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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)

#71

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

hgsgm wrote: post #44
brookst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon might be unethical or immoral or unpleasant, but it is extremely successful at its founder's goal.

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.

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

#72

Post by bee_rider »

osigurdson wrote: post #51
heliostatic wrote: post #8

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.

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.

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

#74

Post by WJW »

bee_rider wrote: post #55
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?

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

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.

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

#75

Post by jatins »

brookst wrote: post #40
siggen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ... because the company is toxic

I mean one of the companies they mention is Amazon

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

#76

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

bee_rider wrote: post #55
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?

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

A venal, decrepit empire can last for hundreds of years.

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

#77

Post by sokoloff »

brookst wrote: post #40
siggen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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%.

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

#78

Post by brudgers »

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.

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

#79

Post by shswkna »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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