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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)

#571

Post by asdfman123 »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #518
asdfman123 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying my contractor put in a low quality roof, but it hasn’t collapsed yet. The problem is while you can’t control randomness, on average those roofs do fail much more. But more broadly it’s amazing how far developers on HN will go to defend things that will mildly inconvenience developers.

No, it's not like that at all. It's like saying the roofer I hired doctored his references, but then proceeded to build a roof that's objectively good enough for me to hire him again to build another roof, on a bigger house for more money. Cheating to bypass a stupid gatekeeping system that's designed to ration 1 job per N perfectly qualified applicants is only a problem if it's a problem. If you claim that people wh…

You're confusing an individual for the whole.

If an individual cheats but turns out to be competent, it's no loss for the company or anyone else, really. But on average, if cheating is common, more incompetent people will slip through and ultimately cause problems. I can bet my life savings on black and win, but that doesn't make it a good decision.

> Works well enough, but it's a highly non-scientific, non-rational exercise.

If you'd like to know about the research behind interviews, they've found that unstructured interviews aren't better than pulling people out of a hat, regardless of how effective they feel.

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

#572

Post by boondoggle16 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #535
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…

>> Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA It seems like you are implying that a person who gets an MBA is the type of person who would cheat on a test. This fits with a ubiquitous contempt for MBAs and also project managers that comes up a lot on this site. There is a lot of room for criticism of business schools and middle managers in tech. But if you really think of peop…

Respectfully, I disagree. At it's core, business school is the study of making money. How to make power and social status numbers go up.

The business domain is interesting, and intellectually deep and rewarding, but without the money, all interest goes away. The money is the point.

With tech, there are complicated technical mechanisms. They still exist to make money, but, there are many layers of translation in between. And it seems easier for humans to be interested in computers in a more pure way, because of these layers between. Kinda like how a gift card "feels" more personal than cash even though it's a strictly worse gift.

So I think business school attracts many more "ends justifies the means" types of people because of these inherent properties.

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

#573

Post by bumby »

bradlys wrote: post #555
bumby wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA One nuance that may help explain how the change happened is how the status of CS has changed in the last 20 years. Maybe its just my age bias, but there seems to be a perceptible change of how CS majors are viewed by society and that changes the type of people attracted to that curriculum. It used to be that CS and engineering major…

If you want people to take on jobs purely for non-socioeconomic reasons then you might need to fix the underlying socioeconomic problems. (e.g. cost of housing) I don't see any real movement from older generations to do anything about that. They just keep complaining about the youth chasing money instead of some "passion." (Which ignores that the material conditions have completely changed in the last 20 years)

I don’t think this dichotomous thinking accurately captures the nuance and may just show a personal (and understandable) axe to grind. It’s definitely not an either-or choice.

Somebody can still quite easily work in CS and find affordable and high quality living. But maybe not in SV. I’d even argue you can work on more interesting problems. But people overwhelmingly want to work in SV because of the status it confers.

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

#574

Post by gumby »

scarface74 wrote: post #176
JohnFen wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > In business there is no cheating, there is only making money and not making money. This is the attitude that turns business from being something that is for the greater benefit of all into something that more like a cancer, harmful to all.

[dead]

The only reason businesses are tolerated is for the greater benefit.

If a paint company is dumping waste in the river we get them to stop. They push back and say "if you stop you won't have paint" and we work out a tradeoff.

Some businesses have hacked the system. For example finance is a service business but some people who just use it for self-enrichment have managed to persuade others that that is for the public good. That won't last forever, but certainly will take a long time (many more human lifespans I suspect, unfortunately) to damp out.

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

#575

Post by brabarossa »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #327
bombcar wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently this is moderately common especially during remote Covid work; there were some discussions of it on HN, even to where the person interviewed and accepted was not the person working, and apparently the work was being done by an entire group of people.

Been remote since 2015 and not gonna lie, thought about finding contractors on Fiverr or e-Lance (or whatever e-Lance is called these days) to do just that. Basically become a PM for a team of four Vietenamese kids and pull in pay from 3 gigs. I later did some contracting on the side of a full-time job in 2018 and it was hard -- confusion and burnout set in quickly. But still think about the offshoring approach somet…

Hey, I'm looking for remote work. Lets talk? Email in the profile.

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

#576

Post by mock-possum »

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…

every liar justifies it to themselves somehow. committing to dealing honestly with other people is a very serious undertaking, it's a struggle against nurture and nature that lasts a lifetime. some people don't see the value of it - some people see the value, but don't think it's worth the risk.

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

#577

Post by everforward »

voakbasda wrote: post #303
tristor wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

If a LC interview effectively serves as a proxy for an IQ test, then I think the courts might treat it the same as a literal IQ test. I wonder if we will see lawsuits testing this hypothesis.

The precedent for the illegality of IQ tests for employment is Griggs v Duke Power Co. [1] if I'm not mistaken. The court ruled:

> The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination, but also practices that are > fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business > necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot > be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.

(apologies for the dated and offensive language, starring it out seemed like it would imply a different and more offensive term so I left it as is)

My reading of it is that IQ tests aren't broadly illegal, but the employer would have to demonstrate that it's somehow related to job performance. E.g. one employer refused to hire people with too high of an IQ, and the courts ruled that was a reasonable (if unwise) justification [2].

I'm doubtful any case challenging LeetCode tests on the same grounds would succeed. I think it would be exceptionally difficult to convince a court that solving coding problems is unrelated to a programmer's job performance.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

2: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

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

#578

Post by spicyusername »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #151
spicyusername wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can always throw the argument “it has always been like that” to any discussion, but that’s never going to be a meaningful response to anyone who cares to think critically about whether the status quo is how things should be.

I'm saying that's how things have been, are, and will continue to be.

Any policy, technology, process, etc must take that into account.

I definitely wish that's not how it was, and I don't think that's how it should be, but we have to work with what we have to work with.

There are plenty of ways to get people to rise to their best selves, rather than sink to their worst selves, as they are in this context while competing for high paying jobs, and we should always try to induce the best outcomes possible.

I think this what you're getting at by suggesting we don't just give up, despite knowing what we know about human nature. But we also shouldn't deny the hard truth that humans won't anyways behave the way we wish they did.

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

#579

Post by Miner49er »

twistedcheeslet wrote: post #12

Your friends did whatever was needed to pass the interview. You did not. How is it surprising that they're the ones getting raises? Clearly they're willing to risk more than you are for the reward. Only getting caught cheating guarantees loss. Playing fair does not guarantee winning.

How is cheating risky? You get caught, you don't get the job. End of story.

On the other hand, not cheating means it will be harder to get the job. This seems to be the riskier strategy (but, I'd argue, has the greater reward.)

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

#580

Post by boondoggle16 »

scarface74 wrote: post #316
JohnFen wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business has always been about the greater benefit. Not solely (or primarily, from the business owner's perspective) about that, of course, but that aspect is the entire reason why government puts so much time, effort, and money into supporting business activities. If business is not at least in part about the greater benefit, then we need to stop wasting so many resources supporting it.

So when was this? When European businesses were exploiting the “new world”? When plantation owners were employing slaves? When robber barons were exploiting people and polluting the environment? The “greed is good” 80s? VCs throwing money at startups that they know will never be profitable waiting for the “greater fool”?

Before globalization, even before the industrial revolution.

The agriculture revolution has been a disaster for the human race. Or at least the individuals within it.

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