| a good solution for interviewing either. I think a lot of
| interviewers just end up copy catting whoever they trained
| with when watching interviews as a shadow (if they even had
| this opportunity).
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I'm so curious about that last one. You interviewed _and
| accepted_ one person, but a different person showed up to
| actually work? If so, that 's incredibly bizarre.
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently this is moderately common especially during remote
| Covid work; there were some discussions of it on HN, even to
| where the person interviewed and accepted was not the person
| working, and apparently the work was being done by an entire
| group of people.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Been remote since 2015 and not gonna lie, thought about
| finding contractors on Fiverr or e-Lance (or whatever
| e-Lance is called these days) to do just that.
|
| Basically become a PM for a team of four Vietenamese kids
| and pull in pay from 3 gigs.
|
| I later did some contracting on the side of a full-time job
| in 2018 and it was hard -- confusion and burnout set in
| quickly. But still think about the offshoring approach
| sometimes...
| brabarossa wrote:
| Hey, I'm looking for remote work. Lets talk? Email in the
| profile.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's any number of stories about it being done, but
| anyone who has tried working this way realizes that you
| either need very skilled underlings or you spend most of
| the time managing it anyway and could have done it
| yourself quicker.
| sgerenser wrote:
| There's lots of stories of this happening. Especially once
| video interviews have become common making the grift easier.
| Example: https://www.askamanager.org/2022/01/the-new-hire-
| who-showed-...
| mnky9800n wrote:
| when i took my quantum mechanics qualifier, i studied for a
| month, i was honest, i worked so hard. The exam was so tough (I
| passed), but as I was walking out I saw a student who had all the
| old exam questions with solutions printed out on his "table of
| integrals". Sure, maybe I "learned" some quantum mechanics more
| than that guy. But it's a topic I have never used (I do
| geophysics and machine learning) so I don't think I remember much
| of anything about quantum mechanics. So what was the lesson
| learned there? "Work smart, not hard"? "Do whatever the minimum
| is because that is all that gets assessed"? "The goal is all that
| matters"? "The ends justify the means"? "Worry about yourself"?
| bee_rider wrote:
| There's something seemingly dysfunctional in academia that made
| you get the best degree in quantum physics and then not work in
| quantum physics.
|
| I mean it is really common and not your fault, but people end
| up getting a PhD in these really advanced subjects all the time
| and then just leverage the ancillary coding and data analysis
| skills they happened to pick up on the way to get high paying
| tech jobs in unrelated fields. It seems like a massive waste of
| brain power that we could target more effectively.
| passion__desire wrote:
| > There's something seemingly dysfunctional in academia that
| made you get the best degree in quantum physics and then not
| work in quantum physics.
|
| The following article is the best example of the above quote.
|
| https://nautil.us/what-does-any-of-this-have-to-do-with-
| phys... What Does Any of This Have To Do with Physics?
| Einstein and Feynman ushered me into grad school, reality
| ushered me out.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| Don't do things that are not useful, enjoyable, or rewarding.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| yes i think you hit the nail on the head. that is what i do
| now. but that took time to arrive to even though it seems so
| easy when you say it now.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Ruthlessly focus on your goals and don't get distracted by side
| quests.
| throwaway678975 wrote:
| Well... yeah!
|
| When I was in undergrad [1] there was a student whose average
| after first year was a D, ie he had to repeat first year of
| engineering.
|
| Instead, he got into the ECE program (our university has first
| year engineering as a common year) that has a B+ entrance
| requirement. Only about 10-15% of students had >B+.
|
| He failed out of ECE with another D average. The university rules
| were clear. Two straight D averages and you are kicked out of
| Eng. (or the school?).
|
| Instead he was put into the nuclear program, an unpopular program
| with only a C requirement. That's where I dealt with him (I chose
| nuke despite my B+/A- average. Big mistake).
|
| There he kept a C minus average largely from cheating but also
| thanks to professor largesse.
|
| When he graduated he got a coveted job at the state controlled
| energy company at one of their nuclear sites. Typical candidates
| needed a B+ to get in if they were a disadvantaged group. White
| men like our protagonist needed a solid A.
|
| His average? A C
|
| His secret? Why so much largesse from the professors? His dad was
| the vice president of said government company. He went on to be
| president and the best paid public employee. Most people in tech
| in SV dont make the money this man was making.
|
| I used to hate this kid. In private he was one of the most
| racist, misogynist people I've ever met. He gladly told anti-
| Semitic holocaust jokes. He'd bully anyone weaker than he, and
| cajole and act saintly to anyone above him.
|
| Im past my anger now. Because, in fairness, he is where he
| belongs. He was quickly promoted to a position where his
| technical incompetence could not harm the public and now enjoys a
| management position. He's too politically savvy in too woke an
| environment to harm women, (or Jews) but his ability to navigate
| and exploit corruption, frankly, benefits the public corporation.
| Maybe even the public.
|
| [1] in a progressive northern country where nothing bad is
| supposed to happen
| psychphysic wrote:
| I sat in an interview at one point and thought. Gee I wish I'd
| cheated because it would have been so easy.
|
| That said I have not needed to cheat at an interview I do wonder
| how many failed applications or financial worries I'd need to
| have before I would try anything.
|
| We all have our moral breaking point, it's on you to build your
| life to be resilient to that.
|
| Once you reach that point all bets are off. If it means keeping
| food on the table and shelter over head I don't expect it off
| people.
|
| It's impossible to stop cheating it is easier to make it useless.
| recursv_thnkng wrote:
| "and she is now SMTS in 2 years" implies this person got a
| promotion every year.. At Salesforce's development pace I somehow
| doubt this person made such an impact to go straight to a senior
| position. Especially during a period of hiring freezes, promotion
| freezes, and squeezing profit margins.
| hluska wrote:
| This is a personal anecdote about something orthogonal to the
| article. A few months ago, I wrote an exam to get an AWS
| certification. Before the test, I had to take the adjudicator on
| a virtual tour of my exam space. My space was small so I had to
| do near gymnastics to give the supervisor the sight lines that
| she needed.
|
| Solutions to this already exist and I find it somewhat heard to
| believe that a company like Pearson knows so much more than
| Amazon.
|
| I wonder if this is a situation where companies know there is
| cheating, perhaps even have ways to identify it but cheating just
| isn't treated as a strong enough negative signal in the hiring
| process to be worth fighting.
| munificent wrote:
| Software engineer interviews are hard because simultaneously:
|
| 1. They are adversarial where the interviewer is trying to tell
| if the interviewee is cheating and evaluate their performance.
|
| 2. They are trying to, as much as possible, emulate the team-
| oriented work environnment where the relationships are
| cooperative. So the interviewer is trying to be on the
| interviewee's "side" as much as possible to see what it would
| be like to work with them.
|
| These two goals are in opposition, which is one of the reasons
| why SE interviewing is so hard to do well.
|
| If you make the interview more explicitly adversarial like
| examinations are, you do a better job of weeding out cheaters.
| But you also bias towards candidates that are comfortable with
| adversarial interactions and you lose vital signal about their
| cooperation ability.
| ciroduran wrote:
| I remember some guy on Twitter (a prominent programmer) openly
| admitting that he and other folks cheated on interviews by simply
| going to them (or paying someone), and then share the questions
| around. I think it highlighted the incredible privilege that some
| people have when looking for a job.
| osigurdson wrote:
| The most interesting example that I read about was a Facebook
| employee trying to get a new job. They hadn't done any Leetcode
| in many years and struggled with it as it was so unrelated to
| their work. I'm surprised that companies don't re evaluate people
| on Leetcode on a regular basis given the amount of weight placed
| on this.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| And this is how you realize real life is not a board game. And
| this is how you're left with an impostor syndrome after a career
| based on google-fu and stackoverflow copy pasta.
| KETpXDDzR wrote:
| This sounds like a business idea to me. Rent small rooms in
| highly populated areas, make sure cell phone signals are blocked,
| let interviewed do their virtual interviews in this room on a
| provided computer. Sell it as "certified interview" to big tech.
| sakopov wrote:
| Befor COVID, my AWS certification exam was in such a setting.
| It was an office space with a row of cubicles each containing a
| monitor, keyboard and mouse. You drop your belongings at the
| receptionist and walk in to take the test.
| gdsdfe wrote:
| I found this laughable at best, this not school anymore kid
| welcome to the real world, people will do what they need to do to
| get what they want but I do agree hiring process is broken for
| many other reasons.
| jrm4 wrote:
| So, I teach IT at a university, and of course part of me has
| concerns.
|
| But honestly, at heart, I respect the hacker ethos more than I do
| the majority of "big (or little) tech" business hiring processes.
| They accomplished the job.
|
| When I deal with cheating, I see it as my job to be "ahead of it"
| or I'm not worthy to teach? (And also, I don't much see it my job
| to be a cheating cop as much as it is my job to teach.)
|
| PERFECT case in point; all the Chat AI things that came out
| recently. I have a few multiple choice tests that I used to be
| able to recycle pretty easily. But ChatGPT comes out, and can get
| 100% with explanations on them. What that meant to me was "time
| to rewrite at least some of the questions."
|
| And so today, I tell my students exactly this. Most of the time
| it'll probably be correct, but I've deliberately put like 5 or 6
| in there that the Chat things confidently answer completely
| incorrectly. Good luck.
|
| (note: Yes, they're open-internet / take home. They weren't until
| the pandemic, and to my complete surprise, my averages came out
| exactly the same whether or not they were closed-book one hour in
| class or open-internet, take a whole weekend)
| destitude wrote:
| Basically they have no integrity.
| cies wrote:
| Say they cheated to get into FB, Google, Amazon -- these
| companies all have a track record of cheating! Basically big biz
| is all about bending the rules: trade influence, use over seas
| letterbox companies to evade tax back home, run illegal anti-
| union teams, plausible deniability, etc. etc.
| maeln wrote:
| It is tangentially related to cheating and interview, but if my
| first internship in the field told me anything, it's that your
| ability to sell yourself is often more important than your actual
| ability. My internship manager was a dev with a lot of experience
| and he was the one doing 90% of the job, but he was not very good
| when it came to communication toward the higher ups. His co-
| worker on the other hand was the exact opposite: Not a very good
| dev, but a very skillful sweet talker. Guess who got raised more
| ?
|
| Anecdotally, I have seen this with my friends and co-worker from
| school. The one who were good at marketing themselves often went
| further faster in hierarchy than the skillful ones who had
| trouble marketing themselves.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| seems fine. it's a competency test and they've passed.
| hoseja wrote:
| Cheating is only wrong if you get caught. Sincerely cooperating
| with the system is a losing strategy for you nowadays but of
| course the system will promote it.
| heldrida wrote:
| Wow! People are paid 230k, 2 years after uni? No wonder my
| generation can't afford to rent a decent house or even dream
| about buying a house...
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Fake it until you make it.
|
| YMMV
| passion__desire wrote:
| "If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not
| sure you can do it, say yes - then learn how to do it later!"
| -- Richard Branson
| giantg2 wrote:
| Seems more and more that the people who cut corners get ahead.
| Lie, cheat, and steal is the path to success these days. I guess
| it shouldn't be a surprise that we are slipping in national
| rankings and the top desired jobs are performers and influencers.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "We laugh at honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our
| midst." - C. S. Lewis
| politelemon wrote:
| Just thinking what the 'contemporary' equivalent of this would
| be, they could use ChatGPT instead and get a well fleshed out
| answer they can read out pretty much word for word.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Or, is it just another version of Fake it Till You Make it.
|
| Lot of programmers that can pass the interview questions might
| not survive a large organization, and vice versa, they can't pass
| but would be good at surviving.
|
| Generally the larger the organization, the less 'individual
| performance'/'merit' is a factor, and it becomes more about being
| 'personable'. Technical skills decline in importance.
|
| Of course, there is inertia. Some of these big organizations,
| that have lost the ability to 'create' highly complex
| applications, are riding on their size and inertia and tend
| towards eventual collapse. Not an iron rule, I've been surprised
| that it is Microsoft that seems to be able to re-invent and keep
| high tech skills focused on actual tech.
| [deleted]
| sota4077 wrote:
| As children many of us were always lead to believe that doing the
| right thing will always be the right thing to do. That doing the
| right thing will get you to where you want to be in life. As we
| grow older we quickly realize that is just not the case. Is it
| right to be dishonest? Of course not. But it does make it hard to
| compete in a society when a not insignificant percentage of that
| society are willing to lie, deceive or commit a fraud to get a
| leg up.
|
| I still choose to be honest about my education, qualifications
| and experience in my professional life. But I personally know
| people around me who have lied. They never admit it outright, but
| by being perceptive and just listening to people I can hear them
| give different facts to different people depending on the
| situation. It happens, a lot.
| [deleted]
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| some cheaters are actually good at what they cheat about and
| simply cheat to obtain additional advantage. the post seems
| pretty whiny to me. morally he's right but we happen to live in a
| "doggy-dog" world and moral codes are promoted by successful
| cheaters to keep the plebs under control. I don't want to justify
| cheating but it's game theoretic conclusion that you either play
| the game by the by the rules and most likely you will lose or you
| cheat a little and get a chance at winning. I hate that our
| society is like that but I can't change it.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The term is "dog-eat-dog" by the way.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| ;)
| [deleted]
| rdtsc wrote:
| Corruption is like cancer. It spreads and metastasizes through
| society quickly. If students see other students cheat and get
| ahead and not get punished they'll be incentivized to cheat. If
| instructors see a large number of students getting 100%,
| obviously the material is too easy, they'll make the problems
| harder. Pretty soon it is impossible to operate or do anything
| without either bribing or cheating.
|
| Dishonesty and a cavalier attitude towards cheating is something
| taught at home early on. Poverty, institutional disfunction play
| a role but at some point they become part of the societal mores.
| If you don't cheat you just look stupid and naive and people make
| fun of you.
| michaelteter wrote:
| Interviews are indeed broken and largely pointless. For so many
| reasons, interviews often have no real relationship to the work
| or skills required. It's no surprise that interview cheaters can
| still be successful at roles. Of course it's also possible that
| they aren't really accomplishing much at work due to any other
| number of company failures.
|
| I refuse to do rounds of interviews any more. I will have the
| initial recruiter call and then one solo or team online call to
| talk, but no tests and no projects. I've burned far too many
| hours on this in the past; and when I get the role, I walk in and
| find they actually need about 1/10th of my skills and mental
| capacity.
|
| Put the candidate on a 1-month trial contract. If that goes well,
| then extend the contract or convert it to employment.
| starky wrote:
| Agreed that interviewing is largely broken and pointless. Often
| due to companies trying to standardize their process. I once
| went to interview at a company where a few former colleagues
| work and they had standardized their interview process. I was
| really put out as a lot of the interview was answering
| questions that they already knew my skill level in and even
| acknowledging it.
|
| The situation where the job you accept is below your skill set
| may be a failing on your side of the interview process. When
| interviewing I'm as concerned about finding out what I can
| about the job and what it entails as I am about making a good
| impression to the interviewer. I'm not going to accept a job
| where I'm not confident that I'm going to enjoy it. On the
| other side of the table I'm constantly surprised at how few
| candidates actually take an interest in what they are going to
| be doing, even when given very explicit opportunities to engage
| in that way. I don't want to hire someone that is going to turn
| around and leave because it wasn't what they expected.
| mouzogu wrote:
| don't hate the player, hate the game.
|
| orange version: show me the incentives, i'll show you the outcome
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Cheating is one of valuable soft skills that square nerds are
| often unable to master. Marketing, sales, people management,
| internal politics, raising capital all require some degree of
| cheating.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Serious question: why do you care so much?
|
| Its just a job. You are drone #23423 who will be sacrificed at
| any moment for the actual shareholders of the company (ie. not
| you with your 200k stock bonus). They don't give a shit about
| you, and you shouldn't care so much when you have no equity.
|
| Get the money, enjoy YOUR life, and move on.
|
| If you really care so much, go start your own company and make
| 100x more money than those clowns. And no offense but software
| engineering is probably one of the easiest jobs in the world, all
| things considered. Literally the only investment you need to get
| started is a working computer of any kind.
|
| I don't like this kind of shitty behavior either, but that's the
| world we live in. I'm not going to go out of my way to make any
| changes when I have literally no upside/equity, I'd rather go do
| my own thing.
| ketralnis wrote:
| I'm not swayed by cat-is-out-of-the-bag arguments. Bad things
| can still be bad even while lots of people do the bad thing.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Yes, it's fundamentally unfair to those interviewees who don't
| cheat. And the process _is_ broken. However, the conclusion this
| person reaches - we must conduct these broken interviews in
| person so the cheaters can 't cheat - is the wrong one.
|
| Look at it from the point of view of the hiring company now, not
| the interviewer. They got a person who was good enough (based on
| the merits of their actual work, not interview performance) to
| subsequently get promoted. So, hiring mission accomplished, end
| of story. They may not have found the very best person for the
| job (very subjective and unknowable anyway), but if the process
| didn't result in an under-performer taking the job, the process
| did _not_ fail. And, importantly, there 's no reason whatsoever
| to think that if no cheating was allowed and a different person
| took the job, that they would on average be any better.
| classified wrote:
| IOW, crime pays.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Yes, it's fundamentally unfair to those interviewees who
| don't cheat. And the process is broken. However, the conclusion
| this person reaches - we must conduct these broken interviews
| in person so the cheaters can't cheat - is the wrong one.
|
| Correct! Making a harder-to-cheat "closed-book-test" isn't the
| answer.
|
| A better answer would be to make it "open-book" -- allow and
| expect interviewees to have their full libraries and reference
| sites open and ready to go. This is actually how they will be
| doing their work (we hope!). Then judge on efficient lookups
| _AND_ insightful comments on how to build upon the found
| knowledge.
|
| Or, based on the above sample recognize that the process is
| really totally broken, that almost anyone coming in will work
| out well (the cheaters clearly lacked the skill or confidence
| of OP, yet did fine in the actual job), and either fix the
| criteria (obviously difficult based on the last decade of HN
| discussions on the hiring sh^tshows), or just cut wasting
| resources on extensive interviews and take the first N
| applicants and be done with it.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Or how about, you know, stop pretending we can evaluate
| someone's "intelligence" or "skill level" as if it's a one-
| dimensional factor that you have superhuman insight into
| measuring.
|
| I'm satisfied, in an interview, if I feel the person is
| interested in the topic, is able to admit that they don't
| know something, and seems like they'd be pleasant (although
| i'd settle for "not difficult") to work with.
