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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)

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Whether the two statements are equivalent is a topic of some debate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Differences_in_sit... > Immanuel Kant famously criticized the golden rule for not being sensitive to differences of situation, noting that a prisoner duly convicted of a crime could appeal to the golden rule while asking the judge to release him, pointing out that the judge would not want anyone else to send…

Needless discourse. Everyone understands there must be caveats to the Golden Rule. People aren't so literal in their moral frameworks to care about the exact wording. It's not charitable to say "what about this extremely contrived situation where the rule doesn't apply!"

The Golden Rule conveys 99% of the idea. No one cares about the remaining 1% except for people who have time to waste. We get it. We get the point Kant is trying to make.

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

#382
post #275

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…

>As a passing thought I've noticed that there's also sort of like a fierce loyalty to defending LLM's in the forums, often by people who display a certain amount of ignorance as to how they work. I wonder if there's a similar dynamic there as to the people who are justifying the cheaters in the comments? No it's the other way around. Hinton, basically the father of "AI" and other real experts who are involved in the…

There's a lot of great stuff in this comment.

> There's a fierce artificial downplaying of AI when it comes to programming. [...] I think this is the delusional group.

This could definitely be the case. I personally wouldn't bet against AI as in all of AI. I, like many, think it's a matter of time and technology, but I do think this particular moment in time, and this particular technology is over hyped. I'll just be candid about that. Still, one day? Yeah you bet, although it appears that we're at least one fundamental breakthrough short, so the technology will be different. Today's tech will still nonetheless be fundamental though.

> I think it occurs because a lot of people's identity rests on their actual ability to program. They think your they're superior programmers [...] causes them to dismiss the technology in the face of actual experts who fear and question it.

I can't speak to the first part, with respect to what one side's biases are, as I don't really know what they're thinking, but you're almost certainly right that there's bias on both the bear and bull cases for AI. Sometimes I think it's a simple as the "line goes up" thinking in crypto just for programming and that's all that people need. I just read a lot of comments that at times feel kind of desperate to defend LLMs and so I added that last part to my original comment to see if anyone felt like adding to that thought, which you have so thanks.

> You have failed to address the controversy instead you categorize people who "defend" AI as people who don't "understand" it and you imply it's some psychological quirk or bias people have

Well, in all fairness I didn't want to make my already very long comment any longer than it already was, however in my defense, with respect to defining the controversy vs. implying there's a psychological quirk - I have seen what you can call some very strange gymnastics around what is learning or what is intelligence in, again, sort of desperate efforts to make LLMs just something that they're not. It's in those situations that I was referring to the people clearly not understanding how they work. That being said, I also did imply there was a psychological quirk but that was just because I didn't have the space nor the ability to really articulate what else might be going there. I think in parts of your response though you conveyed a valid viewpoint.

> Maybe your born with talent, so you worship and defend that talent with calls to uphold "integrity."

First, thank you, but second I don't think this was the case. I am one of those people who actually thinks talent is usually overrated, as "good enough" + perseverance does at least the same job for less in most cases. If anything, I think talent is kind of a scapegoat whenever some great goal proves to be elusive.

> Do people really want to live a shitty life getting sub 100k salaries only letting people like you take up all the high paying jobs in the name of "integrity"? No. No one does... not even you, but you have the luxury of talent or ability to master those interviews.

I think I would just respond by saying that nobody is guaranteed something just because they want it, but all of those people have the same access as anyone else to leetcode and the internet or whatever else they need to do the work to pass the interview. Bearing that in mind, cheating is obviously understandable, but just because I understand it doesn't mean I would do it, personally. I definitely don't think that it's a good thing either, but I don't think I'm high and mighty about it either. Ultimately we all act the way that we do because we don't know any better. If I knew how to be smarter I would, but I don't so I'm kind of stuck where I'm at just like the rest of the world. I make mistakes and at times I can also be dishonest too. It's life. That said, it's not like I wholly embrace the moments in my life where my actions demonstrated my limitations, at least not when it became painfully obvious to me.

> You defend integrity not because you are a stand up person, but because you have the ability to succeed without violating your integrity

I appreciate your honesty about this and I don't think there's really anyway I can disagree with it. Maybe in another life, if I were in another person's shoes, I would act differently. I mean, that makes sense to me. I can't prove otherwise. That said, knowing what I know in this life, I stand by what I said.

The last thing I'll say is why I believe we should still make our best efforts to be good, at least within our ability. That is because living for the sake of accumulating power, at the cost of doing what you believe is right, is just not in one's own best interest. In the absence of understanding what is right and what is wrong, the power that we accumulate has the same opportunity to cause tremendous harm as it does joy.

