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I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

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Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#131

Post by nahshon »

One of my friends cousin immigrated to Canada recently from India.

They both are shady and like to use shortcuts to reach success.

Few years back, she rang me up at 12am in the night. She sent me a link asking me to solve a coding assessment for her. I was naive and idiot. I spent 2 hours on the test and submitted it.

After that, both of them did not contact me for year.

A year later, I came to know from him that her cousin passed that coding assessment and secured a full-time job with top 10 tech company for $140k/yr. She bought a house in one of the most prestigious community in Canada after probation.

On the other hand, I never got a job higher than $50k/yr. I continue to rent and survive.

Both of them came as immigrant few years after me and own houses. I cannot. I blocked both of them. I regret participating in that assessment everyday. It was against my morals and principles.

Never make friends in Canada. They use and through you like a condom.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#133

Post by DeathArrow »

buran77 wrote: post #84
ignoramous wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's harsh because TFA does mention that they feel outright uncomfortable (even after 18 years!) how big a role luck played in them clearing that fizzbuzz interview question: > I've struggled with this a lot over the years, but I finally decided to share my story. I don’t think I would have made it past the first round of interviews at Microsoft if I hadn’t gotten so lucky. So pretty much, my entire career is built…

Out of pretty much all the people I know, I can't think of any successful career not pivoting on one such fateful moment of "luck". One lucky question/answer, one fortunate encounter, one near miss. Of course we'll never know how the road not taken looks like. Any moment could actually be a pivotal one but most are very unassuming and only the memorable ones stick with us, making them feel more important. Also, as so…

Gauss solved the same problem in a very similar fashion when he was a kid.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#134

Post by lrvick »

One time a company I interviewed with asked me obscure algorithm questions about playing card shuffling. As a former professional magician I knew the optimal answers instantly and could jot them down straight away. They had allocated an hour for answers I wrote in a few minutes. I could have told them I had a massively unfair advantage, but I did not bother.

They were visibly impressed and told me I was moving on to the final interview stage right away. I declined, as I hate companies that select for algorithm puzzle skill instead of real world problem solving experience.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#135

Post by TrackerFF »

redredrobot wrote: post #63
mrweasel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can absolutely see why people would view this as cheating, I'm also not sure what he was suppose to do. It's a case of: "Hey, look, I really want this job so I took the time to prepare and studied the kind of question you might ask. I happen to know the answer to this question, could you ask a new one that I don't know the answer to?" If I where the interviewer, I'd just stop the interview at this point and m…

You tell the interviewer you are familiar the question instead of pretending to come up with a solution on the spot. Is that not obvious to everyone?

Low risk, high reward.

Close to 0% chance someone would find out, as that would involve the person revealing the question also facing consequences - unless the company has some elaborate scheme involving modified and unique questions tailored for each candidate, and keeping track what candidate got which question. But that obviously wouldn't work with a trivial question like the one OP got.

Either that, or some third party which could have intercepted the communication between OP and the friend revealing the question. But again, what are the chances...

And on a tangent - should candidates "grinding leetcode" reveal that they've encountered the question before? That's the whole point of leetcode.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#136

Post by nerdponx »

lrvick wrote: post #134

One time a company I interviewed with asked me obscure algorithm questions about playing card shuffling. As a former professional magician I knew the optimal answers instantly and could jot them down straight away. They had allocated an hour for answers I wrote in a few minutes. I could have told them I had a massively unfair advantage, but I did not bother. They were visibly impressed and told me I was moving on to…

Hopefully you told them why you declined, otherwise they will just keep asking those questions of other people.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#137

Post by IshKebab »

belter wrote: post #110
omegalulw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not cheating but it's absolutely unethical. OP is right that they should have disclosed that they had seen the problem before. It only is that the right thing to do but also good interviewers can tell when you genuinely thought about a problem vs just regurgitated the solution.

As unethical as the hundreds of interviewers who pretend to believe that the candidate in front of them, just somehow managed to find within minutes the solution to some programming puzzle, and not through hundreds of hours of mentoring and self-practice. I would propose to change coding interviews to the following scheme: Step 1: Interviewer ask a coding question. If candidate is able to answer correctly then move t…

I agree that interviewers asking stupidly hard questions that they wouldn't be able to figure out in an interview is a problem, but I don't see how your solution would remotely work. How would you ensure the questions are equally difficult?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#138

Post by momirlan »

nahshon wrote: post #131

One of my friends cousin immigrated to Canada recently from India. They both are shady and like to use shortcuts to reach success. Few years back, she rang me up at 12am in the night. She sent me a link asking me to solve a coding assessment for her. I was naive and idiot. I spent 2 hours on the test and submitted it. After that, both of them did not contact me for year. A year later, I came to know from him that her…

you should not blame them for your situation. just be smarter and find a better paying job. i also found that it's not so important how much you make, but how wise you spend. but 50k in IT, that is ridiculous, even for a first job. you're definitely not trying hard enough.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#139

Post by jasonhansel »

napo wrote: post #13

I'm surprised that atm there is a consensus in the comments saying that it's not cheating. Companies ask interviewers to not reveal the questions they had to other candidates. It's likely that his friend was told not to say that. Overall he clearly had an unfair advantage, and even if legally it wouldn't be the definition of "cheating" it would go against the intent of the interview: which is to evaluate candidates i…

> Companies ask interview[ees] to not reveal the questions they had to other candidates.

I'm not condoning the author's actions, but I don't think any company has explicitly told me that. (I assume by "interviewers" you meant "interviewees.")

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#140

Post by yarg »

ldx1024 wrote: post #132
yarg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, at some point I'm going to need to accept that I'm too burnt out to code anymore.

Software is hard, that's why we make the big bucks :)

I never did; though even my employers acknowledged that I was undervalued - albeit as I walked out the door.

I wasn't joking though - I haven't been able to work for years and have no real hope of piecing myself back together.

(Mushrooms help, though they're seasonal - and there's no damned way the government's ever going to legalise them.)

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