|
| The breadth and depth of their knowledge is secondary and
| it's always a gamble because people excel at putting up very
| convincing facades of whatever it is that they think they're
| being evaluated for.
|
| People have different things to offer, and you really don't
| find out until at least 6-12 months into their employment
| what they really excel at, you have no chance in 30-60 minute
| (or whatever) interview.
|
| The best you can hope for is to rule out the obvious
| sociopaths.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >The breadth and depth of their knowledge is secondary
|
| That's what the parent comment is saying. Open-book instead
| of closed-book, just have the candidate walk you through
| figuring out what they don't know, listen to them think
| aloud, and evaluate that.
| shswkna wrote:
| It seems those that have a fundamental problem with cheating
| are in the minority. Reading through the comments leaves me
| only sad.
|
| Based on how I believe the world works, and on larger patterns
| at play here, this general cultural trend (if this is in fact
| what it is) will backfire.
|
| If this is deemed culturally acceptable, and one extrapolates
| this pattern further, there is little deeper value that a
| culture has to offer.
| whitemary wrote:
| [flagged]
| alphabettsy wrote:
| I'm not sure it's a cultural trend, but I'd say users of
| Blind are not the typically developer. That's not to dismiss
| it, but that a subset of a population will always have
| dishonest people.
| scarface74 wrote:
| How do you think the world has always worked?
| peyton wrote:
| I think the cheaters tend to end up together over time
| without realizing it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's also possible the company is setting themselves up for
| ethics/regulatory issues by selecting for individuals willing
| to cheat. I guess this should be no surprise since the culture
| at Amazon already sucks.
| belfalas wrote:
| Sadly selecting for individuals who cheat might help the
| company navigate ethics/regulatory issues. I have seen many
| instances of people treating regulation as an annoying
| roadblock to work around, not something worth honoring.
| fnimick wrote:
| That's something this community celebrates. Look at how
| much Uber and AirBNB are touted as success stories when
| really they were illegal enterprises allowing individuals
| to violate the law (taxi licenses, rental laws) for profit.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| This is like saying my contractor put in a low quality roof,
| but it hasn't collapsed yet.
|
| The problem is while you can't control randomness, on average
| those roofs do fail much more.
|
| But more broadly it's amazing how far developers on HN will go
| to defend things that will mildly inconvenience developers.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| No, it's not like that at all. It's like saying the roofer I
| hired doctored his references, but then proceeded to build a
| roof that's objectively good enough for me to hire him again
| to build another roof, on a bigger house for more money.
|
| Cheating to bypass a stupid gatekeeping system that's
| designed to ration 1 job per N perfectly qualified applicants
| is only a problem if it's a problem. If you claim that people
| who _didn 't_ cheat during that process are any less likely
| to do something unethical when hired, I'd say that's a claim
| in need of proof.
|
| My preferred solution is to come up with a less stupid
| gatekeeping system. But I only ever hire co-op students, and
| no one will let me try anything that involves more than a
| 30-minute chat. Works well enough, but it's a _highly_ non-
| scientific, non-rational exercise.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| You're confusing an individual for the whole.
|
| If an individual cheats but turns out to be competent, it's
| no loss for the company or anyone else, really. But on
| average, if cheating is common, more incompetent people
| will slip through and ultimately cause problems. I can bet
| my life savings on black and win, but that doesn't make it
| a good decision.
|
| > Works well enough, but it's a highly non-scientific, non-
| rational exercise.
|
| If you'd like to know about the research behind interviews,
| they've found that unstructured interviews aren't better
| than pulling people out of a hat, regardless of how
| effective they feel.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > They may not have found the very best person for the job
| (very subjective and unknowable anyway), but if the process
| didn't result in an under-performer taking the job, the process
| did not fail.
|
| My process is that I hire only men. I have not yet had an
| underperformer. Hence, my process never failed.
|
| At _some_ level, fairness is important. And no, it 's not
| important only when there is a law behind it.
| paulcole wrote:
| > However, the conclusion this person reaches - we must conduct
| these broken interviews in person so the cheaters can't cheat -
| is the wrong one.
|
| It's not "right" or "wrong" - it's just a decision. There may
| be other choices and other decisions but to paint this one as
| flat wrong seems, well, wrong.
|
| > They may not have found the very best person for the job
|
| The vast majority of job searches _do not_ have this as a goal!
|
| Most companies want to hire somebody who's good enough
| relatively quickly for a price they want to pay.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Best person for the job given relevant constraints,
| obviously. When those are "relatively quickly" and "for the
| price we want to pay", you still want the very best person
| for the job.
| paulcole wrote:
| > you still want the very best person for the job.
|
| No you don't! Or else you'd never hire anybody because how
| can you be sure anyone is the best person for the job?
|
| You want to hire the person in front of you who is good
| enough to be likely enough to be able to do the job.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Isn't there an alternative interpretation, that the internal
| evaluation process is just as broken as the hiring process?
| siggen wrote:
| Correct. You have unethical people now, you are probably
| "cheating" at work by taking credit for ideas not theirs.
| brookst wrote:
| But that means the culture is also broken. Credit isn't
| something you can steal in the dead of night; everyone
| knows who did the work.
|
| At some point, if someone says their company hires
| cheaters, promotes thieves, and has a culture that
| celebrates those things. . . either there is more to the
| story or that person needs to run like hell because the
| company is toxic.
| jatins wrote:
| > ... because the company is toxic
|
| I mean one of the companies they mention is Amazon
| sokoloff wrote:
| Everyone knows who committed which piece of code. It's
| much less clear the origin of ideas. Did my comments
| spark an idea in your head? Did you share that with
| someone else who made it slightly better? If so, what's
| the split among me, you, and the third person for that
| idea?
|
| If we surveyed the three of us and asked for the
| percentage contribution, that would typically add up to
| more than 100%.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Or they're the "smartest guys in the room!"
|
| /s
| pdpi wrote:
| > Credit isn't something you can steal in the dead of
| night; everyone knows who did the work.
|
| Sadly, that's not how it works in practice. In fact, a
| person I worked with was the perfect counter-example.
|
| As an SEM, he routinely portrayed his engineers' ideas as
| his own when talking to senior management, he committed
| to unrealistic timelines, shipped utterly broken code to
| meet those timelines, then cast blame on other teams for
| the brokenness. (E.g. blaming the mobile team for broken
| responses in his team's backend APIs). Things like that.
|
| At some point, it became sort of a self-fulfilling
| prophecy. Because senior management saw him as the guy
| who delivered, they dismissed the complaints about his
| behaviours as the cost of doing business, so they never
| really acknowledged that he wasn't delivering in the
| first place, so the people complaining were cast as
| jealous b-tier whiners.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Seen the exact same personality at many employers, it's
| like they all come from the same factory. I can smell it
| a mile away now.
|
| OP is right though, that all CreditTaker's peers know he
| isn't doing any of the work, but it doesn't matter
| because companies are hierarchal and CreditTaker is the
| only one talking to execs above him, so his story is what
| gets passed around as reality. His peers who know the
| truth are too busy doing the actual work.
| sota4077 wrote:
| Exactly. I commented to a different person, but I will
| repeat it here.
|
| Taking credit doesn't look just one way. Very few mid-
| level management types will delegate work then when the
| work is completed they go to their direct report and say
| "Hey look what I created all by myself with no help.
| Pretty great huh!?" What happens more commonly is that
| they will delegate a project to team members A & B and
| have them come up with a solution to a problem. When the
| project is complete A & B show it to manager I. Manager I
| then goes to manager II and says "Here is what my team
| came up with as a solution to our current problem."
| Manager I had little to no involvement in the work or
| development of the solution, but they present it as
| though they had. That happens constantly in the working
| world. A good manager and leader will always mention, by
| name, who did the work.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Amazon might be unethical or immoral or unpleasant, but
| it is extremely successful at its founder's goal.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| It has succeeded at making Bezos money.
|
| It has become the premier cloud provider. That wasn't the
| original goal, but it's good for them.
|
| As a marketplace it is degenerating into an absolute
| mess. The force that maintains Prime membership is about
| 70% inertia.
| tough wrote:
| One can imagine AWS surviving longer than the marketplace
| in 10-20y
| icedchai wrote:
| Many "upper management" types have no idea who actually
| did the work.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| They care more about "who made it happen".
| icedchai wrote:
| That PM who can barely open a spreadsheet made it happen,
| of course.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This same process can be applied on a community/country
| level.
|
| Trust is invaluable, and you will not see its savings
| enumerated on the P&L, but lack of trust will eventually
| find itself on the P&L, due to ever increasing costs.
| sota4077 wrote:
| >But that means the culture is also broken. Credit isn't
| something you can steal in the dead of night; everyone
| knows who did the work.
|
| I'm not sure that is true. Plenty of mid level management
| types will assign work to the people they oversee on
| their team. Then never make mention of who actually
| performed the work when they present the completed
| product to the folks above them. It is incredibly common.
| One way this also happens is to have a mid-level manager
| delegate a project to someone. They quite literally do
| all the work. Then they present it as a team effort later
| on when it wasn't because as a team effort it gives the
| appearance of their involvement.
|
| Taking credit by omission of information is still taking
| credit.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> everyone knows who did the work.
|
| Not the people deciding rankings and promotions.
|
| Consider that every manager, over the course of a year,
| has things they want done but which they can't directly
| task people to do because those people either have
| defined job responsibilities or require a job code to
| charge their time while performing the task (which the
| manager can't, or won't, provide.)
|
| Now consider that there are some employees that care more
| about doing what their manager wants than they care for
| doing their job (shocking I know.) They will happily take
| on the 'extra-credit' tasks without regard for any
| collateral consequences because when it comes time for
| annual reviews the manager will place them at the head of
| the queue for promotion.
|
| And yes that does mean that the culture is broken and
| it's probably why so many people hate their jobs.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Depending on the corporate culture: feature, not a bug.
| roenxi wrote:
| It is more likely that the internal evaluations process is
| working fine. There are >$200k salaries on offer and the
| challenges Amazon et al. are dealing with aren't that
| demanding on an absolute scale. There are a lot of smart
| people out there.
|
| The interview process is probably calibrated more like a
| rationing system than a ranking system. They'd have too many
| capable hires applying for each job.
| pydry wrote:
| It's a bit like their abysmal process for detecting product
| fakes and review fakes.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Possibly. But if that's the case, the best thing that can
| happen is for bullshiters to fill up all of the positions
| there and drive the company down fast as possible.
|
| I have lots of sympathy for people that lose time discarding
| cheaters from their hiring processes, or that hire people
| just to immediately fire them due to cheating. But if they
| are promoting those cheaters, then they are the fraudulent
| ones.
| shusaku wrote:
| How about the lack of personal ethics correlating with
| success in what we know to be highly unethical companies...
| bee_rider wrote:
| In that case, the market should take them out, right?
| WJW wrote:
| Only if the other companies perform better, but since they
| also might have a corrupted culture that may not be the
| case. Also, relying on "the market" to fix things can take
| decades so it is not really a useful strategy for
| individuals.
| bee_rider wrote:
| If the other companies _don't_ perform better, then this
| company has found a process that works (I mean not
| filtering to only select people who play leetcode is a
| pretty good idea, the only questionable thing is asking
| leetcode style questions in the first place if they don't
| need that data).
|
| If a company lasts decades, that's a pretty good success.
| Not every company can be IBM, and the world is probably
| better off without too many IBMs.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| A venal, decrepit empire can last for hundreds of years.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Amazon is large enough to maintain market dominance via
| strategies other than technical excellence.
| bee_rider wrote:
| So then why hire technically excellent people? They might
| expect excellent salaries or excellent working
| conditions.
| scaramanga wrote:
| That's like asking why do kings buy wonderful artworks
| when they could save their gold and hang mediocre
| artworks on their wall?
|
| Either it's because they have very refined tastes and
| value aesthetics over money, or...
| bee_rider wrote:
| I would think technical employees would have an analogy
| closer to useful things like tools, rather than aesthetic
| stuff like art. But I'm not sure what the analogy is
| getting us here, anyway.
|
| Anyway, a king that hoards priceless art seems worse? The
| good stuff belongs in a museum visible to the public, not
| a private collection or walled off throne room. And lots
| of the art (jewelry for example) produced for royals was
| just expensive gaudy crap anyway, a waste of gold.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There is another, even more cynical, interpretation. They may
| have been discovered to be incompetent, and promoted into a
| role where they can do less damage.
| scaramanga wrote:
| And an interpretation more cynical than that:
|
| The manager who hired them can either a) fire them,
| admitting they made a mistake, and taking a headcount and
| budget reduction; or b) promote them, congratulating
| themselves for the successful hire and increasing the
| budget.
|
| Nobody gets promoted to stop doing damage, they get fired.
| Contrary to popular belief, it's not difficult to fire
| people, less so incompetent people.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| People get kicked upstairs to sinecures all the time
| naasking wrote:
| > They may not have found the very best person for the job
| (very subjective and unknowable anyway), but if the process
| didn't result in an under-performer taking the job, the process
| did not fail.
|
| The process did not fail in the same way my bear repelling
| crystal necklace has not yet failed me in repelling bears.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| This comparison only works if you routinely walk through
| crowds (groups? congregations? clowders?) of bears.
| Preferably polar bears.
| nverno wrote:
| > And, importantly, there's no reason whatsoever to think that
| if no cheating was allowed and a different person took the job,
| that they would on average be any better.
|
| I think there is plenty of reason to think people who actually
| know the stuff instead of cheating would be better on average.
| It's a signal that they were smart enough and motivated enough
| to learn the material (basic algorithms/coding skills in this
| case)- both traits that would probably make them better on
| average at the job.
|
| Being a good cheater is a useful skill that probably also helps
| people on average- but I doubt it's nearly as useful an
| indicator of future success as being good at the skills
| necessary to do well on interview questions (w/o cheating).
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| If someone can just look it up, digest information in X
| minutes and come up with the same answer, then why does it
| matter that they didn't memorize it in the first place?
| Presumably I'm hiring an expensive problem-solver with good
| judgment here, accumulation of past knowledge beyond some
| basic level of competence is useful, but secondary.
|
| Fundamentally, the issue is the interviewing/selection
| process itself. The best interview that I've encountered is
| the long interview. I hire you for four months as a co-op,
| see what you can do, and we go from there. Impractical in
| many/most settings, obviously.
| nverno wrote:
| > If someone can just look it up, digest information in X
| minutes and come up with the same answer, then why does it
| matter that they didn't memorize it in the first place?
|
| But this is usually not possible- it's contingent on other
| people having already solved and posted solutions online
| for some question worded nearly the same. Much of the
| knowledge behind interview questions applies to all sorts
| of programming problems where the solution won't be
| available to copy. A knowledgeable programmer would know
| quickly that some problem is best approached by dfs or bfs,
| while the cheater may not.
|
| > Fundamentally, the issue is the interviewing/selection
| process itself
|
| I agree, but this will always be a hard process. LC
| problems are like IQ test or SATs, they work fairly well
| most of the time, but probably better to weed out the
| particularly weak candidates than determine how good people
| truly are.
| jwmoz wrote:
| My gf used chatgpt for her cv and interview process, using it
| generate a presentation task they gave her (she is doing project
| management type stuff). They offered her the job the next day.
| ctvo wrote:
| The person's friends all went to large corporations.
|
| Someone who was willing to cheat so aggressively (keyboard with
| another laptop behind the current one?!) won't take credit for
| someone else's work? Play politics relentless? Lie about their
| contributions? Etc.. And all of these things help you get
| promoted in large corporations. And this was from entry level to
| mid level. It does get a little harder if you're a complete fraud
| for senior and staff levels.
| mattgibson wrote:
| TBF I don't think this is bad. The "cheating" involved seems a
| closer match to the actual real world conditions of the doing the
| job than the artificial "no internet allowed" assessment. If the
| candidates can get stuff done but need the internet as a
| reference, that's still getting stuff done. Not surprising that
| they are now getting promoted given they can not only get stuff
| done, but were resourceful enough to find a method to "cheat" and
| also pull it off successfully whilst being monitored.
| pydry wrote:
| Technically, it would be better if everybody had internet
| access.
|
| BUT, it means that Amazon creating a selection pressure for
| people who cheat. Long term this will be corrosive to the
| organizational fiber of the corporation as idiotic unrealistic
| leetcode questions are to the technical fiber.
|
| Amazon has become way buggier for me over the last few years
| and so has Google. I think this is intimately connected to
| their organizational dysfunctions.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I wouldn't blame the devs for their quality issues. Try
| ownership.
| brookst wrote:
| Finger pointing isn't a great signal.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Quality isn't a skill issue. It's prioritization.
| Ownership decides how devs spend their time.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I get your point, but skill also plays into quality.
| solarmist wrote:
| Skill plays into ownership too. It plays into everything.
| What is your point?
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > Amazon has become way buggier for me over the last few
| years and so has Google. I think this is intimately connected
| to their organizational dysfunctions.
|
| People are just riding these organizations down as they
| crash, starting at the very top with the CEOs. The same
| feeling extends to the countries and societies where these
| things operate. Vultures upon a corpse.
| thih9 wrote:
| Get stuff done but not exactly meet all of the requirements.
|
| So maybe features will get implemented but rules and laws not
| necessarily respected.
|
| And perhaps that's useful for some companies.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| "No internet during dev" is not a business requirement, it's
| hazing
|
| When I used to run interviews (no longer working) I'd learn
| the most from seeing how candidates resourcefully used
| google, skimmed results, found relevant info. That was
| immediately revealing.
| hgsgm wrote:
| "Interview should be a real world test of my abilities."
|
| "OK, take two weeks and create a feature."
|
| "No, not like that."
