Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

teamblind.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 748 posts

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

#461

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

runlaszlorun wrote: post #69

I’m going to go out on a limb here and be “that guy”. But in my experience, there’s a big difference between perspectives on cheating in the US vs perspectives in… let’s just say broadly… “some other nations”. I say this as an American who has lived overseas much of my life and, lest you think I’m just a flag waving parrot for the US, prob prefer living overseas and am more than willing to criticize the heck out of t…

>Feel free to downvote me or call me a moron…

You are actually being very astute. One of the reasons (there are of course more reasons) that America does so well is that most common citizens are relatively honest. Consequently in many third world countries corruption is rife, not only is it tolerated it is often encouraged.

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

#462

Post by trefoiled »

tdba wrote: post #435
trefoiled wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and it's also hard to consider the US as on some kind of general decline from high trust to low trust. American honesty has always been highly contextual. All it takes is a look into how we treated written agreements with Native Americans to see how small the radius of this value extends. Native societies were "high trust" in the sense that they had no ability, at least initially, to comprehend that settlers…

High/low trust at root refers to how you behave to other members of your nation, not foreign peoples. Every nation ever has always tried win zero-sum interactions with other nations (e.g. who gets the land, resources), and all existing nations today continue to do so. Native American societies may have been high trust internally (within the tribe, clan, nation boundary) but certainly screwed over other Native America…

Point taken, but consider the context of where we are in this thread: discussing immigrants and foreign contract workers cheating in interviews and on their resumes for positions within the United States. Perhaps your point is more applicable to how the idea of high or low trust cannot apply to workers operating in a culture foreign to their own.

The example of inter tribal slavery doesn't actually apply to what I'm talking about. Slavery, and highly destructive, unprovoked raids which sometimes concluded with massacres of women and children were normal in the Americas. Is enslaving a member of another band or tribe a violation of trust? Is engaging in unprovoked war raids a violation of trust? These practices would not come as a surprise to anyone living within raiding territory of a warlike people. Trust can only come into play when a party to an agreement, whether tacit or explicit, has an opportunity to violate what was agreed upon.

Saying "Every nation ever has always tried win zero-sum interactions with other nations" conceals that there were actually vast differences in the way colonialist powers conducted themselves in relations with Native American tribes. The (at the time British) Canadian government honored treaties much more often and in better faith than US authorities.

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

#463

Post by sota4077 »

As children many of us were always lead to believe that doing the right thing will always be the right thing to do. That doing the right thing will get you to where you want to be in life. As we grow older we quickly realize that is just not the case. Is it right to be dishonest? Of course not. But it does make it hard to compete in a society when a not insignificant percentage of that society are willing to lie, deceive or commit a fraud to get a leg up.

I still choose to be honest about my education, qualifications and experience in my professional life. But I personally know people around me who have lied. They never admit it outright, but by being perceptive and just listening to people I can hear them give different facts to different people depending on the situation. It happens, a lot.

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

#464

Post by gs17 »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #449
gs17 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 had to be respected . The reality (speaking from experience) may be that international stud…

If you're wondering why international students are so lucrative, it is because the majority of them they pay full price for tuition. This is particularly noticeable at state colleges/universities because those institutions have to provide in-state residents a significant discount.

In my case, it was private, but international students wouldn't be offered as generous scholarships.

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

#465

Post by capitainenemo »

raghudotcc wrote: post #372
tristor wrote: post #160

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…

I am from India, and I just recently completed my Masters from a US university. I have never cheated in my life when it comes to interviews, exams, or assignments; not once. I am worried that calling us “low-trust” because of your experience with a few students might lead others to think that the entire country that is so diverse and large is comprised of just an incompetent set of cheaters. I agree that a lot of stu…

I read his complaint as more one of societal reinforcing of certain behaviours. Certainly cheating exists in all societies, but if it is considered acceptable or necessary as a reaction to others, it's going to be a problem.

I looked up where Indians feel about trust here: https://ourworldindata.org/trust

Indians self-rank at 17% - the US at 40%, Canadians at 50%.

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

#466

Post by throw9away6 »

TeeMassive wrote: post #452
kelipso wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I know for a fact the higher ups tell (heavily imply to) the professors/lecturers to go easy on the undergrad international students with cheating and other behaviors at least in the smaller US colleges.

With the advent of AI and wearable IoT gadgets, the only way for schools to test out their students will be one one one filmed interviews that the students can give to future employers.

Oral exams are hard to cheat

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

#467

Post by sota4077 »

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.

>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.

I'm not sure that is true. Plenty of mid level management types will assign work to the people they oversee on their team. Then never make mention of who actually performed the work when they present the completed product to the folks above them. It is incredibly common. One way this also happens is to have a mid-level manager delegate a project to someone. They quite literally do all the work. Then they present it as a team effort later on when it wasn't because as a team effort it gives the appearance of their involvement.

Taking credit by omission of information is still taking credit.

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

#468

Post by Floegipoky »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #300
yCombLinks wrote: post #216

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”

Fwiw I've usually seen "fake it till you make it" in 2 contexts: 1. Disciplines in which skill development requires overreaching beyond one's current skill level eg musical improvisation 2. In reference to confidence eg many software developers experience imposter syndrome and have to pretend to be more confident than they actually are in order to be taken seriously, even if they are the most skilled in the room

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

#469

Post by throw9away6 »

asimpletune wrote: post #191
tristor wrote: post #160

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…

> 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 guy that’s getting payed more than you because he cheated into a higher paying position is happy to have you believe that.

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

#470

Post by evantbyrne »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #312
asimpletune wrote: post #191

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.

"Fake it till you make it" has been a thing for a long time -- hence the catchy phrase. When did this wonderful meritocracy exist? Where? I think back to Jobs and Woz, and how he got him to hack a project to win a contest, and then didn't tell Woz and kept the money. It's been here since day 1.

Meritocracy doesn't exist for the poor. Before getting my job at The Atlantic through a random personal connection, I experienced job discrimination on the basis of not having graduated from a "prestigious" institution. Obviously this is coded language for being poor. To add insult to injury, I had actually aced a couple engineering courses that University of Michigan had provided to my high school class. You don't get to put that on your resume though. Even though I've always been honest to fault, I would never judge a poor person for skirting the rules of society. At the end of the day, if hiring managers can't tell whether candidates have fake credentials, all that does is prove that credentialism is not about merit.
Post reply on HN