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

I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

facet.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 503 posts

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#291

Post by cmsonger »

I have no opinion whether or not it's cheating. Feels like a definitional issue more than anything.

I work and interview for one of the FAANG's. I had a candidate tell me just the other day: "Oh, I've done this in another form." We went on, talked about some details that are not a part of the core algorithm but that I think are interesting to suss out things like: "Do they understand concurrency", "Do they understand good API design", etc and then we moved on.

As I was doing the writeup, I scored the person high on a measure that I rarely get a read from in technical interviews. I guess my point: I don't know if it's cheating and in no way shape or form feel judgy towards people who do what the author did. But when I've encountered people disclosing this, I have noted that.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#293

Post by IshKebab »

belter wrote: post #156
IshKebab wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that interviewers asking stupidly hard questions that they wouldn't be able to figure out in an interview is a problem, but I don't see how your solution would remotely work. How would you ensure the questions are equally difficult?

If the candidate can manage the question the Interviewer should be able also. After all he/she was already hired. If a company decides to approach hiring with the naturally confrontational approach of, "let me find out in 60 minutes if you are smart enough to work here", I don't see why it should stop there. After all recruiters always mention, it is good for you if you are also inquisitive, show interest in the comp…

> If the candidate can manage the question the Interviewer should be able also.

You mean ask them the same question that they asked? Of course they'll be able to answer it. What does that prove?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#294

Post by albedoa »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187
darkerside wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is actually difficult to work through something that you I am the answer to but forgot how you got the answer Well, yeah. That's a big part of the point of the question. Anybody can Google the answer. Do you understand it well enough to explain it, and if you don't, can you walk through your thought process as you figure it out.

I failed to practice answering questions that I already knew the answer to. I also think the interviewers style had something to do with putting me off balance (it became adversarial after I pointed out this was just alien dictionary, I probably would have had a better result pretending not to have seen the problem before). Or maybe that’s just how things are at Amazon? My Google and Facebook interviews went much bet…

> I failed to practice answering questions that I already knew the answer to.

You failed for the same reason you would have failed if you had never heard the problem before. Knowing the answer has nothing to do with why you were dinged.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#295

Post by relaxing »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #210
dekhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would have lost me (principal engineer) with those questions.

Really? You don't like to socialize with peers, with puzzles or tricky problems? Enough to make you refuse to join a company? Discussion has gone off the rails here. Maybe I didn't make it clear - the puzzles were during casual conversation at lunch. Rebutting something I didn't say, is not fair.

> Really? You don't like to socialize with peers, with puzzles or tricky problems?

No, we like to talk about normal stuff.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#296

Post by sershe »

I don't think this is cheating.. if someone asks me how to design a distributed join and I answer because I worked on distributed joins directly, is that cheating?

This reminds me of a guy who, on the contrary, probably thinks I wronged him during an interview. He couldn't solve my relatively simple programming question and then remarked, sounding rather unhappy, that this question "wasn't on leetcode", and so he wasn't prepared for it ;)

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#297

Post by gumby »

tzs wrote: post #271
gumby wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to use problems like this too. What’s nice about this example is it provides lots of scope for discussion (as you did) without requiring much domain experience. If the person can’t program their way out of a paper bag you’ll find out right away. If they are a junior hire, any working answer is fine. If they have more experience they can start to talk about why they chose the approach they did. If they are quit…

If I was interviewing people what I'd probably do is pick 3 or 4 LeetCode problems, but not ask the person to actually solve them. Instead, we'd pick whichever of the problems they find most interesting discuss the problem specification, and how we might approach it. We'd discuss what difficulties and special cases we anticipate. Then we'd look at the answer together and see if it seems to make sense. In these discus…

I agree, but there is a reason for having the candidate write some code: some people can talk a good talk but can’t actually write a line of code. That’s a phone screen fail, but yes, some people pass the phone screen, so the sooner you figure it out the better.

When I say “some code” I mean no more than ~20 lines and who cares about missed semicolons or such.

And only one or two interviews need this, the subsequent interviewers can do more of the important stuff you’re talking about.

Another important point about these discussions: train your interviewers. I hate interviewing with (for that matter Working with too) someone who wants to show how smart they are. If we bring someone in for a round of interviews it’s because we want to hire them so are looking to see if our prior judgement is correct. Don’t be mean to the candidate and don’t waste their time or yours.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#298

Post by xtracto »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #210
dekhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would have lost me (principal engineer) with those questions.

Really? You don't like to socialize with peers, with puzzles or tricky problems? Enough to make you refuse to join a company? Discussion has gone off the rails here. Maybe I didn't make it clear - the puzzles were during casual conversation at lunch. Rebutting something I didn't say, is not fair.

Are managers that naive with regards to power imbalances with their peers/colleagues?

I have seen people with similar insensitivity fail to understand why people in their teams dont like them: "but I treat them as if we are peers!! I like playing on the 'you are doing it wrong'games"!!

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#299

Post by advocate23 »

This isn't the sad part. The sad part is that technical interviews cannot be audited externally so they can ratchet up the difficulty if they don't want you. To my knowledge Google and Microsoft don't do that, but I would not be surprised if other companies who are more tolerant of dark patterns have already started.

Second, after reading that blog post, you just know that there are some poor saps out there who have informed their interviewer: "I've already seen this question before." It breaks my heart that they are (likely) punished for their honesty.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#300

Post by WillPostForFood »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #155

IMHO, this was not cheating. This is a phenomenon called success. If you are fortunate (?) to be around in the entrepreneurial world long enough, you will realize that intelligence, hard work, good time management etc are not adequate. They just qualify as deserving. There are serendipities that separate those who succeed from everybody else who was deserving. Survivor bias [1]. Calling Eli was your serendipity. The…

"Calling Eli was your serendipity"

He didn't call Eli randomly, he called to research an interview. That's putting the work in. That the question was the same might have been serendipitous (especially if the question was one of many possibilities). And he didn't just call and get the question, he then put in the effort to research an answer.

Post reply on HN