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Who said that (not me)
| ambicapter wrote:
| Might not be you, but I've seen tons of people on this
| board bemoan take-home interview tests.
| falcolas wrote:
| Usually people are only annoyed if they're not paid for
| their (excessive for an interview) time.
|
| Two weeks worth of contractor rates for a finished
| feature as an interview? Sign me up!
| thih9 wrote:
| I think it's a popular approach to see the hiring process
| as hazing, at least in some companies. I.e. to throw random
| hurdles, later check who's doing best and hire them.
|
| I saw companies state that openly. E.g. saying: we're all
| competent programmers, none of us like leetcode and we
| don't use that in our actual job, but we need a way to
| filter candidates and this seems the best practical
| solution.
|
| Again, perhaps desperate people and/or hustlers make for a
| good workforce, especially in some companies.
| doctorh wrote:
| If you're willing to go to such lengths in order to be
| deceptive, it reflects very badly on your moral character. I
| wouldn't want to work with people like that and we should not
| reward that kind of behavior.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I am not particularly fond of this kind of moral flexibility.
| It's lying and the person found ways to justify themselves.
| This isn't the kind of person I can trust to be honest with
| me, they don't seem reliable either. Thanks, but no thanks.
| JohnFen wrote:
| A person who cheats is a person who cannot be trusted.
| Trustworthiness is one of the things employers are looking for.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Trustworthiness is one of the things employers are looking
| for.
|
| And yet rarely reciprocated beyond what's explicitly required
| by law.
|
| </ Tangent >
| nevermindiguess wrote:
| The goal of interviews and assignments is not to achieve an
| outcome but to assess someone's abilities. Henceforth, cheating
| cannot be justified.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > The goal of interviews and assignments is not to achieve an
| outcome but to assess someone's abilities.
|
| Maybe to the interviewer. But for the applicant the goal is
| to achieve an outcome.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Why not just literally take the job?
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| If the assessment has no relationship to the job requirements
| then the test assessment cannot be justified either
| JohnFen wrote:
| That might be true, but is a different issue. It's
| certainly doesn't justify dishonesty.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's a silly argument. There are many jobs at which being
| smart is an advantage. IQ tests correlate fairly well with
| being smart. Giving an IQ test could then give you a group
| of people that are more likely to be smart than the initial
| interviewing population. Assuming the job is not "taking IQ
| tests" is the assessment unjustified?
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| Seems irrelevant if the people getting the job by
| cheating are considered high performers getting
| promotions
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think you took too much from implication. TFA states
| that they are getting promotions. Everything else is
| assumptions:
|
| 1. They are considered high performers (maybe promotions
| are on a schedule?)
|
| 2. They are actually high performers (some people can
| bullshit their way through a job for _years_ ).
|
| 3. They are outperforming a hypothetical person who
| didn't cheat on the test and would have been hired
| instead of them with an honest assessment.
| John23832 wrote:
| As much as I hate the current interview process, this isn't
| true.
|
| The justification foe the assessment is that the assessment
| is the defined set of hoops that the company who you are
| trying to get paid by has assigned.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Isn't that a bit circular? "This is the assignment
| because the assignment is this"?
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| When presented with a problem she not only found a solution,
| but shared that solution with her peers. And has been
| promoted at her jobsite. As far as I can see, the interview
| properly assessed her abilities and found her qualified for
| the job.
|
| In short, the interview process worked as intended.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| As an interviewer, I don't care if the candidates cheat.
|
| I can assess his abilities either way.
| explorer83 wrote:
| Nobody seems to care anymore. I am reminded about this constantly
| at my work where I travel to lots of different offices and meet
| lots of managers. Nobody cares this author worked hard to be
| honest. Nobody cares that the other interviewees cheated. There's
| not much accountability. All anybody who has a say in anything
| seems to care is if they don't caught in a scandal. As long as it
| doesn't cause a scandal, mediocre work, dishonesty and/or neglect
| is widely acceptable in today's workforce.
| endisneigh wrote:
| one way to get around this is to effectively say someone's work
| belongs to them, and to take it is to infringe on that. however
| many techies do not find that acceptable.
|
| another way solution is to install what is effectively malware on
| candidates' computer to ensure honesty. however techies complain
| about privacy.
|
| yet another is to make it so interviews are in person, and to
| begin to end remote work, as it is obviously easier to cheat and
| do things like be overemployed when you're remote. again, not
| acceptable.
|
| so of course this kind of things happens. it is what it is
| ausbah wrote:
| in a system where the company takes a large majority of the value
| I provide for a company, is incentived in many cases to underpay
| & overwork, who can fire me at any point for any reason, and
| takes a majority of the time in my life - I would label cheating
| as evening the playing field in my favor a little bit
| tristor wrote:
| I'm probably going to get roasted for saying this, but this is
| completely unsurprising to me. When I was in college, folks from
| India and other low trust societies would mercilessly cheat on
| their projects and exams, blatantly helping one another on
| individual works, and the college knew about it and didn't care.
| When I had brought this up at one point, I was told by a
| professor that it was a cultural difference that had to be
| respected and that it wouldn't matter anyway because in the
| workforce I'd excel and they would not, so why did I care? After
| entering the workforce I encountered many many resumes,
| especially from contract houses / body shops, that were obviously
| lies, and have interviewed thousands of candidates across my
| career that clearly lied on their resume.
|
| My basic take is that low trust societies encourage cheating and
| dishonesty and think if you're honest and honorable that you're a
| naive rube asking to be taken advantage of. For my part, I've
| never cheated in any interview, in anything at school, and never
| lied on my resume, yet being in tech which is dominated by people
| who originate in low trust societies, I see how it becomes
| something insidious that creates extremely negative behavioral
| norms in corporate politics, where it's now acceptable for people
| to bald-face lie about project status, receipt of information, or
| the severity of an issue if it gets them ahead or makes someone
| else look bad and deflects the blame.
|
| Luckily, my professor was right though, despite exposure to a lot
| of negative behaviors I don't like, don't respect, and don't
| endorse, I did excel and I continue to excel above my peers,
| especially those who cheated. Cheating ultimately cheats oneself,
| but it's very galling that it's now becoming accepted as okay
| behavior in American society due to cultural shifts aligned to
| low trust societies we do business with. The Blind app
| demographics make it unsurprising to see this there or that it's
| essentially universally supported in the comments there. I am
| honestly unsurprised that most of the comments on HN support it.
| There's absolutely an attitude of "lie now, and figure out how to
| make it not a lie before investors or customers notice" in the
| startup world as well. Frankly, it disappoints me deeply that so
| much our society has become one big grift, especially as someone
| who entered the tech industry when it was still dominated by
| honest nerds doing cool stuff.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > it's very galling that it's now becoming accepted as okay
| behavior in American society due to cultural shifts aligned to
| low trust societies we do business with
|
| Pull the bandaid off and just admit it -- we're just becoming
| one of those "low trust societies". And it has nothing to do
| with who we're doing business with, and it is due to our own
| culture.
| politician wrote:
| > Luckily, my professor was right though...
|
| The explanation provided by the professor assuaged your
| concerns, but their salary was funded in part from the tuitions
| paid by the cheaters.
|
| The 'grift' is a collaboration between the academic
| institutions that tolerate cheating and award degrees and GPA
| scores, and the cheating students that game the process.
| mc32 wrote:
| I had classmates from France which would be middling in the
| social trust spectrum -boy oh boy, did they cheat on homework
| and exams. Same for Koreans and Chinese, but Japanese didn't
| cheat (or at least I didn't notice).
| asimpletune wrote:
| > Cheating ultimately cheats oneself, but it's very galling
| that it's now becoming accepted as okay behavior in American
| society
|
| Man, you crushed it here, so true.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The post-pandemic economic environment is toxic.
|
| Everyone seems to have come out of the pandemic convinced
| that they need to tighten whatever screws they have to get
| theirs. And that triggers other people to do the same thing.
| Cheating enters the realm of possibility because people
| (correctly and incorrectly) believe others are doing the same
| thing.
|
| It's gross and feeds on itself. I'm not sure what will help
| it get better.
| bumby wrote:
| When resources are perceived scarce, it tends to
| incentivize worse behavior.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's pretty simple. There are few incentives for integrity
| and few disincentives for lack thereof. This shows up in
| all kind of contexts - from business leaders, to social
| media "influencers", to athletes, to politicians.
|
| I'm not sure why anyone would expect "the average Joe" to
| maintain some semblance of integrity when very few
| successful individuals do the same. The overall message is
| pretty clear - if you want to succeed, you will need to
| cheat.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| People that don't cheat much think that cheating is easy.
| Often times I see cheaters put in almost the same amount
| of effort as non cheaters the cheaters just get a higher
| probability of success.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| But the long term success for cheating is actually much
| lower, those who actually learned things will do better
| in the long term even if they have a lower probability of
| short term success
|
| Many humans seem to be incredibly short sighted
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > the long term success for cheating is actually much
| lower, those who actually learned things will do better
| in the long term even if they have a lower probability of
| short term success
|
| I want to believe this, but I'm not sure it's always
| true. Timing of opportunities matters a lot. Someone who
| is not as skilled in programming probably cheated their
| way into a FAANG job during the height of the pandemic
| and made absolute bank, perhaps being able to sock away
| $200k-$300k since then. That money could then be invested
| and start compounding, leading to a materially different
| outcome from someone else who played it by the rules and
| was better.
|
| The long-term for the cheater might be to simply find a
| less demanding job and continue riding the prestige hike
| they got when they snuck into the FAANG job.
| codebreake wrote:
| I disagree, I don't believe Trump and Elon musk are
| ethical and they are very successful in terms of power
| and money.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That said, Falcon 9 actually flies and is a very reliable
| rocket; SpaceX does not seem to be "cheating" in the
| classical sense of the word, but making money due to
| genuine innovative capability.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| The success of those two are bad for the country long
| term, the idea that being super rich is success is also
| bad
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I think you absolutely _are_ cheating yourself if you cheat
| on something you 're supposed to be learning. On the other
| hand, I have a tendency to be brutally honest about my own
| knowledge and capabilities, and it has bitten me _multiple_
| times.
|
| I've gotten negative performance review feedback from
| management that was word for word from the 'things _I_ think
| I can improve '. I've gotten passed over for jobs and
| promotions because I don't do a good enough job of 'selling'
| my experience.
|
| Basically, the most successful software engineers I've met
| also have the ability to bullshit with the best used car
| salesmen, and it's hard to argue my unwillingness to do so
| hasn't held me back.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| That sounds more like bad management than anything you did.
| I'm the same way, I try to be honest about my own knowledge
| and abilities. I hope you don't change that because there
| are assholes out there, supportive managers definitely
| exist
| justin_oaks wrote:
| >brutally honest about my own knowledge and capabilities
|
| Is this a lack of confidence?
|
| > I've gotten passed over for jobs and promotions because I
| don't do a good enough job of 'selling' my experience.
|
| Selling your experience IS an important skill. Other
| factors may have played a part too.
|
| > successful software engineers I've met also have the
| ability to bullshit
|
| Is it their bullshit that gets them to be successful? Or is
| it that they're more friendly, tactful, and and positive?
|
| To be clear, I don't doubt that you're telling it as you
| see it. I'm just wondering if your perceptions match the
| reality.
|
| If someone is always talking about how bad they are at
| something, then I'll interpret that as the person being
| negative, lacking confidence, and pessimistic. That's not
| the kind of person I'd want to be around in general, let
| alone hire.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > If someone is always talking about how bad they are at
| something, then I'll interpret that as the person being
| negative, lacking confidence, and pessimistic. That's not
| the kind of person I'd want to be around in general, let
| alone hire.
|
| Enjoy the circle of yes men.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| There are many people outside of the two groups yes men
| and people always talking how bad they are at something.
|
| If you disagree, tell me which of the two groups you are
| in?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Maybe 'bullshitting' was too strong of a word.
|
| I was always raised that you don't brag about yourself,
| you don't take credit for things you didn't _really_ do,
| and you don 't over promise and under deliver.
|
| As I've gained experience, I've learned that people can
| take self deprecating things as gospel and as a worker
| it's _your_ job to talk up your abilities and invitations
| to identify 'things you can improve' have to be spun in
| a positive way. As much as I hate to admit it,
| salesmanship, presentation, and ones ability to 'smooth
| talk' seems to get you further than raw technical
| ability. I don't hold it against devs that are able to do
| that, it's just been an adjustment for me.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Those who make the hiring/firing/promoting decisions
| rarely have the technical chops to determine which of the
| engineers is good and which isn't. So it's the engineers
| that are the most convincing that get the benefits,
| rather than the highest performers.
|
| There are those who constantly put in overtime to put out
| fires that they created. To management, these seem like
| hard-working, dedicated folks. Meanwhile those who design
| things well, don't have fires to put out, and leave on-
| time every day seem lazy. All too often the first group
| is given praise instead of the second group.
|
| This is a point of unfairness that is rampant in the
| industry. I don't know of any way to solve it, besides
| each person being their own promoter, hype man, sales
| man.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| "Fake it till you make it" has been a thing for a long time
| -- hence the catchy phrase.
|
| When did this wonderful meritocracy exist? Where?
|
| I think back to Jobs and Woz, and how he got him to hack a
| project to win a contest, and then didn't tell Woz and kept
| the money. It's been here since day 1.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Meritocracy doesn't exist for the poor. Before getting my
| job at The Atlantic through a random personal connection, I
| experienced job discrimination on the basis of not having
| graduated from a "prestigious" institution. Obviously this
| is coded language for being poor. To add insult to injury,
| I had actually aced a couple engineering courses that
| University of Michigan had provided to my high school
| class. You don't get to put that on your resume though.
| Even though I've always been honest to fault, I would never
| judge a poor person for skirting the rules of society. At
| the end of the day, if hiring managers can't tell whether
| candidates have fake credentials, all that does is prove
| that credentialism is not about merit.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Some things are different structurally. Eg about 50 years
| ago most kids grew up with both of their parents, today
| it's about half.
|
| Less adult time per child means a generation with far less
| formation.
|
| It has to collapse before it gets better, but it will take
| centuries to get back to Rome levels of violence and back
| stabbing.
| mchanson wrote:
| Actually its over 70% of kids in USA grow up with two
| parents still. 50 years ago it was 85%, but that would
| have been with a lot of unhappy and abusive marriages
| that now with no-fault divorce are able to be dissolved.
|
| Also child sexual and physical abuse has reduced during
| this same time frame. "According to David Finkelhor who
| tracked Child Maltreatment Report (NCANDS) data from 1990
| to 2010, sexual abuse had declined 62% from 1992 to 2009
| and the long-term trend for physical abuse was also down
| by 56% since 1992." from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse
|
| We have a lot of problems, but your understand of the
| issues are poor.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| What's the relationship between abusive marriages and no-
| fault divorce? Won't abusive people be the easiest to
| divorce with fault?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Abusers are at their most dangerous when you try to leave
| them. They will be even more dangerous if you have to
| damage their public reputation with the ugly truth to try
| to escape.
|
| No fault divorce makes it vastly easier to divorce for a
| lot of reasons and making it unnecessarily hard to leave
| can foster situations where it becomes abusive because
| they don't get along that well and can't just up and
| leave because they want to.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Understood, but in this context of parenting and looming
| child support, would that not present an equally
| difficult situation?
| smileysteve wrote:
| Fault divorce is more expensive and requires burden of
| proof.
|
| Abuse isn't always reported, and abusers often manipulate
| or lie.
| kmoser wrote:
| That's theory. In reality abused women may choose not to
| attempt to divorce (or even leave) their abusive husband
| since they fear retaliation.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| How is that relevant? Why would no-fault divorce help
| that situation?
| granshaw wrote:
| How I can be a good example to my child is what I'm most
| worried about. I'm not even convinced myself that having
| the highest levels of integrity is beneficial in current
| society, let alone when they're of age.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| The guy that's getting payed more than you because he cheated
| into a higher paying position is happy to have you believe
| that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > it was a cultural difference that had to be respected
|
| I strongly disagree with that professor. Dishonesty does not
| have to be, and absolutely should not be, respected. Even if it
| is a "cultural difference" [citation required].
| bumby wrote:
| > _" absolutely should not be, respected"_
|
| Taking issue with the 'absolute' part: The cultural context
| does impact what gets respected, though. For example, having
| an organization that avoids nepotism is generally respected
| in the U.S. There are other countries/cultures that do not,
| at least to the same degree. From their perspective, the more
| respectable act is to help out those in your tribe/family
| when you are in a position to do so.
| frumper wrote:
| Parent specifically said dishonesty should not be
| respected. Helping people in your family/community is a
| fine goal as long as it's not dishonest. If Bob gets hired
| at global corp A and is able to hire his unqualified family
| to the detriment of corp A then that's just as bad. If
| they're qualified then there might be a culture clash, but
| it doesn't sound necessarily dishonest.
| bumby wrote:
| Fair enough. I maybe unfairly characterized both
| "dishonesty" and "nepotism" as a display of lack of
| integrity (by the Western definition, which tends to bias
| toward meritocratic values). "Dishonest" from the
| standpoint of deviating from the social contract of
| unbiased and meritocratic hiring.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't see nepotism as being dishonest. It may be
| unseemly or unfair (or not, depending on culture), but
| it's not dishonest.
| bumby wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't draw the distinction I was making clearly
| enough. I've edited the post, but it's too late to
| clearly show the edit.
|
| My point being, in the U.S. there is an agreement
| (implicit or explicit, depending on the context) that
| hiring will be fair, above board, and based on
| meritocratic principles. Nepotism undermines this and is,
| in the distinction I was trying to draw, dishonest from
| the standpoint that an organization will say one thing
| ("We hire based on merit") and do another ("We hire based
| on connections"). Other cultures do not necessarily play
| this game and make it quite well known that you will be
| hired based on your network above most else.
| [deleted]
| tru3_power wrote:
| What's even more depressing is when these liars and cheats
| ultimately run out of time (people start realizing) they just
| hop ship.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Which is super encouraged by the standard, "you should be
| switching jobs every 2 years to maximize your wage".
| netfortius wrote:
| I assume such events are fairly common, at least in the US. I
| was once colleague with a [nationality to be preserved, to
| avoid expanded blame] guy in a CS graduate program, in the US,
| who had his sister (yes - different gender!) sitting a few
| exams for him, and passing them, of course.
| dumbotron wrote:
| > [cheating] was a cultural difference that had to be respected
|
| What he meant to say was "they pay sticker price"
| skanga wrote:
| America actually elected Trump - the ultimate liar/cheater. Pot
| meet the kettle ...
| raghudotcc wrote:
| I am from India, and I just recently completed my Masters from
| a US university. I have never cheated in my life when it comes
| to interviews, exams, or assignments; not once. I am worried
| that calling us "low-trust" because of your experience with a
| few students might lead others to think that the entire country
| that is so diverse and large is comprised of just an
| incompetent set of cheaters. I agree that a lot of students
| cheat, but that's true of students from other countries(like
| US, Uk, etc) as well. I know this from my experience as a TA. I
| love computer science and so do many of my friends.
