On the other hand that first question was just a filter. He managed to do well in the on site interview. So even if he had an unfair advantage to get the foot in the door, he managed to back it up
I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
331–340 of 503 posts
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the flip side, we questioned a candidate the usual way with pertinent technical challenges and so on. Then when driving in a van to lunch (our habit was to do a social segment as well as technical) I asked some puzzle questions - add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be? and suchlike. He was charmed, we brainstormed some answers and had a fun lunch. Years later,…
Is that a puzzle? Isn't it just 2πr + d = 2π(r + d/2π)?
Yes, to both.
It's very counter intuitive, and very easy to solve.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#333IMHO, 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…
I agree, this is definitely not cheating. This is interview preparation. When I prepared for my FAANG interviews I googled so many questions that I couldn’t find another blue link, they were all purple. I prepped for them all. The more you want the job, the more you prep
Really nice way to put it!
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve had this happen to me before and disclosed it during the interview. Consistently, the response was the interviewer telling me they were impressed that I was well prepared, and to go ahead with the answer.
The vast majority of your coworkers will have gone through a similar if not identical interview process. Do you prefer to work with people that pretend they've never seen a question before when they have? Then do that. Do you prefer to work with people that admit they have seen the question before but are not directly penalized for it? Then do that. If you somehow are penalized for it... you dodged a bullet.
As an interviewer, I would prefer (in this order):
1. The candidate has actual domain experience matching the question and can rattle off the answer in their sleep. We can use the remaining time to go deeper into the question and probe the boundaries of candidate's knowledge. [maybe 1 out of 200 candidates actually deliver this]
2. The candidate came prepared, studied the question ahead of time, can rattle off the answer from memory. As above, with the question out of the way, we could use time to explore around the topic and find areas the candidate didn't study but still can work their way through. It's rare that you see someone who memorized a perfect answer, but then can't go further purely because they have no canned response.
3. The candidate doesn't know the question ahead of time, and legitimately "thought hard" and solved it on the spot. We may or may not have time to probe further, but candidate has shown the ability to reason through a problem outside their domain.
[above this line is my "hire" bar, below is unfortunately the vast majority of candidates]
4. The candidate doesn't immediately get there, but can be guided through with hints and can follow the bread crumbs I'm laying.
5. The candidate tries but, for many possible reasons, struggles, goes off down wrong-way roads, and doesn't make any progress.
6. The candidate freezes up, deer in headlights, won't produce anything.
7. The candidate talks and talks with a prepared speech about his background and skills, but doesn't actually do or solve anything [yes, I've seen this multiple times]
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#335In 2012, I moved from a long-term job to a small startup. I was the first engineering hire for the startup, and they had started building their product with consultants at Pivotal Labs. They also used Pivotal to test my programming ability -- I did an interview in which I implemented sets in Java in a style where the interviewer actually typed the code, I told him what to build.
That startup failed pretty soon afterward, and I got an interview at another startup -- that had also used Pivotal as contractors. That startup did its own interviewing, but they had liked Pivotal's style of interviewing, so I went into an interview with the CTO who started saying, "Okay, we're going to build a set in Java, I'll type the code..."
I said, "Look, I'm happy to do this interview, but I've done this exact thing before. Why don't you let me sit down with one of your coders for the time period you've allotted to this, and I'll help him do his work, which I think gives you a good sense for how I'd actually work."
I sat down with a JS developer and figured out a bug in his tests which was causing him to think that he had a bug in his main code.
I got the job.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not cheating but it's absolutely unethical. OP is right that they should have disclosed that they had seen the problem before. It only is that the right thing to do but also good interviewers can tell when you genuinely thought about a problem vs just regurgitated the solution.
As unethical as the hundreds of interviewers who pretend to believe that the candidate in front of them, just somehow managed to find within minutes the solution to some programming puzzle, and not through hundreds of hours of mentoring and self-practice. I would propose to change coding interviews to the following scheme: Step 1: Interviewer ask a coding question. If candidate is able to answer correctly then move t…
I like your approach, but step 3 should see the interviewer immediately let go, to be replaced by the candidate.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#337Every time the topic of cheating comes up on HN, I become increasingly disheartened by the amount of people chiming in who think it's not only alright to cheat but also laudable to do so. Ethics are foundational to engineering. Jettisoning them is a sign of a discipline in decline.
