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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)

#51

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.

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.

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

#52
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Finger pointing isn’t a great signal.

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

#53

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.

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.

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

#54

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 thi…

Ruthlessly focus on your goals and don't get distracted by side quests.

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

#55
post #9

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 pe…

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

In that case, the market should take them out, right?

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

#56
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.

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

#57

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.

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.

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

#58
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

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

#59
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.

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

#60
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.

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