|
| Edit: I should also add that I realize by low-trust OP meant
| the academic term for kinship-based society but my worry is
| that tying low-trust with cheating students from a country that
| gets its image tarnished because of various other reasons like
| low-wage labour and tech scams might paint a different picture
| to those who don't know about the term or OPs intent
| thr0away wrote:
| I came to US from India in 1996. During my college years, at
| a state school in CA, 80% of the student in CS courses were
| from India. Almost all of the boys from India cheated on
| exams because professor would generally leave the classroom.
| Grading was done on curve so those of us who didn't cheat had
| bad grades to show for :-)
|
| India has been a low-trust society for a long long time and
| remains so. Every Indian I know would admit this in private.
| Back in 90's there was an Indian grocery store in Fremont, CA
| owned by a Gujarati gentleman. He had a poster on the wall
| that offended many of his countrymen. It said, "100 mein sey
| 90 beyimaan, fir bhi mera Bharat Mahan!". Roughly translated
| it says 90 of 100 Indians cheat but still my India the great.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I graduated with my Bachelors about a decade ago and recently
| went back to school for my Masters. I work full time and
| attend school part-time.
|
| I was shocked when I went back and started to work alongside
| many of the students in group projects. About 3/4 of the
| class were from India or Nepal. When I would meet up for
| group projects on Comp Sci security labs, I was shocked that
| everyone's instinct when we would start was to immediately
| google or use Chegg to find the lab done by other students
| and essentially copy it. I got frustrated because many of the
| times, my group would resort to cheating before even
| understanding what the lab wanted us to do, it was
| instinctual.
|
| I didn't see this in the few groups I had with other
| American-born citizens. I feel guilty to even suggest a
| difference like this and I am conscious of cultural bias, but
| it was impossible to ignore the dichotomy between these
| groups.
|
| Up to this point i have chalked the difference to an age gap.
| Many of my classmates are young and have zero work experience
| yet. They want their degree as a piece of paper to get a job.
| By contrast I already have a high-ranking and high-paying
| position and extensive resume. I am not looking to use my
| Masters as a rite of passage, but I truly want to go back to
| school to deepen my knowledge academically at some scientific
| concepts that you won't find in YouTube videos or through
| personal study. I am there to learn, not just pass a class.
| So when given these labs, I see them as opportunities to
| learn something to apply in my current career and my
| teammates just want to get it done so they can get a job. But
| this doesn't explain why the American-born teammates who were
| also young were willing to learn and not resort instantly to
| cheating, so it likely is deeply cultural.
| pkdpic wrote:
| I was happy to see this comment but expected to see it much
| higher up. "low-trust" is obviously an established term but
| it's really giving me a bad feeling here. These are
| enormously diverse cultures and we only see a very specific
| filtered set of demographics that end up in the US / West.
| esaym wrote:
| Not sure how but after reading your response, I've got a
| "knight and knave" logic puzzle running through my mind....
| capitainenemo wrote:
| I read his complaint as more one of societal reinforcing of
| certain behaviours. Certainly cheating exists in all
| societies, but if it is considered acceptable or necessary as
| a reaction to others, it's going to be a problem.
|
| I looked up where Indians feel about trust here:
| https://ourworldindata.org/trust
|
| Indians self-rank at 17% - the US at 40%, Canadians at 50%.
| btilly wrote:
| I'm glad you've never cheated, and hope this becomes more
| common in the future.
|
| But you're fighting an uphill battle to expect people not to
| possess prejudices based on what is statistically likely.
| People will believe the evidence of their eyes.
|
| The most you can hope is that people not act on their
| prejudices before getting to know you. And, as unfair as it
| is that you can't change it, you'll have to find ways to live
| with the reality that there are people who will act on their
| prejudices before they get to know you and know that you're
| really different.
| cayley_graph wrote:
| Can't believe I have to state this explicitly, but I am on
| Hacker News, after all-- scraping the bottom of the barrel
| here.
|
| It is absolutely reasonable to ask people to reconsider
| their prejudices. Your line of thought does nothing but
| reinforce people's existing biases without leaving room for
| the nuance of social context. Racists misuse statistics all
| the time to justify their awfulness. Consider whether
| _you're_ really different from any of those people. Or do I
| just need to get to know you more?
| dang wrote:
| I'll stick up for btilly here - I don't think you've read
| his comment fairly, and instead are criticizing something
| he didn't say. He didn't say, or imply, that people
| shouldn't be asked to reconsider their prejudices. Of
| course they (or we, rather) should.
|
| This is covered by the HN guidelines, which ask: "
| _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| I could imagine a criticism of btilly's post on the basis
| that it didn't really meet the GP's experience, didn't
| show empathy (though I think he was trying to be helpful,
| not mean), and didn't contribute anything positive, just
| "you'll have to find ways to deal with it". A better
| comment might have been more constructive and less coldly
| generic. But those aren't the criticisms you've offered.
|
| Instead, you crossed into personal attack and snark with
| your last two sentences. Those things are definitely
| against the rules here, so please don't do them. It's
| always possible to make your substantive points without
| that, and you're of course welcome to do that instead.
|
| No matter how low in the barrel HN is or you feel it is,
| there's always room to sink lower! That's why we have
| guidelines--to try to stave off further sinking. If you
| wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| posting in the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it.
| cayley_graph wrote:
| Sure, I agree that I could have been nicer. On the other
| hand, I have very few spoons for responding politely to
| people who retort to others' requests to not be judged on
| the basis of their race with, effectively, "suck it up".
| It's difficult for me to consider that an attempt at
| helpfulness, though it's possible that someone without
| personal exposure to these issues could mistakenly think
| otherwise. It causes a lot more damage than some snark on
| my part, imo.
|
| In any case, thanks for taking the time to offer a more
| charitable perspective on the comment I responded to.
| archagon wrote:
| Not OP, but to be clear, "low trust society" has a specific
| sociological meaning relating to interpersonal trust: https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_socie...
|
| It doesn't mean that individuals from that society are less
| trustworthy.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| It isn't defined that way, but yes it is strong evidence
| that people from that society are less trustworthy. People
| are less trusting when others are more likely to cheat
| them.
| archagon wrote:
| "Strong evidence" = your feelings?
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| well you tell me, who is defrauding them causing them to
| trust others less? Are you going to find a way to blame
| White people for how Indians treat each other?
| raghudotcc wrote:
| I realized that's what they meant but I was worried that
| tying low-trust with cheating students from a country that
| has a tarnished image because of tech scams and low-wage
| tech workers might paint a different picture to those who
| don't know about the term or OPs intent.
| archagon wrote:
| Fair, thanks for the clarification.
| system16 wrote:
| I find it odd this article doesn't provide any examples of
| low and high trust societies.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| What about using the corruption index and equating it to
| the trust level?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_In
| dex
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Caveat:
|
| > The Index only measures public sector corruption,
| ignoring the private sector.
| tristor wrote:
| Like all observations, they are reflective only of the
| individuals observed, even if a pattern emerges. 17% of all
| people in the world are Indian, India alone has 1.4B people,
| and that doesn't even count the hundreds of millions of
| Indians in the diaspora around the world. Nothing you could
| possibly say about Indians is true for every person in that
| group, because the group is so large that it necessarily
| includes every possible facet of humanity, good, bad, or
| otherwise.
|
| I say all that to say, that I stand by the truth of my
| observations, but I do not intend for those observations to
| in any way imply that it would be acceptable to discriminate
| against people from India, or anywhere else, on the basis of
| their origin or ethnicity. I do not discriminate in this
| manner, as it is just as ethically reprehensible, incorrect,
| and dishonorable as the behavior I was pointing out in my
| original comment. I have worked with many Indian colleagues
| throughout my career that were excellent engineers, managers,
| and otherwise decent people.
|
| Just to clearly state it, I do not in any way think that any
| individual person I meet from India is any more likely to
| cheat or otherwise be dishonest than any individual person I
| meet from anywhere else. India is far from the only low-trust
| society in the world, and in general most of the countries in
| the world qualify as low-trust societies. These are academic
| terms, and it is entirely expected that there is a higher
| variance in behavior for individuals in low-trust societies
| versus high-trust societies, so if anything honestly
| referring to India as a low-trust society implies within it
| that there is a higher variance of individual behavior and
| it's even less accurate to generalize about the behavior of
| Indian people.
|
| I would be happy to work with anyone who loves computer
| science and embraces the cool things that we can do with
| technology to reshape the world and improve the human
| condition, no matter where they originate from.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Your rant is a redundant "but not all" truism.
|
| It doesn't invalidate the easily observable phenomenon of
| widespread cheating in low trust society like India. This
| is also a huge problem for universities around that accept
| students of wealthy parents from these countries which
| cause grade inflation. Multiple articles have been written
| around this in mainstream publications.
| tristor wrote:
| > It doesn't invalidate the easily observable phenomenon
| of widespread cheating in low trust society like India.
|
| Agreed. I am very carefully saying that I stand by my own
| observations as well. The point is that, while these
| behaviors may be commonplace in a particular society, it
| does not mean any given individual person from that
| society engages in these behaviors. We should always be
| careful of the heuristics we apply to people and work to
| treat every individual as an individual.
|
| Not being careful here can actually create a form of
| category error. It's similar to the expectations of
| visitors to the US that everyone is walking around openly
| carrying guns and shooting each other constantly due to
| what's in the news or the statistical probability of a
| shooting occurring compared to other countries in the
| world. If you have a 4x higher chance of being involved
| in a shooting per capita in the US vs a random Western
| European country, both numbers could be minuscule chances
| (and are). Just because this type of dishonest behavior
| is more commonplace in low trust societies, and in this
| case in India in particular, the population is so large
| that it still represents a small fraction of the total
| number of people and you have to be careful not to indict
| everyone within the society on the basis of the behavior
| of a few. 15% of the Indian population would be the same
| as half or more of the US population, but there's a very
| big difference in categorization between something that
| is the behavior of a minority of a population vs half or
| more of the population.
|
| That's all I'm saying. Treat individuals as individuals.
| [deleted]
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My spouse works in a large multinational non-profit. India is
| one of the countries they will not partner with very often,
| due to the massive amount of, shall we say, unexplained cost
| inefficiencies (lost money) that happens. One of her Indian
| coworkers explained that the culture is just like that, for
| better or worse, it's a hustle culture. And once you get
| someone to buy, it seems it's expected to use that as
| resources for the next hustle.
|
| Sounds a lot like academia, to be honest.
| laratied wrote:
| It is disappointing philosophically but I would imagine how the
| game theory of this works out strategically if really trying to
| play an optimal strategy is "always cheat".
|
| There just such asymmetry between the risks vs payouts.
|
| Sadly, I imagine your professor was simply wrong. Most likely
| even for you there is something you could cheat/lie about that
| would be practically undetectable and give a huge payout for
| almost no risk.
|
| This is also why a level of a self delusion is an advantage in
| our system too. Then you get the benefits of cheating/lies
| without even knowing it or having to intentionally cheat/lie.
|
| "Cheating ultimately cheats oneself" sounds right but just
| isn't reality.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| This just reminded me of a comment from my father from like 40
| years ago. He was a civil engineer who designed waste water
| treatment plants when the US was funding it in the '70's (clean
| water act). Apparently there was some huge water treatment
| plant project in India at that time, and everyone he
| interviewed from that area said they had been in charge of the
| project.
| mock-possum wrote:
| > folks from India and other low trust societies would
| mercilessly cheat on their projects and exams, blatantly
| helping one another on individual works, and the college knew
| about it and didn't care. When I had brought this up at one
| point, I was told by a professor that it was a cultural
| difference that had to be respected
|
| I mean I'm sympathetic to your experience, the treatment you're
| describing is unfair, but... that also sounds pretty racist.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Not endorsing cheating, but in the real world, everyone cheats.
| Somehow looking up answers in exams is considered cheating, but
| hiring your buddies (which is very prevalent in tech) for
| positions they aren't the best candidates for is not. Everyone
| cheats, but somehow calling specific societies as low trust
| while ignoring similar behavior in others is not fair.
|
| It's the same philosophy of "it's not bribing it's lobbying."
| giantg2 wrote:
| I mean, I do see the appeal. I would guess it's better to cheat
| and be successful than to be honorable and be a failure. I can
| say that the latter really sucks.
| wavefunction wrote:
| I'd only roast you for misunderstanding the "problem" to be
| solved. It's not that the societies are "low-trust" but that
| the cost of being caught for cheating is that you continue with
| the life already available to you or you win a golden ticket if
| you're not caught. It's a no-brainer.
|
| There's no reason to not-cheat unless you absolutely don't have
| to and what's the maxim about good programmers, they're so lazy
| they'll figure out a work-around to save themselves some time?
| Even if it's stuff they know already? Once you're into the
| system there are mutual shared interests and political efforts
| that can support such a career.
| tristor wrote:
| You essentially just described the difference between low-
| trust and high-trust societies. In low-trust societies
| because minimal trust exists, violating trust has minimal
| consequences. With high-trust societies, losing trust has
| heavy consequences, because you've violated an expected
| social norm and it creates reputational damage.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There's no reason to not-cheat unless you absolutely don't
| have to
|
| It's a shame that being a decent person is not sufficient
| reason.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Many generations of people before us ended up prematurely
| dead by being decent people while others cheated
| JohnFen wrote:
| And many generations of people before us ended up
| prematurely dead by cheating, as well.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Luckily, my professor was right though, despite exposure to a
| lot of negative behaviors I don't like, don't respect, and
| don't endorse, I did excel and I continue to excel above my
| peers, especially those who cheated.
|
| Disagree from my experience.
|
| When I was a TA in grad school, I had a PhD student who clearly
| had access to the instructor's solution manual. His answers
| were copied verbatim. If the solution's manual had an error, so
| did his answer. If the professor assigned a problem not from
| the book, he wouldn't answer it. I debated reporting him to the
| professor, but didn't want the drama and figured what your
| professor did: He'll do poorly on the exams (I was right), and
| poorly in the work place.
|
| He got his PhD, got a fairly senior position, and quickly rose
| to be the director of a well known company's research division.
|
| He probably _was_ smart - he did get the PhD from a top ranked
| university. But I strongly suspect he gamed the system at his
| company just as he gamed the system there.
|
| In grad school, I had a close friend. Clearly a very bright,
| skilled guy. Was kicked out of the PhD program when it was
| discovered he had been fabricating data (Nature was right about
| to publish his paper when he got discovered).
|
| He went off to another top ranked university and got his PhD in
| the same area. I don't know how/why he had the balls to do it,
| as surely his former advisor would be in close proximity
| (conferences, etc) - and at least within my university his
| advisor was quite open about my friend's malfeasance.
|
| He then got a research position at the top company in his
| field. Got promotions, and then quit and founded a startup that
| is doing well, and is known to some in this crowd here. If all
| goes to plan, he'll have his exit and be quite rich.
|
| Now I don't know if he cheated in his second PhD or on the job,
| and I'm still in touch with him. But ... no - cheaters often
| continue to do well after graduating.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Reminds of the billionaire who cheated in chess against
| Vishy.
| wanttocomment wrote:
| Absolutely. Values such as "it's wrong even if nobody gets hurt
| or finds out" are not universally held. Besides differences in
| culture, there is almost no liberal arts education in places
| like India.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I had a fantastic thermodynamics instructor in undergrad
| school. He was from a rough part of a city in Iran. At the
| beginning of the course, he told us his policy on cheating,
| which was zero tolerance. He added that he had seen every kind
| of cheating and dishonesty in his neighborhood growing up and
| there was no way anyone in that class would get away with
| anything because he had seen it all. It was a great course.
|
| At any rate, being from a "low trust society" can also motivate
| someone to go in the other direction because they have seen the
| injustice that is a consequence of cheating and dishonesty.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| I don't know where are you from, but there's a difference
| between wanting to be different by leaving your community and
| going to another place, and trying to be different from your
| social circle yet staying there.
|
| If he stayed, he wouldn't have been as successful as he is
| now.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This. Low-trust countries generate an outflow of people in
| the direction of first-world countries. This is an incredible
| talent-pool of disciplined and motivated idealists and a lot
| of the technological IP that gives an upper hand to Western
| economies comes from this process.
|
| Personally, my parents are such people - they left Poland in
| the 1970's and excelled in America. One of the best things
| that our country has done since is that we have climbed into
| a higher-trust category in the 90's. This has gradually
| limited that brain drain mechanic. While things aren't
| perfect, there are far fewer such people leaving our economy
| and it has done wonders.
|
| However, everywhere in the world this is a continuous battle
| that will always have to be fought and won over and over
| again. The lying and the cheating always creeps back into
| every system.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes because Americans never cheat to get ahead and we are all
| morally superior...
| renewiltord wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is that many Americans have a blind
| spot here. You can get away with a lot of corruption and
| dishonest behaviour if you're the right kind of American
| because admitting it would be to question the idea of honesty
| here.
|
| That's usually why the first port of call when some
| corruption is detected is Finding What's Weird and the second
| is Not Like The Rest Of Us.
|
| San Francisco's city government is hopelessly corrupt and
| visibly so for someone who has lived under other obviously
| corrupt governments. But that is not even apparent to faraway
| Republicans who are the only ones who will say it is.
|
| But those people are similarly ignorant of the massive
| corruption of their own local government.
|
| It has taught me a new path of success for corruption: that
| of hiding in plain sight among those of your identity.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| If he corruption is institutional it's not seen as cheating
| timthelion wrote:
| Having grown up in America and moved to Czechia for college I
| have to say that I was absolutely shocked by the level of
| cheating both by Czechs as well as those from "farther east"
| like Ukraine and Russia. Just brazen obvious sheeting like
| taking notes into exams and hiding them. Cooperating during
| exams. Even collaboration to distract the teacher during
| exams. When I was at college in the US getting caught
| cheating once meant an instant fail for the course. Twice
| meant you were kicked out of school and you'd have a cheating
| mark added to your credit transfer paper so you couldn't move
| your college credits elsewhere. In Czechia, getting caught
| cheating meant having to re-take the test. Nothing bad
| happened to cheaters and they cheated rampantly.
| nosianu wrote:
| This contradicts what we read here about cheating being
| very often tolerated in higher education institutions in
| the US, because money.
|
| Usually I try including at least a few links, but in this
| case I think anybody who has read these threads right here
| on HN should remember those numerous posts and discussions?