Just think about why people always love really down to earth celebrities. We see them and think that despite all their money, power, and fame, they're happy and there's something comforting about that. Can the same really be said for the contrary? I know it's a silly argument because you kind have to keep an open mind to agree with me, but it's not as undeniable as 2+2=4. Still, that's what I truly believe and you don't know me or where I've been or what I've done. However, I wouldn't think this if I wasn't sincere about it. I have had my own mistakes and there have been times in my life, like anyone, where I've been immoral and I honestly came out the other end thinking the means didn't justify the ends. But it's up to you to believe me.

Anyways, apologies to everyone for the massive response. I wish I knew how to be more succinct in response.

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

#383
post #365

This is a personal anecdote about something orthogonal to the article. A few months ago, I wrote an exam to get an AWS certification. Before the test, I had to take the adjudicator on a virtual tour of my exam space. My space was small so I had to do near gymnastics to give the supervisor the sight lines that she needed. Solutions to this already exist and I find it somewhat heard to believe that a company like Pears…

Software engineer interviews are hard because simultaneously:

1. They are adversarial where the interviewer is trying to tell if the interviewee is cheating and evaluate their performance.

2. They are trying to, as much as possible, emulate the team-oriented work environnment where the relationships are cooperative. So the interviewer is trying to be on the interviewee's "side" as much as possible to see what it would be like to work with them.

These two goals are in opposition, which is one of the reasons why SE interviewing is so hard to do well.

If you make the interview more explicitly adversarial like examinations are, you do a better job of weeding out cheaters. But you also bias towards candidates that are comfortable with adversarial interactions and you lose vital signal about their cooperation ability.

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

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cheating ultimately cheats oneself, but it's very galling that it's now becoming accepted as okay behavior in American society Man, you crushed it here, so true.

The post-pandemic economic environment is toxic. Everyone seems to have come out of the pandemic convinced that they need to tighten whatever screws they have to get theirs. And that triggers other people to do the same thing. Cheating enters the realm of possibility because people (correctly and incorrectly) believe others are doing the same thing. It's gross and feeds on itself. I'm not sure what will help it get b…

When resources are perceived scarce, it tends to incentivize worse behavior.

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

#385

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…

>>promotion process is distinct from the interview process

Promotions often have nothing to do with merit. It takes a lot of political manoeuvring, back room dealing, negotiations, packet building, documentation, positions trading, making allies to building support/consensus etc etc.

People who cheat are exactly the kind of people who are likely to win big in these processes.

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why are you calling for segregation? We have didn't years trying to move the world forward and yet you persist in trying to move backwards

We discriminate tuition based on national (even state!) origin. That's not physical segregation but it has the same result.

I'm calling for schools to just create a "international student focused" campus where they can collect all the rich international students, let them party and cheat for 4 years, collect the outrageous tuition, and shield the indigenous students from their bullshit.

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

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very well studied decline in trust in America over time. Despite your snark no one claimed we never cheated etc. It's just getting much worse

Nobody claimed that americans never cheated, yet the blame of things getting worse is put on GP on those coming from “low trust” societies. It’s a xenophobic lie, like if Americans don’t celebrate lying on positive euphemisms like “fake it till you make it” or “being a good salesman”

> if Americans don’t celebrate lying on positive euphemisms like “fake it till you make it” or “being a good salesman”

Most Americans that I know don't consider those phrases to reflect positive values at all. They're used disparagingly against people who really think like that.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the pro-cheating attitude is pretty widespread among young adults tracking into white collar careers, and computer science is no different. It usually starts in school - and these interview quizzes track this behavior pretty closely. Even without the cheating, you can pass an interview "honestly" by putting in the time to cram for it. That does not justify cheating in any way, though. The fact that people…

> they also need to fix their process to actually test skills. If we're being honest, LC style interviews aren't even about testing skills, it's trying to proxy for testing raw intelligence (or at least the ability to remember and regurgitate lots of facts). If companies could just IQ test people and hire by IQ, there'd be a lot less weirdness in interviews, but that's illegal (and probably rightly so).

https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...

IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

#389

I'm probably going to get roasted for saying this, but this is completely unsurprising to me. When I was in college, folks from India and other low trust societies would mercilessly cheat on their projects and exams, blatantly helping one another on individual works, and the college knew about it and didn't care. When I had brought this up at one point, I was told by a professor that it was a cultural difference that…

What’s even more depressing is when these liars and cheats ultimately run out of time (people start realizing) they just hop ship.

Which is super encouraged by the standard, "you should be switching jobs every 2 years to maximize your wage".

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

#390

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'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 not true that all of the gains are captured by investors.

Alphabet's CEO makes about 1000x the average googler, but that's only about 1% of salaries. What I mean is that for every $100 a Googler makes, about $1 goes to the CEO. It's not like top executives are claiming ing most of the value for themselves, the majority of the value a worker generates is returned to them in their compensation.

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