Ask HN: Interviewing at this point feels unfair due to cheaters. What now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Interviewing at this point feels unfair due to cheaters. What now?

3 pointsvolkk7 comments

How do you all feel about interviewing and being compared against people that are straight up cheating with the rise of these tools that are hidden during screensharing?

I don't even want to interview anymore until I know a company does theirs in-person now. People have always been cheaters/liars to begin with, but now it's doubly worse with this new tool that blew up on twitter. It's extremely unfair for me to study my ass off only to be in a pool full of people who didn't do it fairly. Anyone else feeling this way?

View on HN

Think of it this way. If someone gets hired after cheating on an interview, they'll presumably not be as good as expected. They'll get fired, and the company will launch another round of interviews -- this time watching vigilantly for off-screen cheating.

Maybe I'm saying that I reject the assumption that off-screen cheating is as effective as people think it is. (I really don't have any statistics for this, though -- does anyone? I'm just making my own assumption that it's not having a hugely noticeable impact on the overall pool of hired coders.)

Either way, I can totally see why you'd be mad cheating exists. But maybe take some heart from the fact that employers don't like it either, and will be on the look-out for it? I mean, if you preemptively remove yourself from interviewing because "What's the point if there's cheaters out there" - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They'll do damage and you missed your hiring shot. Your perspective is a macro view of things, but the damage is micro. We are descendents of people who gained immunity to devastating diseases, so good for our generation, but it's not like the diseases were a neutral fact.

> If someone gets hired after cheating on an interview, they'll presumably not be as good as expected.

there are people that are entirely clueless and then there are people that are solid engineers who aren't willing to spend months prepping by leetcoding. there are plenty who can cheat, and still do fine day to day once hired.

either way, even if the people that cheated don't have enough skill to keep the job, they've already taken that job and pushed out someone else that's legitimate. then they have to pip them, fire them, and reopen that role. that's months wasted and the original qualified candidate is long gone.

I don't want to discourage you, but people have "cheated" on remote technical interviews for decades. It's a staple of the industry, HBO made like 5 Silicon Valley episodes about this.

i had a feeling someone would say "there's always been cheaters." i've been working in the industry for a long time, i'm certainly aware. but there's a difference between going out of your way to cheat when it wasn't that easy before mixed with a booming job market knowing you'd have like 15 interviews lined up, and what is happening today where the market is decimated, filled with utmost desperation, combined with tools that make it dead simple at the click of a button. it's a complete mess

Well, "booming job market" is certainly a precondition you won't see any more of, these days. Welcome to America's century of humiliation, you should get comfortable as we're going to be here for a while.

That's the same argument as "no worry about guns out there, people who want to commit crimes have always been able to get them". Which just isn't true. It certainly occurred, and I caught people cheating at remote interviews, but not at this scale with this level of sophistication.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com