| I remember comments from educators who wanted to do
| something but the higher-ups prevented it, for example, or
| reversed the decision. Unfortunately I don't know what to
| search for to find these kinds of comments again.
|
| _EDIT:_ Found one very quickly after just a little cross-
| reading of one cheating related thread, the reply to this
| linked comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32533086
|
| Quote:
|
| > _The amount of cheating was insane. He started academic
| dishonesty proceedings against many of the students but the
| department pressured him to "work it out."_
|
| It's not just the students either: https://www.forbes.com/s
| ites/ryancraig/2019/06/21/americas-l...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| As someone born and raised in Romania, I can 100% confirm
| what the above poster was saying for Romania as well.
| Even if cheating may be widespread through corruption and
| other means in the States, it is at least theoretically
| treated much more seriously.
|
| The worse penalty possible for cheating (IF you get
| caught and IF the teacher/professor even cares, which was
| not by any means universal) is getting a grade of 1 (out
| of 10) on that specific item (exam, project etc. ).
|
| This is even true for the national country-wide exams you
| take in 8th and 12th grades: if you are caught cheating,
| you get a 1/10 on that specific exam, but can still take
| all the rest, and will be forced to re-take the one you
| cheated on in the next session.
|
| The only thing treated more seriously were
| bachelor's/master's/PhD theses, where you could face
| plagiarism charges. But even this is mostly theoretical,
| especially for the bachelor's, since only some cursory
| verification was ever performed, at least at my
| university (one of the biggest ones in the capital).
| nosianu wrote:
| > _it is at least theoretically treated much more
| seriously._
|
| My impression from reading HN, where the topic came up
| numerous times over the years, was that that is not so.
| See the link I presented as example, I saw _a lot_ such
| stories, right here in the discussions, but also in some
| articles. Not just the US, I also remember similar
| anecdotes about management preventing punishment from
| Canada even when a professor initially tried to do
| something.
|
| If it is not representative I apologize, I go by what I
| read mostly here, and it was a lot over the years.
|
| There certainly seems to be an official stance against
| cheating, e.g. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.p
| hp?story=201609211...
|
| It's just that I saw so many stories from or about
| educators who tried and it went like in that link I
| included, especially when many students were caught.
|
| "Why Professors Don't Do More to Stop Students Who Cheat"
| - https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-professors-dont-
| do-mor...
|
| > _Some who have tried say that administrators, fearful
| of lawsuits, don't back them up_
|
| > _"In the majority of cases of trivial cheating, I think
| most professors turn a blind eye," says Donald L. McCabe,
| the associate provost for campus development at Rutgers
| University at Newark, who has studied the issue. "The
| number who do nothing is very small, but the number who
| do very little is very large."_
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I did say _theoretically_. That in practice corruption
| and various power games make it difficult to apply the
| theory in reality is very different from there just not
| being any punishment in the rules at all (or only very
| weak punishment).
| trgn wrote:
| Two things can be true at the same time. There is a lot
| of cheating in america, but nowhere near as much as in
| low-trust countries.
|
| fwiw - I think Americans value integrity a lot more than
| most other places, and academic cheating is not nearly as
| common.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _Two things can be true at the same time._
|
| Of course, but the commenter I replied to made a specific
| statement, first sentence, making it sound to my reading
| - and I don't think I'm reading something into it that
| isn't meant to be there? - as if it's a lot less in the
| US. But even a little bit of searching, and every single
| time the topic comes up here, which usually is for higher
| education so I'm not making any statement about anything
| below, ends up with a lot of comments, and no opposition
| to them, saying there is _a lot_ of cheating there.
|
| Examples:
|
| https://academicintegrity.org/resources/facts-and-
| statistics
|
| > _McCabe's original research and subsequent follow-up
| studies show that more than 60 percent of university
| students freely admit to cheating in some form._
|
| https://proctoredu.com/blog/tpost/5dk67zrns1-academic-
| dishon...
|
| > _The level of cheating in high school according to
| statistics is extremely high. One of the most thorough
| studies, carried out by Dr. Donald McCabe, reveals that
| about 95% of polled students (both undergraduates and
| graduates) admitted to having cheated in some form._
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031255390/reports-of-
| cheatin...
|
| Therefore, it surprised my that the original commenter
| made such a strong statement.
| trgn wrote:
| thx for clarification and added links, will read up.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Cheating might be tolerated more in the US if the student
| is wealthy, which might be a US student or far more
| likely the scion of some family in a foreign country. It
| has not been tolerated anywhere I've attended though.
| jagtstronaut wrote:
| I'm gonna have to go with scarface on this one. While your
| statements could very well be true, it is dangerous to make
| cultural generalizations without the data to back it.
| wanttocomment wrote:
| What kind of "data" would you accept for this? Crime data
| by demographic?
|
| Scarface just said "can't generalize to everyone" which
| is true and not the original point made.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| There's a very well studied decline in trust in America over
| time. Despite your snark no one claimed we never cheated etc.
| It's just getting much worse
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| Nobody claimed that americans never cheated, yet the blame
| of things getting worse is put on GP on those coming from
| "low trust" societies.
|
| It's a xenophobic lie, like if Americans don't celebrate
| lying on positive euphemisms like "fake it till you make
| it" or "being a good salesman"
| mydogcanpurr wrote:
| Do you have an alternative explanation? Or is your stance
| that it just couldn't possibly be immigrants?
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| Maybe academic cheating is related to people pursuing a
| degree more like a passport to riches than a vocational
| pursuit.
|
| I mean, the whole reason why people also lie in other
| areas. Which also explains why people of "low trust"
| societies might lie more rather than "it's in the culture
| of those dirty foreigners".
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Similar experiences have been reported by people who came
| from these places
| Floegipoky wrote:
| Fwiw I've usually seen "fake it till you make it" in 2
| contexts: 1. Disciplines in which skill development
| requires overreaching beyond one's current skill level eg
| musical improvisation 2. In reference to confidence eg
| many software developers experience imposter syndrome and
| have to pretend to be more confident than they actually
| are in order to be taken seriously, even if they are the
| most skilled in the room
| JohnFen wrote:
| > if Americans don't celebrate lying on positive
| euphemisms like "fake it till you make it" or "being a
| good salesman"
|
| Most Americans that I know don't consider those phrases
| to reflect positive values at all. They're used
| disparagingly against people who really think like that.
| kelipso wrote:
| Either you live in some bubble or you're just lying lol.
| kbenson wrote:
| It may be xenophobic, but whether it's a lie is separate
| from that and it may or may not be. Unpalatable
| assertions can still be true.
|
| For what it's worth, "fake it till you make it" is far
| from being universally seen as positive, and (car)
| salesmen are seen as one of the most untrustworthy and
| least liked professions (just above telemarketers and
| members of congress). [1]
|
| 1: https://thehill.com/business/3812900-here-are-the-
| most-and-l...
| scarface74 wrote:
| I guess "trust" was at an all time high when there were
| literally laws against Black people being in the same
| section as White people, sundown towns in the south and
| laws against black people marrying white people?
| yCombLinks wrote:
| Not every facet of society is related to racism. Saying I
| prefer the days of a single income being enough to
| survive on doesn't mean I wish black's and women had less
| rights. It's an orthogonal point. Wages are gone because
| manufacturing moved overseas in the same time period,
| etc...
| scarface74 wrote:
| Those were the same days...
|
| I assure you that "the good old days" weren't so good for
| my still living parents growing up in the segregated
| south.
|
| As far as "not everything being related to race", tell
| that to my parents who grew up in the 60s and 70s when
| everything was related to their race there those were the
| good old days.
|
| They literally weren't "trusted" to drink out of the same
| water fountain, go to the same schools or swim in the
| same pool.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Different issues, unrelated
| scarface74 wrote:
| We are talking about "trust" receding in society. The
| majority didn't "trust" the minority enough to even allow
| them to be a part of society. It's only a different issue
| to _you_ because your parents can wax poetically about
| the "good old days"
| yCombLinks wrote:
| Are you implying trying to increase societal trust would
| increase racism? You aren't making an obvious point.
| Trust and racism are inverses?
| scarface74 wrote:
| I'm not implying anything. I'm stating very explicitly
| that people who say trust is lower now than some mythical
| time in the past is the same time period when the US had
| laws explicitly targeting "others" because they didn't
| trust Black people (Jim Crow laws, laws against
| miscegenation, redlining), Japanese (internment camps),
| etc.
|
| The only people who long for "the good old days" when
| "trust" was high are those who benefited themselves or
| whose parents benefited from systematic and de jure
| discrimination.
|
| The good old days when you could live off of one income
| came about because Europe was recovering from a war and
| we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.
| bumby wrote:
| Does this correlate with the increase in polarization? I
| know Jonathan Haidt has spoken about his research on the
| increase in polarization is America.
|
| If that correlation exists, it may point to an alternative
| hypothesis to the GP claim that the issue is rooted in
| those coming from "low trust" societies and due to an
| internal mechanism.
| scarface74 wrote:
| This gets back to my other statement where people seem to
| ignore Jim Crow laws and the segregated south. How much
| more "polarized" can people be than literally being
| forced by law to do everything separately?
| bumby wrote:
| So you're saying we are less polarized? How do you square
| that with Haidts research?
| randcraw wrote:
| I wonder if Americans' history of seeing cheating as
| dishonorable grew from our roots in Puritanism, where
| principle always trumps pragmatism. If so, then perhaps our
| ongoing devaluation of principles (and our rising mistrust
| in others to act honorably) is caused by the erosion of
| those roots as the American middle class has fallen on
| harder times, concluding that "the rules of the game have
| changed" and the old mantra of guiding one's life by
| principle is now delivering diminishing returns. So when in
| Rome...
| prewett wrote:
| It's not Puritanism, but Judaeo-Christianity. In the
| Bible, God is always described as telling the truth, so
| any form of misrepresentation is moving yourself towards
| the opposite of God's character. Cheating is basically a
| form of misrepresenting yourself; commandment #9
| prohibits false testimony about your neighbor, which
| presumably also includes false testimony about yourself.
| The New Testament also prohibits lying, as does the
| Talmud. In fact, the New Testament describes Satan as the
| father of lies, which presumably reflected Jewish
| traditions at the time. Imitating the devil would hardly
| be honorable for either Jews or Christians, and Paul even
| explicitly says we are to imitate Christ. (Since Paul was
| a rabbi applying the current Jewish thinking in the
| context of discovering that Messiah = Christ = God,
| presumably the Jewish thinking was that we should imitate
| God)
|
| The Old Testament also offers an approach to dealing with
| rampant cheating in society: trust in God to provide you
| with what you need. It's not an exact match for
| classmates cheating, but David had to deal with a literal
| existential crisis by a king who believed falsehoods
| about him, and dealt with it by trusting God and refusing
| to kill the king (that is, using the king's methods to
| secure himself). Many of the psalms appear to record the
| emotional process he went through.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It also says invade a country and kill all of the men,
| women and children and take their land...
|
| https://www.bible.com/bible/1359/1SA.15.3-23.ICB
|
| Even with David, when David sent one of his soldiers to
| die on the front line so he could have the soldier's
| wife, God let David's baby die.
|
| The Old Testament God wasn't exactly the loving and
| forgive your neighbor type.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Americans cheat at earth-scale by bringing about into
| existence of intricate systems that benefit them immensely.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Bretton Woods was an own goal by Europe because they
| couldn't stop killing each other for centuries. America
| benefited because immigrants who leave are typically quite
| bright and willing to take risks.
|
| The perfect storm of incompetence created the system we
| inherited from our forefathers. It benefits Americans, but
| maybe the wealth is also killing us due to massive obesity
| and sedentary lifestyles on top of a greedy litigious
| society.
|
| No system is perfect.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Yeah, I mean one thing that's interesting about the world
| is that every country cheats, but we all cheat in our own
| ways. I don't think there's anyway to get around it.
|
| That said, I don't really want American culture to continue
| down this "if the ends justify the means" trend that we've
| been on. We're not cut out for it! We'll get our lunch
| eaten.
| passion__desire wrote:
| America, as a country, is "dollar" wise and cents
| foolish, which is a good thing to be, if we invert the
| meaning of original phrase.
| kelipso wrote:
| America has been "going down the road" of ends justify
| the means since WW2. What exactly was the massacre in the
| Korean war and Vietnam war if not. And sanctions to
| starve citizens of numerous countries. Etc etc.
| trefoiled wrote:
| Agreed, and it's also hard to consider the US as on some
| kind of general decline from high trust to low trust.
| American honesty has always been highly contextual. All it
| takes is a look into how we treated written agreements with
| Native Americans to see how small the radius of this value
| extends. Native societies were "high trust" in the sense
| that they had no ability, at least initially, to comprehend
| that settlers would sign an agreement with the full
| knowledge that they would renege on it as soon as the
| conditions had favorably changed. This is much more in
| keeping with a game theory style decision making process
| than anything related to an adherence to a higher moral
| virture or whatever. Native peoples experienced this
| process one by one, and eventually none trusted the word of
| colonialists ever again.
| tdba wrote:
| High/low trust at root refers to how you behave to other
| members of your nation, not foreign peoples. Every nation
| ever has always tried win zero-sum interactions with
| other nations (e.g. who gets the land, resources), and
| all existing nations today continue to do so. Native
| American societies may have been high trust internally
| (within the tribe, clan, nation boundary) but certainly
| screwed over other Native American societies (e.g. the
| Haida and Tlingit practiced hereditary chattel slavery of
| foreign tribesmen for hundreds of years before European
| contact). What I'm getting at is that there effectively
| is no such thing as "high trust" in international
| relations so your example isn't cogent.
| trefoiled wrote:
| Point taken, but consider the context of where we are in
| this thread: discussing immigrants and foreign contract
| workers cheating in interviews and on their resumes for
| positions within the United States. Perhaps your point is
| more applicable to how the idea of high or low trust
| cannot apply to workers operating in a culture foreign to
| their own.
|
| The example of inter tribal slavery doesn't actually
| apply to what I'm talking about. Slavery, and highly
| destructive, unprovoked raids which sometimes concluded
| with massacres of women and children were normal in the
| Americas. Is enslaving a member of another band or tribe
| a violation of trust? Is engaging in unprovoked war raids
| a violation of trust? These practices would not come as a
| surprise to anyone living within raiding territory of a
| warlike people. Trust can only come into play when a
| party to an agreement, whether tacit or explicit, has an
| opportunity to violate what was agreed upon.
|
| Saying "Every nation ever has always tried win zero-sum
| interactions with other nations" conceals that there were
| actually vast differences in the way colonialist powers
| conducted themselves in relations with Native American
| tribes. The (at the time British) Canadian government
| honored treaties much more often and in better faith than
| US authorities.
| tdba wrote:
| When you're getting colonized, I don't know if it really
| matters whether the colonizers honor their promises more
| or less. Consider the Maori, the gold standard for a
| colonized people who managed to get a full treaty with
| the British very early on, even securing representation
| in government in the mid-1800s. Are they meaningfully any
| better off as a result of these agreements, relative to
| other indigenous groups? Not really, and in recent times
| they even seem to have slid back on many important
| welfare and quality of life metrics, despite changes in
| NZ policies towards Maoris that should have had the
| opposite effect. Sure the Maori may have built up "trust"
| in the colonizers' treaties, but since they were an out-
| group it didn't affect their day-to-day interactions, so
| they didn't reap the benefits that go with being part of
| the high trust society.
|
| My point is that in-group relations is not the same as
| out-group relations. High trust is about how you treat
| members of your in-group. Enslaving foreign people is
| most certainly a "low trust" move (how can I possibly
| enter an agreement with you when I know you might just
| show up one day and enslave me?) but it's fully possible
| and consistent for the perpetrator to belong to a high
| trust society.
| trefoiled wrote:
| I think you'd be surprised by just how possible it would
| be to enter into a successful and good faith agreement
| with a warring tribe which has enslaved or massacred your
| people. Spanish colonists in New Mexico did so with the
| Comanche despite the Comanche holding hundreds of captive
| New Mexicans who they had kidnapped. How did this work?
| The New Mexicans honored their treaty, and the Comanche
| established a degree of personal trust with their
| governer, Juan Bautista de Anza. This treaty was signed
| in the wake of massacres on both sides, and the captives
| were not returned. The Comanche continued to raid and
| kidnap in other regions of New Spain after the treaty was
| signed. Part of the reason you might find something like
| this hard to believe is because of your own cultural
| attitudes about war and slavery, but these are not
| universal attitudes.
|
| Your example of the Maori is perfectly analogous to what
| happened in Canada/ But regardless of how things turned
| out, why did the British honor treaties when they had no
| incentive to do so? How do you account for this
| difference in a world dominated by purely rational
| decision making when interacting with those outside of
| your culture?
| tdba wrote:
| Why did they honor treaties rather than just continuing
| with open conflict? The juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
| In general you only fight a war when a) you're being
| attacked or b) there is something to be gained by doing
| so that, in expectation, is more valuable than the cost
| of the war. If there'd had been mountains of gold in
| Canada to be won, or if the indigenous peoples had put up
| less of a fight (imposed less of a cost), you can bet the
| British would not have signed any treaties. Same with New
| Zealand.
| psygn89 wrote:
| It's the "fake it 'til you make it" and "good artists copy,
| great artists steal" mentality that some people really stretch
| and abuse the meaning of to lift any guilty conscience they
| would otherwise have, and think "if you can't win, then join
| 'em".
| msie wrote:
| To add my two bits: I don't support it.
| _puk wrote:
| According to game theory [0], it all comes right in the end..
|
| Sadly, the time horizon is far too long, and the individual
| short term benefit far too high for this to be (currently)
| working out as hoped..
|
| 0: https://ncase.me/trust/
| asimpletune wrote:
| I looked at this and followed the whole thing. So good and
| interesting. It basically implies that one of the keys to a
| trusting society is repeated interactions and low "mistakes",
| I.e. things that can be perceived as evil even though they're
| just honest mistakes.
|
| This is why it's important for in politics and media for them
| to police their own behavior, because without it there are
| too many mistakes for a trusting society.
|
| One thing that isn't shown though in the games sandbox mode
| is for the players to be able to change the rules and reward
| structures, which is more akin to our society. This would
| create a much more hard to predict dynamic.
| hoosieree wrote:
| This is why I enjoy both woodworking and code golfing. There's
| an inescapable objective success or failure indicator that no
| amount of posturing can overcome.
|
| Either the code is short, or it isn't.
|
| Either the chair supports your weight, or it breaks.
|
| I think I enjoy these pursuits as an antidote to the kind of
| software I have to deal with on a daily basis - it's the kind
| that is so complex there are "no obvious deficiencies", so
| being able to retreat to domains where there are "obviously no
| deficiencies" is a treat.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yup. I've gravitated towards difficult domains in my career
| because they serve as a very effective filter on the people
| actually applying for them, they keep me sharp, and people
| that have needs in these areas tend to less of the
| stereotypical "idea people," that are looking to milk those
| who can execute.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Can you give any examples of those difficult domains?
|
| I'm an ok-ish web developer, and would love to fine some
| niches to specialize in like you mentioned.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| * Deep systems programming (this one is losing its "hard"
| luster a bit with Rust, which I'm okay with)
|
| * Compilers/DSLs/language runtimes/static analysis
|
| * Distributed systems (on my list of things to learn,
| know basically nothing)
|
| * More generically: high-performance code, doesn't have
| to be fintech-fast, but designing and maintaining code
| that makes excellent use of hardware resources
| BeetleB wrote:
| While what you say is true, my experience at such jobs is
| they also tend to have the most dysfunctional people/teams,
| unfortunately. And career growth tends to be very stagnant,
| and working conditions are poor (the supply of labor
| exceeds the demand).
|
| Switching to "dumb" jobs made my life a lot happier. While
| it's easier, the demand exceeds the supply. Easier career
| growth, and better colleagues (no egos, etc).
