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My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

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Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#31

Post by wahnfrieden »

pydry wrote: post #18
mattgibson wrote: post #3

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…

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…

I wouldn’t blame the devs for their quality issues. Try ownership.

Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#32

Post by osigurdson »

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.

Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#34

Post by Spooky23 »

gardenhedge wrote: post #4

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 present…

We live in an era of transition. Deals and speed are more important than rigor.

When the easier money dries up, that will change.

Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#35

Post by praxulus »

gardenhedge wrote: post #4

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 present…

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.

Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#36

Post by algorithmmonkey »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #14

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.

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.

Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#37

Post by fauxpause_ »

nevermindiguess wrote: post #15
mattgibson wrote: post #3

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…

The goal of interviews and assignments is not to achieve an outcome but to assess someone’s abilities. Henceforth, cheating cannot be justified.

If the assessment has no relationship to the job requirements then the test assessment cannot be justified either

Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#39

Post by WJW »

glanzwulf wrote: post #17
duxup wrote: post #7

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?

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.

It's also possible that they kept cheating in order to get promoted, of course.

Re: My friends who cheated in interviews are getting promoted (2022)

#40

Post by brookst »

siggen wrote: post #20
n4r9 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there an alternative interpretation, that the internal evaluation process is just as broken as the hiring process?

Correct. You have unethical people now, you are probably “cheating” at work by taking credit for ideas not theirs.

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.

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