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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)

#141

Post by setgree »

asimpletune wrote: post #115

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 promote…

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.

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

#142

Post by n4r9 »

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?

Amazon is large enough to maintain market dominance via strategies other than technical excellence.

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

#143

Post by paulryanrogers »

l2silver wrote: post #134
asimpletune wrote: post #115

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 promote…

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 shoul…

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.

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

#144

Post by CamelCaseName »

psychphysic wrote: post #136
knicholes wrote: post #129

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.

So basically "do unto others" but phrased needlessly complexly?

Kant was notorious for writing in needlessly complex German

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

#145

Post by wootland »

selcuka wrote: post #133
wootland wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#146

Post by psychphysic »

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.

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

#147

Post by mirkules »

dariusj18 wrote: post #107
heelix wrote: post #27

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…

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.

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.

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

#148

Post by asimpletune »

spicyusername wrote: post #132
asimpletune wrote: post #115

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 promote…

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 dish…

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.

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

#149

Post by joenot443 »

whitemary wrote: post #127
asimpletune wrote: post #115

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 promote…

[flagged]

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.

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

#150

Post by davemp »

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.

This assumes internal performance evaluation is functional/unexploitable in these orgs.
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