I desperately wish there were some kind of equivalent to the Bar Association for software. A higher power that can punish blatant ethical violations in the face of the relentless greed of an engineer's boss, company, or industry. I think of the Volkswagen emissions snafu and how that might have been handled differently if the engineers had something with teeth to use to push back against unethical and illegal practic…
> I desperately wish there were some kind of equivalent to the Bar Association for software.
There are many bar associations, not just one. The American Bar Association is a voluntary organization with no punishment power. Some US states have mandatory bar associations, other states don't.
Whenever someone suggests a professional organization governing software, it's usually overlooked that all such organizations are only regional. Ultimately, the power derives from local governments.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#338One time a company I interviewed with asked me obscure algorithm questions about playing card shuffling. As a former professional magician I knew the optimal answers instantly and could jot them down straight away. They had allocated an hour for answers I wrote in a few minutes. I could have told them I had a massively unfair advantage, but I did not bother. They were visibly impressed and told me I was moving on to…
On the flip side, we questioned a candidate the usual way with pertinent technical challenges and so on. Then when driving in a van to lunch (our habit was to do a social segment as well as technical) I asked some puzzle questions - add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be? and suchlike. He was charmed, we brainstormed some answers and had a fun lunch. Years later,…
The rope question is more of a Fermi question[1]. Not that they aren't commonly called [2] puzzlers, but I think the distinction is useful. Fermis are about estimating, and that's an actual skill - innumeracy[3] is real.
What I would call puzzle problems usually involve some trick to getting the answer. If you can't figure out the trick, you're stumped. If you know the trick, you barely have to think to crank out the answer. Optimally solving the example in the article is one of those.
They weren't widely banned because they were too novel and charming. They were banned because "time to aha!" in any given instance doesn't tell you much about how someone solves problems. Also, because the bulk of the work at most jobs doesn't really resemble seeking "aha moments," these questions tend to select for people who thrive most on doing something other than the job at hand.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem
[2] https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-hardest-interview-puzzle-q...
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
You tell the interviewer you are familiar the question instead of pretending to come up with a solution on the spot. Is that not obvious to everyone?
Low risk, high reward. Close to 0% chance someone would find out, as that would involve the person revealing the question also facing consequences - unless the company has some elaborate scheme involving modified and unique questions tailored for each candidate, and keeping track what candidate got which question. But that obviously wouldn't work with a trivial question like the one OP got. Either that, or some third…
> "Low risk, high reward."
I've seen candidates deny that they've seen the problem given, blitz through the basic version (intended as a quick warm-up), and then completely choke when a slight twist is added. Let's just say that really raises some questions...
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#340IMHO, 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…
What was the point of the question? That would help determine whether or not this was cheating. Normally with things like this the interviewer claims to want to "see how you think." If some prepared rote answer passed this interview phase, at the very least, the interview failed to meet its stated goal. What's the difference between cheating and what's needed for your version of "success?" Can someone cheat their way…
> Can someone cheat their way to success?
Yes people "cheat" their way to success. I hate it, but they do and we support it. From just a position of basic human integrity (forget about the law), Apple "cheated" by implementing the graphical user interface from Xerox Parc without adequate compensation. Then Microsoft "cheated" by implementing Apple's GUI as Windows. Then came the lawsuits. This happens again and again.
I have experienced this personally - the USDA RUS broadband program had written rules where an ISP had to work with their regional office and not walk their application through the front door in Washington DC. Yet being the first to apply through the regional office resulted in significant delays over our competitor walking their application into USDA headquarters against procedure. They got the $20 million. We did not. Any attempt to object or litigate would only hurt us further.
> If the fraud in your story hadn't been discovered, would that have been success?
I do not consider the author talking with Eli to be fraud. There was no obligation of disclosure. For all we know the reason why Microsoft repeated this question with so many applicants may have been deliberate to see how many applicants would actually get the solution by asking around. After all, isn't that how all of us code?