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| You still need to be picky about teams. Where I am
| currently pays decently, has interesting work, and is
| small enough that there is meaningful progression, and is
| low drama. (We're hiring, check my profile for email if
| you like some of the stuff I mentioned above!)
|
| So, my one example disputes your claim. :)
| hexane360 wrote:
| >Either the chair supports your weight, or it breaks.
|
| Well, it's very easy to make a chair that works a couple
| times. Whether it holds up for a week or a century is another
| matter.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > There's an inescapable objective success or failure
| indicator that no amount of posturing can overcome.
|
| Because of this statement, I feel like I finally understand
| the aversion in the woodworking community to pocketholes and
| CNCs.
| drivers99 wrote:
| How so? If it's objective, and a CNC or pockethole based
| chair holds up, wouldn't it be accepted?
| petsfed wrote:
| The point is that without pockethole jigs or CNC, certain
| "wood workers" couldn't build anything that actually held
| up.
|
| Its not an aversion to the technique per se, its an
| aversion to the kind of person who uses them for
| _everything_.
| gs17 wrote:
| > When I was in college, folks from India and other low trust
| societies would mercilessly cheat on their projects and exams,
| blatantly helping one another on individual works, and the
| college knew about it and didn't care. When I had brought this
| up at one point, I was told by a professor that it was a
| cultural difference that had to be respected .
|
| The reality (speaking from experience) may be that
| international students are a lucrative market and getting a
| reputation as being hard on cheating will make them choose to
| go elsewhere.
| kelipso wrote:
| Yep, I know for a fact the higher ups tell (heavily imply to)
| the professors/lecturers to go easy on the undergrad
| international students with cheating and other behaviors at
| least in the smaller US colleges.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| With the advent of AI and wearable IoT gadgets, the only
| way for schools to test out their students will be one one
| one filmed interviews that the students can give to future
| employers.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Oral exams are hard to cheat
| guhidalg wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and
| flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly.
| It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is
| for.
|
| Fortunately, most of your comments have been fine so this
| should be easy to fix.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful.
| pverghese wrote:
| Why are you calling for segregation? We have didn't years
| trying to move the world forward and yet you persist in
| trying to move backwards
| guhidalg wrote:
| We discriminate tuition based on national (even state!)
| origin. That's not physical segregation but it has the
| same result.
|
| I'm calling for schools to just create a "international
| student focused" campus where they can collect all the
| rich international students, let them party and cheat for
| 4 years, collect the outrageous tuition, and shield the
| indigenous students from their bullshit.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| If you're wondering why international students are so
| lucrative, it is because the majority of them they pay full
| price for tuition. This is particularly noticeable at state
| colleges/universities because those institutions have to
| provide in-state residents a significant discount.
| gs17 wrote:
| In my case, it was private, but international students
| wouldn't be offered as generous scholarships.
| mightymosquito wrote:
| I actively avoid companies that ask random leet-code problems,
| but the sad reality of the situation is I can't avoid it
| completely.
|
| While I think being unscrupulous in any shape or form is
| incorrect, I do feel some sense of revenge in fooling people who
| whole heartedly give in to this unfair process.
|
| Being unfair to an unfair process, seems pretty fair to me(i know
| extreme opinion, but I am trying to find a job, its frustrating
| how people don't care what you are actually going to do at a job,
| and just ask you random questions that might be related to what
| you do in a distant way).
|
| I've tried searching for solutions in the past in interview
| situations, but am not smart enough to cheat like that, always
| end up fumbling. Hence has resorted to going back to grinding on
| LeetCode.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I grew up staunchly against cheating. Becoming an adult was hard.
| My whole university class cheated on a tough assignment - someone
| found the solution online and shared it around. I didn't look at
| it, took the challenge and gave it a lot of effort. I got a
| pretty bad mark and the rest of the class got top marks.
|
| I also see the same mindset in work. People don't prepare for
| presentations and then spitball when presenting it. It's not
| "cheating" but it's skipping the effort and preparation in the
| same way.
| mach1ne wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I disagree with the analogy. If you can spitball
| the presentation, your time is likely spent better elsewhere
| than preparing for the presentation.
| [deleted]
| gear54rus wrote:
| "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was
| the rule?"
|
| - No country for old men
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| What does spitball mean? I don't prepare for presentations but
| I can't tell how that would be cheating.
| sk5t wrote:
| It means to extemporize / ramble.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| But that's not cheating on presenting, that's just doing a
| bad job, no? That is, just visible incompetence?
| hgsgm wrote:
| It leads to the modern world where "influencers" and
| "fake news" succeed while creators and contributors fail.
| It's hard to see this being the basis of a sustainable
| society.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| I don't agree that those things are at all related to not
| preparing for work presentations
| scarface74 wrote:
| If you are a creator that can't get your ideas across,
| you're just like the literally dozen of people who have
| approached me with a "great idea" with no go to market
| strategy.
| scaramanga wrote:
| > I didn't look at it, took the challenge and gave it a lot of
| effort. I got a pretty bad mark and the rest of the class got
| top marks.
|
| I am curious to know what conclusion you draw from the anecdote
| about the test?
|
| Is it that you aren't good enough because you tried your best
| and failed?
|
| Or is it that the test is a fallible instrument, designed by a
| human being who works within the constraints of an institution
| and has no choice but to treat education as if it is a magic
| juice that it's his job to squirt into the students heads and
| then administer tests to determine if the juice stuck there or
| leaked out, thereby identifying the defective and leaky
| craniums?
|
| Or is it that you seemed out of touch with what every else
| intuitively understood? ie. That they're being evaluated and
| that a negative evaluation can have profound consequences for
| the rest of their life, regardless of if the testing procedure
| is fair or not?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| We live in an era of transition. Deals and speed are more
| important than rigor.
|
| When the easier money dries up, that will change.
| tough wrote:
| Hadn't easy money dried up already ?
| praxulus wrote:
| How is spitballing a presentation cheating? It's the equivalent
| of taking a test without studying, not presenting somebody
| else's work as your own.
| hgsgm wrote:
| It's a broken system where effort and performance isn't
| acknowledged and rewarded and the whole purpose of being
| there is undermined. At some point the whole enterprise is
| destructive and should be shut down.
| jimkoen wrote:
| When has "having been there" ever been a measure for
| reward? In college no one gave a shit if you came to
| lectures, all that mattered was the exam at the end of the
| semester. If you learn better with books: great!
|
| I'm suprised that so many companies are unable to measure
| the performance of their employees in an effective manner.
| This entire discussion comes down to whether management
| actually wants to own the product and subsequently the
| product development lifecycle and is then also willing to
| investigate potential friction, or, as is much more often
| the case, doesn't really care and just wants to be told
| what they want to hear.
|
| You prioritize a metric (keep management happy) over
| actualy results. If I can improve that metric by
| improvising, how am I a cheater?
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| If the outcome is successful with less effort how is that
| bad? I was just in a joint presentation with a new grad. We
| both had our parts. They spent hours preparing their parts
| of a technical demonstration. I just walked through my part
| of the demo and had an "open discussion".
|
| They put 4x more effort to achieve what I would say was a
| 20% better result. That's not meant to be an insult to
| them, I have much more experience.
| ausbah wrote:
| if the end result is the same who cares
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I'm curious how far you are into your career. It sounds a bit
| like you are treating presentations as a performance, which is
| natural to fall into but I think it is a bit of a trap time
| investment wise. If you practice improvising presentations you
| will eventually get good at improvising presentations which is
| a valuable skill to have IMO.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| What is the reward for putting in the presentation effort? If I
| get my salary if I spitball and I get my salary whether I put
| in effort, why bother?
|
| I don't bother prepare for client support calls, mostly because
| I don't want to do them and want to be considered incompetent
| at them so I am not asked to help in the future as much. So at
| least for me, presentations are nothing but more work.
| pavlov wrote:
| You can't really cheat your way to a better presentation. If
| the "spitballed" version is good enough for the situation, why
| expend a lot of effort on preparation?
|
| Maybe the problem is that people have low expectations when
| everyone delivers bad presentations. This kind of cultural
| thing is often easier to fix by changing the format rather than
| pushing for everyone to do more -- in other words, ask "do we
| need all these presentations?" instead of "why do you all put
| so little effort in your presentations."
| twic wrote:
| It probably isn't good enough. But it's hard for the audience
| to tell.
|
| "Any questions?"
|
| "How are we going to scale the data storage?"
|
| "Oh, we're confident that the data will all fit in a single
| SQLite instance."
|
| "Great."
|
| It's only six months later, when it turns out it won't, and
| there's a lot of stress and panicked re-working, that the
| lack of preparation will be obvious. And by then, everyone
| will have forgotten the presentation.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| This is less spitballed presentation and more spitballed
| design. The latter is much much much worse.
| [deleted]
| somsak2 wrote:
| If all you need to answer that question is "we're confident
| that X" then that's still a problem with the asker. Why are
| they confident? Have we modeled the data needs over time?
| What data are we even storing? Basic probing questions
| should either uncover the lack of preparation or show that
| things will indeed be fine.
|
| Just like cheating is a problem for a teacher to solve, a
| lack of preparation is a problem for the audience to solve.
| boondoggle16 wrote:
| This is only true in a low-trust society. In a high-trust
| society, it's absolutely on the presenter to make their
| claims not only true, but realistically true, and
| acceptable by the average person. When people defect from
| that norm, they are shamed, or worse.
| somsak2 wrote:
| Aren't we talking about an environment where there are
| rampant cheaters? My perception was that this is by
| definition a low-trust company. Of course, it is always
| going to be easier to remove yourself from that situation
| and go to a company that has more rigorous interviews
| that would catch cheating in the first place.
| peteradio wrote:
| If the presentation misrepresents a projects state through
| vagueness I might call that cheating.
| preommr wrote:
| Ironic then that the real test was to see who has flexible
| thinking to adjust to a dynamic situation and who mindlessly
| follows misconstrued advice.
|
| If you really wanted to challenge yourself there's nothing
| stopping you from doing extra excerises outside of class. Yes,
| your other classmates were wrong for cheating, but you're
| paying the university and they can't even be bothered to update
| the their tests because they don't care about the cheating or
| you getting an education either.
|
| There's any number of situtations like this that happen in real
| life, from school, government, politics, work, etc. Not
| understanding these rules is much worse than being able to do
| some assignment in university.
| toss1 wrote:
| While it's unlikely these test results were deliberately
| leaked as a 'real-world' learning exercise, the principle
| _definitely_ applies.
|
| I had a friend in college friend who was in a Government
| major program, which was notorious for handing out insanely
| large reading lists for each class, like literally a ~meter
| tall stack of books for a term. Being the highly
| conscientious person she was, she spent the first three years
| trying to get through it all. She was blown away her senior
| year when she found out that the professors did NOT expect
| every book to be read! The professors had worked at the
| highest levels of govt (including Cabinet level), and knew
| that the volume of available references in the real role was
| enormous, and that a key skill was being able to efficiently
| whittle them down to a usable level without reading every
| page. So, they were literally recreating the situation for
| their students. Her senior year went a lot better after
| learning that...
| tough wrote:
| Why didn't they told them so, what a shitty professors
| toss1 wrote:
| Good question, bad assessment.
|
| I'm pretty sure it was because it is actually the same
| situation in the real world -- you're _EXPECTED_ to have
| full command of all that information, yet need to filter
| it down in real time. If you are told to just skim
| forever, you don 't ever face the real-world problem, and
| fail when you get there.
|
| EDIT typo
| ryandvm wrote:
| Yeah, it's sadly predictable that OP is seeing this play out
| in the workplace. People who cheat to get hired are also
| likely to scheme and manipulate their way up the corporate
| ladder. This happens at almost every company, every day.
|
| Interestingly it doesn't have to be this way. This is mostly
| due to the fact that nearly all companies use a command-and-
| control management structure where people are promoted by the
| people above them. Stealing credit from your co-workers
| and/or convincing your manager that you're going to support
| them is a surefire way to climb the ladder.
|
| The solution is simple: promote from below.
|
| Basically, teams should be lead by people they have
| democratically chosen, and that process should continue all
| the way to the top. I've always found it curious that most of
| the world recognizes democracy as the most effective way to
| structure a government, but the corporate world is obsessed
| with dictatorial command-and-control structure - with
| predictable results.
|
| Disclaimer: I am the co-founder of a co-op dev studio that
| was based on 18th century pirate charters
| (https://www.fountstudio.com/blog/yes-we-have-a-pirate-
| code-1...).
| maxweylandt wrote:
| Dahl wrote about this (which you might already know):
| https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520058774/a-preface-to-
| econ...
| hgsgm wrote:
| When the rules of civilization change to the rules of the
| jungle, society collapses. Many societies have collapsed,
| even in modern times. It's not fun.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So when was the golden age of "society" where it was
| morally better?
| nequo wrote:
| Your comment reads as though you were saying that cheating on
| an assignment is "flexible thinking." That's quite a stretch.
| cmcconomy wrote:
| he's thinking flexibly
| [deleted]
| clnq wrote:
| We all know that interviews can focus on knowledge not applicable
| to the job, leading to candidates excelling in interviews but
| failing at their job, or vice versa.
|
| I don't hold a firm ethical view on whether this justifies
| cheating in interviews. However, as noted on Blind, people do
| succeed in their roles after cheating. Some could even make the
| argument that those who deliver business value fulfil the primary
| expectation an employer has of them, and whatever happens at the
| interview might be almost irrelevant.
|
| From my experience leading teams, people with gumption,
| perseverance, and great learning skills almost always outperform
| others long-term, making entry-level skills a worse indicator of
| future performance in comparison. I've never regretted hiring
| someone with these values.
|
| When entering tech, I performed poorly on some technical
| interviews, which I'm ashamed of. Still, I received competitive
| offers based on potential. Some companies even skip technical
| panels/whiteboards for candidates with poor initial performance
| in technical tests but good growth potential. While
| unconventional and you should not expect that a company will do
| this for you, this approach seems more sensible than crazy to me.
| euix wrote:
| Which company is that that skips white boarding or technical
| tests? I was under the impression "holding everyone to the same
| bar" was a iron motto in the FAGMAN companies.
| clnq wrote:
| Somehow I've not yet heard of FAGMAN. Very humorous, just
| like the idea that they hold everyone to the same bar!
|
| But to speak seriously for a moment, some will do it with
| exceptional candidates. Probably not FAANG, the attitude and
| level of competition is different there.
| tehlike wrote:
| US society is based on merit, but not just merit, also on trust.
|
| Once this behavior is normalized, the trust aspect will start
| eroding.
| DogTweezers wrote:
| [dead]
| TheCapn wrote:
| My friend who got me my current job once told me about how he got
| into the Games industry. Back in the university days of applying
| to Coop positions he had a day with 2 interviews back to back.
| While he bombed the first interview, he had some excellent
| interviewers who were happy to show him where he did poorly and
| guide him through the problems to the correct answers. On the
| second interview, they used the same questions and he got the
| job.
|
| Now? He runs his own studio. After spending ~10 years in various
| positions at AAA and Indie studios he's out doing it on his own,
| and best as I can tell he's doing a damn good job of it. I won't
| doxx him, but he's got his name under several highly regarded
| releases.
|
| Am I conflicted with the idea of cheating interviews? Perhaps a
| bit. But knowing a brilliant mind like him just needed the
| guidance to get through a terrible practice to show his true
| talent? I'm happy he was fortunate to be able to ""cheat"" in the
| way he did. I wish him all the best.
| rocmcd wrote:
| That's not cheating? That sounds like the interviewers could
| see his potential and guided/corrected him through the process.
| His willingness to take feedback and keep going in itself would
| be something to be commended, especially for a new grad.
|
| What's discussed in the post is clear deception of the
| interviewers by the interviewee (using a second laptop to
| google answers), which is a very different thing.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| The thing is clearing the interviews is much harder than doing
| the day to day job in any of these companies. In all of big tech,
| most people are working on trivial crud apps or trivial services
| passing data around. The skills to succeed are similar to
| cheating in interviews. Most people I know in all of big tech
| have never used any data structure more complex than a resizable
| array. Very few people in big tech work on the real hard
| problems. The interview process difficulty and the day to day job
| difficulty are just not related, not to mention that in day to
| day job being able to get solutions from others is a very
| important skill for you to succeed.
|
| One thing the interview process does is to weed out totally
| incompetent candidates. Even one such candidate, once inside, can
| be extremely harmful to the morale of a team.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Your last point is an important one. There are a large number
| of incompetent _applicants_. Prior to the most recent round of
| tech layoffs, I would go so far as to say that the _majority_
| of applicants were incompetent. That 's not to say the majority
| of _programmers_ are incompetent, but because the interview
| filter processes tend to not select the incompetent, they
| accumulate in the applicant pool.
|
| Any "fix" to the interview process has to accommodate the
| reality that the left half of the applicant pool distribution
| is of terribly low levels of ability.
| gedy wrote:
| > Any "fix" to the interview process has to accommodate the
| reality that the left half of the applicant pool distribution
| is of terribly low levels of ability.
|
| I would like to see some distinction between people who apply
| cold, and people who have been reached out to by a company.
|
| I'm an experienced, employed engineer, and if a company
| reaches out to me, I expect to not be treated in an interview
| like "gotta see if you are a faker! You could be coasting for
| 15 years! We get soooo many applicants."
|
| That's the (in-house) recruiter's job, or hiring manager's.
| Don't waste my damn time like this.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think there are three categories rather than just two.
| Cold application, reached out to by a recruiter, or
| referred by a former colleague. Seeing how internal
| recruiting or "sourcing" works, I don't see it as being
| vastly different from a cold application. Someone dredged
| up your profile on LinkedIn and reached out to you based on
| a keyword search (in all likelihood). Once you responded,
| they passed you off to the recruiting pipeline. There's not
| much more signal in you having a keyword on LinkedIn as
| having a keyword on your resume.
|
| Only the third, a referral from an actual ex-colleague,
| would I skip any of the basic vetting steps. (Said
| differently, I agree "that's the (in-house) recruiter's
| job, or hiring manager's"; this is them doing it...)
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Referral too at this point is gamed too much. People
| think of referrals more as a favour that gives them
| brownie points than anything else.
| sokoloff wrote:
| 100% agreed! That's why I specified "from an actual ex-
| colleague" rather than "from someone they once got a
| LinkedIn request from but knows nothing about and
| couldn't pick out of a police lineup".
| halbritt wrote:
| To say nothing of the ethics of cheating, I think this behavior
| speaks to the value of the interview process. If it can be gamed
| so easily, it's likely not a great measure of the quality of the
| candidate and the companies that have implemented deserve the
| hires they make.
|
| It'd doubtful the folks at the company actually mind that the
| interviews are being cheated. If the candidates appear to be
| qualified and appear to be fill the role for which they were
| hired and appear to be competent in that role, that's sufficient
| for most corporations and one of the problems working in "tech".
| That is to say, there are plenty of people in it that appear to
| be doing a thing, but aren't actually capable.
|
| Somewhere in this thread a poster mentioned woodworking, which is
| a nice contrast. If you hire a carpenter, it becomes obvious
| pretty quickly if the carpenter is competent.
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| the problem is that its a zero-sum game, you can only compare
| performance across a cohort. if the majority of your cohort
| cheats, and cheating hurts performance, then they'll all be low
| performance and you'll still end up promoting some of them
| (because thats just what happens)
| halbritt wrote:
| > you can only compare performance across a cohort
|
| I can't accept this premise. Optimally the persons
| responsible for managing engineering staff should be able to
| independently determine whether the work being produced was
| of sufficient quality or not regardless of the cohort.
|
| At issue here, I believe is that this is a difficult thing to
| cultivate consistently in many corporations and so there's
| some desire to create standardized metrics for performance
| against which a cohort is measured. Regardless, most large
| tech firms have some kind of well defined rubric against
| which the engineers are measured.
| throwaway9133 wrote:
| Another way to look at it is that modern capitalist societies
| require you to have a job to participate in said society and the
| benefits it incurs. It's a work to live system. And these
| companies care only about profits, not people, and they will fire
| anyone at the drop of a hat if it means dividends for investors
| or protecting executive bonuses. There is absolutely no benefit
| to loyalty nor honesty because the companies themselves do not
| have these virtues.
|
| There's also the fact that despite efforts in recent years to
| control biases in the hiring process and promotions; it still
| creeps in. The odds are stacked against people from minority
| demographics from getting work _at all_ let alone a decent paying
| job. It often doesn 't matter how well they do or whether they
| play by the rules.
|
| It seems a bit cynical if you believe the world should be mostly
| meritocratic but unfortunately it's not.
|
| In some ways _cheating_ is the morally correct course of action.
| 1101010010 wrote:
| People who use multiple "angry face" emojis to express themselves
| are generally moody, petulant and emotionally unfit to work among
| highly compensated engineers. Instead of whining, adapt and
| overcome the circumstances you recognize in your professional
| life.
| askin4it wrote:
| What's the point of school if it can't do the basic job of
| collating learners by actual ability?
|
| That's the job of school. You personally learning something is a
| side effect.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| There is a very simple way to stop this behavior: ship a 360o
| camera to every applicant and dictate where it should be placed,
| or stop doing remote interviews.
|
| There are even simpler ways to stop this behavior, but I won't
| speak about that here.
| [deleted]
| duxup wrote:
| I don't disagree with the main points here.
|
| It is interesting that the form of cheating would be defeated
| with in person interviews / testing.
|
| I do wonder if you cheat your way into Amazon wouldn't you get
| caught being bad on the job after you are hired?
|
| Or are we talking about people who are generally qualified but
| look better than others because they cheated?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Or are we talking about people who are generally qualified but
| look better than others because they cheated?"
|
| Bingo. The cheaters will get the job because they will look
| better than similarly qualified candidates.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| I think the issue is the interview process, because clearly the
| difficulty of the interview does not match the difficulty of
| the job.
|
| Sure, they cheated to get in, but then once in they found out
| it wasn't that hard to stay and get promoted.
| WJW wrote:
| It's also possible that they kept cheating in order to get
| promoted, of course.
| passion__desire wrote:
| It's also possible they can understand solutions provided
| to them and even implement but not be able to come up with
| solutions under strict time pressure.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| I dunno, I think it's pretty hard to keep cheating as a
| developer. How would a developer even cheat to get
| promoted? I mean, a PM I can see survive for longer, but a
| SDE?
|
| I actually had this issue at my current job where we hired
| someone who seemed great and who did really well on his
| interview exercises but then once he started working...
| well, it was pretty obvious he did not know what he was
| doing at all. So he was let go straight away. There was no
| way he could cheat his way to stick it out for longer than
| a month.
| postalrat wrote:
| The people who hired you probably cheated too. Lots of bad
| hires covering for each other, often without realizing it.
| jtwebman wrote:
| This isn't cheating in my mind. They use tools available to them
| just like they will have on their job. I would ask clarifying
| questions and if they understand what they are saying then why
| does it matter that the memorized the answer vs memorized how to
| find the answer
| Balgair wrote:
| I'll share my perspective on cheating here too, as it may be a
| bit unique.
|
| My HS had a huge cheating scandal erupt near the end of my senior
| year. The short of it was that many of our parents worked in tech
| and those skills were taught to my classmates. A wiki was formed
| as a homework helping site. Kids would get feedback from each
| other on their homework and tests and whatnot. A genuine good
| idea.
|
| Well, until the next year rolled over. It turned out that all but
| two of the teachers reused the _exact_ same homework assignments
| and tests from year to year. My compatriots discovered, to their
| great joy, that they had built an answer key for the whole
| school.
|
| This went on, unbeknownst to me, for ~3 years of my time at the
| school. I can remember sitting in classes and being totally
| flummoxed at how these people were doing so much better than I
| was. I was putting in long hours to try to stay with the
| cheaters. Honestly, I still have to catch myself when I think
| that it takes my longer to learn things than other people. I
| don't, I was just raised competing against the answer key. It's a
| journey I'm still on and affects me to this day.
|
| Everything was going great until one of the kids was dumb and
| used the wiki in a class. A teacher saw it, blew the whistle, and
| things got messy. It made the front page of the paper, there was
| a Dr. Phil episode, etc. However, no college admissions were
| rescinded. Outside of some light wrist slapping, the cheaters
| were rewarded for their cheating, and the teachers who failed up
| went back to doing nothing again (I had friends in lower grades
| that I could verify with). Essentially, the cheating worked.
|
| That, at least, was the lesson I told myself all those years ago.
| However, Facebook is a magical thing in this case. I can follow
| up and see, decades later, what happened to all the cheaters.
| It's not been pretty. Not to bore, but their lives aren't the
| best. A few got dishonorable discharges, one went to Harvard law
| and after the 4th divorce is now a yoga teacher outside Austin,
| another is in the slammer for SEC violations, a fair few are in
| prison for drug dealing, you get the gist here right? To my jaded
| eyes, not a single one is living what I would call a good life.
| Their flowers are not in bloom.
|
| The failures of our teachers, parents, and my classmates' own
| honor during their formative years have lead, without any
| exceptions, to unfulfilled lives at best, and shambles for most.
|
| Yes, cheating did work. In the short term. But especially in
| those formative years, it ultimately lead to catastrophe and ruin
| for my classmates.
|
| Now, taking my view here of cheating to what OP has said: Don't
| worry about the cheater making more than you do. If they cheat on
| things like a job interview, then they cheat on things much more
| and less important as well. They cheat on their taxes, they cheat
| on their SOs, they cheat in card games with their nephews at
| Thanksgiving. They, generally, are cheating jerks. And yeah,
| maybe they get a better car, or a better house. You know, short
| terms things.
|
| But, due to my own experiences, those cheaters have lives you
| don't want to live. I know this is super Socratic/Platonic of me,
| but I have seen it happen with my very own two eyes and with my
| very own two ears. I have lived this, I am still living this. Not
| cheating, not being with people too dumb to see the blatant
| cheaters, not being around enablers of cheaters, that is a reward
| far greater than the short term gifts that cheating enables.
| heliostatic wrote:
| I'll make the obvious point that these interviews were not good
| predictors of success at the companies.
|
| In general, I've found in 15 years of interviews that interviews
| are not highly correlated with the work at any given company. I
| wish we would move beyond cargo cult interview styles and base
| interviews (and screening, for that matter) on the actual work
| and culture of each company.
| eckesicle wrote:
| I ran a largish statistical analysis where I was working on all
| interviews and employee ratings for the following year (16000
| data points).
|
| My conclusion was that:
|
| * some interview problems carried zero signal
|
| * some interviewers are really good at identifying strong
| candidates, and others correlate negatively! On average
| interviewers rating is a weak signal (<0.25. Correlation)
|
| * geographic location is a medium signal (0.2)
|
| * a relevant degree is a strong signal (0.4)
|
| * choice of programming language is the strongest signal (>0.8
| correlation (or anti-) for some languages, and some.
|
| There is some selection bias though since candidates who were
| rejected did not get a chance at the job so we didn't have a
| rating for them.
| zephrx1111 wrote:
| Didn't know the language can be a factor. I was always told
| any language is fine.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| The choice of language being a signal is interesting. That
| goes against my intuition.
|
| Can you elaborate?
| yw3410 wrote:
| My intuition would expect the two to be correlated.
|
| All anecdotal evidence I've seen points to the language
| mattering a great deal since only those people who are
| enthusiastic about niche languages, tend to put more time
| in learning/practicing programming and all other things
| being equal, spending more time on a skill correlates to
| being better at said skill.
| callahad wrote:
| Could rhyme with PG's "Python Paradox" essay from 20 years
| ago: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
|
| > _It 's a lot of work to learn a new programming language.
| And people don't learn Python because it will get them a
| job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program
| and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know._
|
| > _Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers
| companies should want to hire. Hence what, for lack of a
| better name, I 'll call the Python paradox: if a company
| chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric
| language, they'll be able to hire better programmers,
| because they'll attract only those who cared enough to
| learn it. And for programmers the paradox is even more
| pronounced: the language to learn, if you want to get a
| good job, is a language that people don't learn merely to
| get a job._
|
| I wonder correlations eckesicle found, and what languages
| would fit that profile today.
| tough wrote:
| So like Erlang nowadays? Or Rust?
| callahad wrote:
| It may be my own bubble, but it feels like Rust left that
| niche around 2019?
|
| I would've put Clojure on the list around 2010.
|
| Elixir feels like a right answer today. Maybe Zig, too?
| breckenedge wrote:
| Do you have a link to this research? This is amazing.
| osigurdson wrote:
| It is funny. Let's say you have an MIT PHD computer science
| grad with a 4.0 GPA. The 8 years of verifiable performance
| means nothing. The competitive coder would blow them away in an
| interview.
| bee_rider wrote:
| A PhD is intended to set you up for an R&D type job. It
| depends on what kind of education the competitive coder has
| of course, but if they are interviewing for the same types of
| positions, the scientists isn't exploiting their competitive
| advantage.
| hikawaii wrote:
| Yes, because the entire reason competition code was adopted
| in the first place is people graduating with prestigious
| titles that could not write code.
| peyton wrote:
| Fizz buzz gets 'em every time. The competition code stuff
| was more of a culture test. It's gotten weird now because
| people outside that culture now memorize problems to get
| higher-paying jobs.
| prennert wrote:
| There are a few outliers, but generally, I found most
| candidates hired are good, if the interview process mimics the
| actual projects someone is going to work on in the next 3
| months or so. But the downside is that interviewing is slow and
| cannot easily distributed across multiple teams, because the
| tasks are tailor made.
|
| Due to the downsides, I guess it is easier for companies to
| rely on standardised tests. Even just for the reason that those
| are easy for anyone in the company to lead the interview. But
| likewise it is easy for anyone to game the system.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Or they were good predictors of success, just not in the way
| you expected. The individuals got the job done one way or
| another, just like they nailed the entry level job position.
|
| How would you base a job interview on actual work? You have
| very limited time and you're trying to take a representative
| sample of a candidate's capabilities.
|
| IMO interviewing is just plain hard and unpleasant. Obviously
| if you perfectly solve interviewing for software engineers you
| could rule the world, because you could afford to offer all of
| your hires $1M/yr which is far less than the best engineers are
| worth, but more than what everyone else offers.
| voidfunc wrote:
| There is no such thing as "cheating" once you're out of school
| and the sooner new grads realize that the better off they will
| be. The real world is very much "fake it till you make it", "do
| whatever is necessary" because we're all just trying to make
| money to live and retire.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Even within the school system. I intend to teach my kids the
| only problem with cheating is the punishment that might result.
| Cheating has a price along with a weighted chance of that price
| applying. Is what you might gain worth the expected price?
|
| The greatest regret of my life is not lying blatantly to get
| admissions and scholarships to university.
| allenrb wrote:
| I'm a pretty firm believer in first learning the rules and
| only then, learning when it's "OK" to break them. You're
| probably not doing your kids any favors by skipping the first
| step.
| badpun wrote:
| And even school is arguably step 1 in the process of making
| money so that we can live and retire.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I am not sure if any self respecting person wants to work in such
| places among such people with such culture.
|
| But it is good to know what kind of people are in charge in those
| organizations, thanks for the info.
| realjohng wrote:
| There should be standardized, monitored tests for Eng jobs. No
| point in every company repeating essentially the same test with a
| lot of variance in how the test is conducted.
| liminal wrote:
| Honesty matters more than technical merit -- at least when I'm
| hiring.
| boondoggle16 wrote:
| How do you identify liars who are technically skilled at lying?
| It seems like an intractable problem.
|
| The best option I can see is to refuse to hire "obvious"
| dishonest people, aka unintelligent dishonest people. But
| intelligent dishonest people are able to pass without us
| knowing they are dishonest, and cannot be identified until
| their low performance becomes apparent. And we wouldn't hire
| unintelligent people to begin with.
|
| And, evaluating performance in software is notoriously
| difficult, dare I say impossible? A skilled and intelligent
| dishonest person can come up with many plausible-sounding
| excuses for why things are taking so long.
|
| So do you just fire anyone that takes longer than normal? In
| that case, you scare the actual good engineers, they will just
| go somewhere safer.
|
| In the end, I don't think there's a way to evaluate honesty,
| without ruining your business. So I think bad actors are always
| rewarded.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| It's not surprising to me that people cheat or don't see cheating
| as bad. Cheaters literally do prosper. Like in college
| applications, you can absolutely write lies. Nobody's going to
| check if you were captain of the track team. Nobody's going to
| fact check your essay about how you came out as gay[1].
|
| Even the people who don't cheat understand how to stretch and
| bend the truth. You take a minor event and turn it into a whole
| college essay. You take a side project and turn it into a
| supposed startup. Hackathons are competitions for who can lie the
| best and claim their flashy front end will change the world.
| There was a period where the same project won hackathon after
| hackathon. And sure, hackathons are not exactly a big deal. But
| if you're cheating at a hackathon, why not cheat at a job
| interview?
|
| So much of what we teach in school these days is how to play the
| game, how to appear more impressive than you are, how to trick
| people into believing you're smarter than other people.
|
| [1]: Both of these are first-hand experiences, i.e. I knew the
| people who did them
| lisasays wrote:
| This being of course exactly the mindset the current mainstream
| interview process was designed to create. As a feature, not a
| bug.
| knicholes wrote:
| If one considers Kant's categorical imperative, "Act only
| according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will
| that it should become a universal law," then also considers how
| they'd feel if they were go to visit a doctor who had cheated or
| is cheating, one certainly must draw the conclusion that cheating
| is indeed immoral and undesirable.
| psychphysic wrote:
| So basically "do unto others" but phrased needlessly complexly?
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Kant was notorious for writing in needlessly complex German
| munificent wrote:
| The Golden Rule operates at the small scale of an iterated
| prisoner's dilemma where two parties are directly
| interacting.
|
| Kant's wording scales up to include the emergent properties
| of a society which operated according to that rule.
|
| The Golden Rule doesn't cover cases like, "Should I throw
| this trash in a lake." because there's no concrete person
| being "done unto". Kant's rule does: Would you want to live
| in a world where everyone threw trash in the lake? Probably
| not.
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| Ok, then "be the change you wish to see in the world" but
| needlessly complex.
| FredPret wrote:
| The golden rule with gilded edges
| smugma wrote:
| Kind of, but no. This explains the "needless" complexity
| well, but it is complex:
|
| https://philosophynow.org/issues/125/The_Golden_Rule_Revisit.
| ..).
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| More like: "act like you'd like everyone to act"
|
| Meaning, don't be a cheater unless you want to live in a
| society of cheaters. Slightly different meaning from "do unto
| others" which is about interpersonal reciprocity.
| andybak wrote:
| Whether the two statements are equivalent is a topic of some
| debate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Differences
| _in_sit...
|
| > Immanuel Kant famously criticized the golden rule for not
| being sensitive to differences of situation, noting that a
| prisoner duly convicted of a crime could appeal to the golden
| rule while asking the judge to release him, pointing out that
| the judge would not want anyone else to send him to prison,
| so he should not do so to others. On the other hand, in a
| critique of the consistency of Kant's writings, several
| authors have noted the "similarity" between the Golden Rule
| and Kant's Categorical Imperative, introduced in Groundwork
| of the Metaphysic of Morals (See discussion at this link).
| siftrics wrote:
| Needless discourse. Everyone understands there must be
| caveats to the Golden Rule. People aren't so literal in
| their moral frameworks to care about the exact wording.
| It's not charitable to say "what about this extremely
| contrived situation where the rule doesn't apply!"
|
| The Golden Rule conveys 99% of the idea. No one cares about
| the remaining 1% except for people who have time to waste.
| We get it. We get the point Kant is trying to make.
| andybak wrote:
| My reading of the application of Kant's imperative to this is
| different to yours. The "universal law" here would be "cheating
| on a test for Amazon" rather than "cheating on any test for any
| job".
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35887145.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I'd rather my doctor look up an answer in a medical textbook
| rather than "not cheat" and allow me to die in adherence to the
| noble idea that only the ideas we can keep in our long-term
| memory are worthy.
| chii wrote:
| but cheating indicates a lack of moral integrity, which might
| seep into the aspect of how they treat their patients.
| watwut wrote:
| Double checking a book when figuring out treatment is not
| cheating, it is normal. Cheating for a doctor would be going
| with the feeling without double checking.
|
| However, when learning for exam, it is cheating, because
| exams define minimum set of stuff that you should have in
| memory at that point.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| eventually, the cheaters won't know what to look up...
| leroy-is-here wrote:
| Verifying a measurement isn't cheating. The word exists
| because it is memory externalized.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| a cheating doctor would prescribe / perform unnecessary drugs
| / procedures / surgeries for personal gain or out of
| carelessness.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Overprescription is a gigantic problem in the US. Most of
| that can be attributed to being overly careful, but many
| doctors are legitimately just prescribing treatments that
| are known to be unhelpful in expectation for personal gain.
| Knee and hip surgeries are common examples. They regularly
| degrade quality of life in recipients. We should be doing
| less, but then the surgeons that perform them would make
| less money.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| So just your rental urgent care doc?
| hirvi74 wrote:
| This is basically how western medicine operates in the US
| to begin with.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| to be fair - I also met doctors who appeared to be
| competent and afaict didn't take advantage of my
| situation.
| laratied wrote:
| That is simply not true. What you are ascribing to
| personal gain is just protecting against personal loss.
|
| Ordering an extra test or an extra drug is mostly a
| doctor covering themselves from potential lawsuit.
| siftrics wrote:
| You're delusional if you think physicians maliciously
| over-prescribing in the US is not a problem.
|
| People are tremendously impacted, for good or ill, when
| prescribed pain medications, ADHD medications, anti-
| depressants, etc. Many of these people are harmed. Many
| of the doctors who caused them harm simply do not care.
| tristor wrote:
| That's blatantly untrue. The primary criticism to Western
| medicine is that is has a high cost because doctors are
| afraid of being sued for malpractice and order lots of
| unnecessary and invasive tests to confirm any diagnosis
| before ordering a treatment. It's basically the exact
| opposite of what you say, which when taken to the extreme
| is also problematic.
| siftrics wrote:
| What about the opioid crisis? What about the Sacklers?
| Was all of that fiction?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Using reference works in the course of doing your job is not
| cheating.
| randcraw wrote:
| Yes, if you're doing what the patient and the regulators
| _want_ you to do, that ain 't cheating.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Rarely in real life will the situations not be open book
| exams. While coding, we have access to interactive/searchable
| docs, demos, tutorials, and of course SO and the likes. At
| work, we can chat with co-workers when we're stuck or have an
| idea but really feel like there's probably something better
| if more than one head was working on it.
| electrondood wrote:
| Unexpected Kant, and relevant. Nice!
|
| "Would you go to a surgeon who cheated their way through
| medical school?"
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Many people reject Kant's ethical philosophy.
| atlantic wrote:
| Arguments are decided on logic, not votes.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Even a broken clock is right twice a day. There are bits that
| are worth considering even without adopting everything he
| wrote in its entirety.
| msie wrote:
| It looks like a lot of the cheating can be curbed with in-person
| interviews. As for rapid promotion, I guess the cheaters had some
| skill, otherwise I blame the management for being idiots and they
| deserve what they got. It's surprising to find cases where there
| was no due diligence done.
| twistedcheeslet wrote:
| Your friends did whatever was needed to pass the interview. You
| did not.
|
| How is it surprising that they're the ones getting raises?
| Clearly they're willing to risk more than you are for the reward.
|
| Only getting caught cheating guarantees loss.
|
| Playing fair does not guarantee winning.
| davemp wrote:
| Person adept at exploiting one human process (interviews) is
| good at exploiting another human process (performance reviews /
| promotions).
|
| Calling it "risk taking" seems overly reductive.
| emddudley wrote:
| What a corrupt way to view the world.
| randomopining wrote:
| If the companies wanted a fair interview they would ask
| questions and have a discussion that _only_ a skilled
| engineer with real world experience could have.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Is it not a true representation?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Wait till you see how the business people you're working for
| see the world!
| Miner49er wrote:
| How is cheating risky? You get caught, you don't get the job.
| End of story.
|
| On the other hand, not cheating means it will be harder to get
| the job. This seems to be the riskier strategy (but, I'd argue,
| has the greater reward.)
| readyplayernull wrote:
| > Oh well she isn't dumb. She did solve 75-100 problems during
| the course of her master's degree of 2 years. She just can't
| solve any question on her own
|
| This is exactly my problem, I have solved very difficult problems
| at big companies, but I need time and research to understand and
| solve anything. I need to sleep on the problem. I need to get
| comfortable and release the stress when the seemingly complex
| problem is presented to me, otherwise I'll drown in a glass of
| words. Recently tried interviewing with HackerRank and the whole
| experience is horrible: weird multilevel scrolling, single
| character variables, answers must be equal character by character
| including blanks. I just quit those interviews.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Fraud is pretty rampant across the corporate / academic world,
| and I imagine relatively few people actually pay any price for
| cheating, falsifying data, etc. I'd guess over 95% of academic
| fraudsters get away with it at some level, as long as they're not
| incredibly blatant about it. The few cases you see in the media
| are generally so flagrant that it's hard to understand how they
| got away with it for as long as they did.
|
| It's probably safe to assume that any research group (or business
| outfit), public or private, that doesn't have active fraud-
| detection and fraud-prevention policies in place is engaging in
| fraudulent activity of some sort.
| Dowwie wrote:
| I don't think that the response should be to lock down the
| interview process further but rather interview candidates for
| what the role entails rather than asking arbitrary leetcode
| questions. The screening process is broken. Make cheating
| irrelevant.
| SadWebDeveloper wrote:
| ChatGPT et al has run online coding exercises/trivia/exams
| pointless imho, leetcode problems are cool solution to the
| problem if you want someone with lots of "raw abstract knowledge"
| but zero real world experience.
|
| Promotion in USA seems to be more like a thing that most happen
| every one or two years at work rather than for work well done,
| last time i had a friend that was working for a faang (pre-
| layoffs) and show me he was like a third level manager for
| several projects because he had 3+ years at company, he still
| does the same job as when he got in just that now has to manage
| or mostly deal with upper management request for estimated time
| to finish every day.
| prirun wrote:
| In my long computer career, I've only had a couple of times where
| someone got ahead of me by lying or misrepresenting their skills.
| When working with such people, it's pretty obvious to most that
| they don't know what they're doing. While I have also been a very
| helpful person, I have a rule: I _refuse_ to help someone who has
| misrepresented their skills. This type of person has no problem
| lying to get ahead then expecting everyone to help them out when
| they get in trouble. And that occurs frequently of course,
| because they are in over their head.
|
| First example was when I was the tech lead on a huge Ford
| project. I was only 20, doing great, Ford loved me, but the
| computer company I worked for (Prime) was uneasy about relying so
| much on a 20 y/o in his 2nd year of college for this huge
| project. So they hired a new guy, a Pakistani with a degree who
| wore a suit everyday and had a glowing resume (apparently).
| First, the guy was nearly impossible to understand. Second, he
| didn't know shit. Third, instead of spending his time reading
| through manuals to figure things out, he'd just ask me since his
| cube was next to mine. My standard answer was "I don't know". He
| could have asked me what color grass is and that would have been
| my answer. They kept him a few months, fired him when it became
| obvious he couldn't do shit on his own, and put me back on the
| account.
|
| The other time was when a contract project manager at IBM decided
| he wanted to work on a project that was supposed to be for me. I
| was still busy with a previous IBM project (he was my project
| manager on that) and couldn't start for a couple of months, and
| since IBM was in a hurry, the project manager told them he could
| do it. He was a great project manager, but not even a good
| programmer. His previous technical experience was more with
| hardware. After a few months, I got called in to review his work
| because he kept saying he would be done in a week. I met with
| him, found out he didn't even have this thing compiling without
| errors (it was a platform conversion of a large CAD program), and
| he asked me if I'd help him. I said no, even though it was very
| hard for me to do that. I met with IBM, they asked me if I could
| take it over and finish it. I told them I could do it but would
| not be able to use any of his work, especially since he hadn't
| made much progress. They fired him, gave me the contract, and it
| was finished in a couple of months.
|
| So if you run into people who have cheated to get where they are,
| don't help them, no matter how nice you are or how bad it might
| make you feel. They don't deserve your help and will have to
| qualms about taking a promotion over you, even though they
| couldn't have done it without your help.
| sampo wrote:
| What is "LC question" short for?
| _corvo_ wrote:
| LeetCode Question.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| As a teacher, I 'work' with cheaters. Some learn their lesson,
| some don't. I try to explain that while you might be able to
| cheat in a school, you certainly won't be able to cheat on the
| job. I guess this is a naive perspective.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| You can go a long way in work without doing anything of value
| by getting credit for any success and dodging blame for any
| failure. Cheating goes a long way here.
|
| Don't even get me started on cheating metrics.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| This is a very naive take that lets people feel good that
| cheaters will one day face their comeuppance. They don't.
| Learning to cheat itself is sometimes a useful skill. It means
| you have figured out what's important that's going to get
| assessed, and you have figured out a way to pass the
| assessment. That skill will help you in the workplace as well.
| greybox wrote:
| I confess myself completely unsurprised that amazon interview
| performance has no bearing on actual job performance.
|
| I would bet money that most companies have this problem.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb here and be "that guy".
|
| But in my experience, there's a big difference between
| perspectives on cheating in the US vs perspectives in... let's
| just say broadly... "some other nations". I say this as an
| American who has lived overseas much of my life and, lest you
| think I'm just a flag waving parrot for the US, prob prefer
| living overseas and am more than willing to criticize the heck
| out of the US on a range of topics when relevant.
|
| I prob shouldn't be afraid of listing out these specific cultures
| where cheating is not just ok but encouraged- as these are things
| that come from multiple occasions of direct experience- but I'd
| rather not make this look like a racist judgement on certain
| cultures.
|
| I'm not saying here that there aren't Americans who cheat and I'd
| be lying if I said I had never cheated on an exam in undergrad.
| And there are certainly cultures outside of the US that on
| average are at least as intolerant of cheating or more so.
|
| But I think the big difference between that and a lot of the
| opinions I've seen in comments here and in the article is that-
| at least in my case- these were slipups done in moments of
| desperation and I damn sure wouldn't be bragging about it on a
| message board and am overall somewhat ashamed at having done it.
|
| Feel free to downvote me or call me a moron...
| hnthrway wrote:
| No, I've had acquaintances who believed cheating made them
| smarter than non-cheaters
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Savvier or more cunning--yeah, probably so.
| renewiltord wrote:
| In a sense, I'm in that category because I paid for zero
| textbooks. Instead I photocopied them at the library.
|
| I imagine if I had to I would have probably paid for them. By
| the laws of the land I'm a cheater. And so be it.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Nah that's not cheating, that's piracy, I did the same
| thing as a broke college kid - copying is not theft.
| Information wants to be free.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >Feel free to downvote me or call me a moron...
|
| You are actually being very astute. One of the reasons (there
| are of course more reasons) that America does so well is that
| most common citizens are relatively honest. Consequently in
| many third world countries corruption is rife, not only is it
| tolerated it is often encouraged.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > there's a big difference between perspectives
|
| Here's my take...
|
| The difference between the United States and other countries is
| how we internalize things. We're very much guilt or shame
| driven because of the heavy influences of puritanical,
| fundamentalist, and catholic religions.
|
| It's not that Americans don't cheat/indulge/whatever, it's that
| they feel bad about doing it. And that doesn't stop Americans
| from doing things, they just try to hide or repent for what
| they've done.
|
| * Thinking about it a little more, there are also people here
| with a strong sense of entitlement and bewildering moral
| fortitude. They'll break down in tears or want to start a fight
| if you cuss in their presence but have no qualms about "moving"
| to Florida to dodge paying taxes or vehicle registration fees.
| now__what wrote:
| Agree that the US can be pretty puritanical, so some of the
| aversion to cheating is driven by guilt/shame. But on the
| other hand, when you grow up without the necessity to
| lie/cheat, and when it isn't normalized, you never learn the
| methods to get away with it, and sometimes that's enough of a
| deterrent.
|
| There are things in my life I'd rather lie about, but I don't
| because I never learned to lie convincingly. The same with
| cheating. Figuring out how to cheat on a test/interview
| sounds like a way more effortful and stressful experience
| than acting honestly (I shudder to imagine how it compounds
| imposter syndrome).
|
| Imo "moving" to Florida (and similar tactics) got normalized,
| so it's easier for people to learn how to do it from a friend
| etc. so they do it more. No moralizing necessary.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > Figuring out how to cheat on a test/interview sounds like
| a way more effortful and stressful experience than acting
| honestly
|
| That's easier said than done when the market is expecting
| unrealistic job experience, requiring coding tests of
| knowledge that won't be leverages for the job, and asking
| candidates to participate in ridiculous interview
| processes.
|
| For someone with an established resume it's manageable but
| for candidates fresh out of school without much work
| experience they're faced with a hostile hiring process.
|
| It's reasonable to understand that they would feel the need
| to cheat to even get a foot in the door.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hirings-new-red-line-why-
| newc...
| berjin wrote:
| It's the elephant in the room and it has small ears.
| dilawar wrote:
| In my country, India, cheating in university is rampant. But
| there were more than a few of my classmates, who didn't. On
| average, it sad to see all that cheating. Aren't you saying you
| are incompetent by cheating?
| solarmist wrote:
| Yup. Pretty much.
|
| Or you don't believe this material/test will affect your
| future.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Yes, it is sometimes a cultural thing.
|
| In some countries, cheating/gaming the system is seen as a
| noble thing. It is seen as a big "fuck you" to the system / the
| man / whatever. If you get away with it, it is not you who are
| wrong - it is simply the system that is too poorly designed.
|
| In other countries, cheating is just too normalized because the
| stakes are so high, and the competition is too great. I'm just
| going to throw out India and China - not because everyone there
| cheats, but because every "edge" you can gain against your
| competition is fair game. The reward is not only life changing
| for you, but for your whole family. Maybe even your neighbors.
|
| And it is not to say that they would cheat each other directly,
| like scamming money off the other guy - but if you're the
| competition, then the gloves are off.
| prox wrote:
| My Russian friend frequently mentions that bribery and cheating
| is a national sport over there. If you want to get anything
| done that is. I am sure countries where it is prevalent know
| so.
| dsm4ck wrote:
| A disappointing part of adult life is how often "just lie" is the
| best advice.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I don't think it's the "best advice". The problem with lies is
| that one lie begets another, and you end up trying to defend a
| whole bunch of lies that don't necessarily weave together
| coherently.
|
| I guess I have low appetite for risk.
|
| "Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to
| deceive."
| antisthenes wrote:
| The lie only has to last long enough for people to forget
| about it.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I do think this is an even bigger indictment of the interview
| process. If they're actually more competent in the role and not
| getting PIP'd and getting promotions, it means the interview was
| worthless to start, it would filter out a good candidate and pass
| a candidate who may only know how to do toy problems without any
| engineering skill.
| algorithmmonkey wrote:
| Maybe a good candidate in this organization is one that will
| leverage every edge they have to produce a desired result.
| Resourcefulness and risk tolerance are a potent pair.
| davemp wrote:
| This assumes internal performance evaluation is
| functional/unexploitable in these orgs.
| pythonb3sss wrote:
| I dislike cheating. I've taken ~50 interviews and in 90% of them
| cheated:
|
| a) I could hear their keyboard clacking when they googled the
| answer
|
| b) they'd stall with "umm" and "ooo" while their friend googles
| the answer and shows it to them
|
| c) (the best one) they'd memorize _everything_ from leetcode
| style solutions and definitions to mathematics MCQs.
|
| In my country, you're the odd one out if you have an exam or an
| interview and you _don 't_ prepare for cheating. It's a cultural
| expectation among peers to cheat to get ahead.
|
| To work around this, I follow the advice I've read here on HN:
|
| 1) Ask them about their programming experience. Bugs they ran
| into, solutions they thought of, implementation of those
| solutions etc.
|
| 2) take a problem I faced in my work and present it to them and
| _observe_ how they navigate the problem to reach a solution. They
| don 't have to solve it, I just see their approach
|
| 3) just talk to them while asking basic language syntax and
| definitions. Again, the goal here is to check if they've
| memorized the answers or are they speaking from experience. If
| the answer is a regurgitation of some interview prep website,
| probe deeper to see if they know what they're saying.
|
| The downside of this approach is, of course, time. It takes 40
| minutes to an hour for each of these interviews. Time that
| sometimes I don't have and I have to move some stuff around to
| accommodate, work late to cover up or delegate. This approach has
| worked for me so far. I've hired 5 people in my team and all of
| them have been good hires.
|
| EDIT: formatting and grammar
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| > c) (the best one) memorize everything from leetcode style
| solutions and definitions to mathematics MCQs.
|
| Couldn't it be argued that memorizing leetcode solutions IS NOT
| cheating? Seems like it would be better to understand things at
| a fundamental level, but its still proof of ability to master
| the problem in and takes a lot of effort.
|
| Especially if the person was upfront about the fact they could
| solve the problem but still didn't understand everything about
| it.
| pythonb3sss wrote:
| The problem was that he was terrible at problem solving. He
| failed at simple logical problems like flattening a nested
| json array, cleaning data before running operations on it,
| etc. And probing further on his memorized answers, he
| couldn't explain anything. He'd just repeat the same thing
| but change voice of the sentence (active/passive)
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