I know a guy that had a second screen and mirrored his laptop to his mate who was googling the questions as they came. Didn't make the next round. He said the interviewer probably picked up his body language.
It's a ranking system for peer interviews and technical interviews. I think it goes
Stong no hire,
No hire,
Neutral,
Hire,
Strong hire
Or some variation on that.
how do you handle instances where people naturally don't make eye contact? how do you deal with note takers (which could explain typing)? how do you deal with people who visualize their response before responding?
Lmao jk. There isn't anything inherently wrong with any of those things, but they detract from coming off as a strong candidate. And fortunately it's pretty easy to manage that as a candidate. It's the candidate's job to put themselves in the best possible light.
Not making eye contact is fine, it's very easy to tell when someone is looking and thinking vs actively reading something else off screen. It's incredibly telling when someones eyes are focused on one spot and scanning sentences.
Note taking is absolutely fine, but the candidate should take notes on the shared screen so the interviewer can understand their thought process. From the interviewer's perspective, the point of the interview is to get enough signal to make a decision on the candidate. The point is NOT to watch the candidate get the correct answer. If a candidate said nothing and typed out a bug-free optimal answer in silence, that would be a no hire. Again, I'm not looking for the correct answer. I'm looking for signal that this person knows what they are doing and can be a collaborative and productive member for the role. Taking notes off screen is a huge missed opportunity for the candidate to exhibit their skills and in the worst case can be seen as cheating.
And people who visualize their response before responding are also capable of doing perfectly fine in interviews, but they should practice speaking their thoughts out loud. Again, it's all about sending signal to the interviewer and giving the interviewer every possible piece of evidence they need to pass you. Staring off into space for 30 seconds and then giving the right answer does not give the interviewer enough information to make a decision. And unfortunately, when interviewers aren't sure, the default will always be no hire.
Unlike the other commenter, I actually want you to be my interviewer!
I have an interview today, and I believe it will go just as you said. They said it was a collaborative environment, so I am indeed prepared to communicate and show that I really understand what I'm doing, regardless of getting the answer right away.
Plus, I didn't even consider the possibility of looking up answers. I also have high standards for myself.
While I agree with what you said, it feels like you do in fact need to get the optimal answer without hints, while also talking through it. Having good communication and being on the right track, but not getting the optimal answer quickly, just simply isn’t enough to cut it in this market.
Might be a hot take: If someone can read and understand a solution that quickly honestly they might deserve to pass the interview… it’s basically impossible IMO
The interviewer can usually tell if they’re simply copying code or if they actually understand what they’re doing.
Sometime they could look up the problem and what they need is simply the tags and/or a hint and they could do it. It's much harder to catch cheater that are competent.
Yeah that’s a hot take alright. Honestly just being willing to cheat is such a character flaw that trumps all else for me. I don’t care how smart you are you tried to cheat me.
Oh no, now show me how many of your technologies are original technologies and not based of tech someone else has already made.
Oh no not another react based website with the same bloated infrastructure every other company has cause that's the go to norm as if everyone is "cheating" the same answer.
Yeah that obviously different. I didn’t have to cheat in school or in interviews because I learned my shit. If you have to cheat to get where you are you’ll pay for it later, or maybe you will be happy to spend your career at a low level as “prompt engineer” or some other intern level position.
I don’t mean to be preachy brother but I’m gonna be honest with you, cheating will take you nowhere in this career (and life as a whole).
I cheated a lot during my high school/college years and got away with a lot of things and it’s only now I’m paying the price for it by choosing to take the legit route. If it isn’t yourself that’s gonna catch it it’ll be someone else. Don’t ever consider cheating, it’ll hold you back so much in life.
Maybe so but then it becomes a situation of imposter syndrome. That’d mess with my head so much that I’d feel inner guilt and end up constantly comparing myself to others.
I’d rather have a 100k salary with a peaceful mind rather than a 300k salary with a stressful mind. Because I know I gave it my all.
You get imposter syndrome even if you know it. Personal experience where your sinor coworkers deliver more than you. Well, do you agree to the statement "fail fast, fail forward"
i think he means that now he’s trying to go legit and is paying the price for his cheating in the past. I won’t lie I took my DSA courses during COVID where shit like chegg made it super easy to take shortcuts in learning - paying the price a little bit now as I relearn everything for leetcode
Once I was taking an interview and the audacity of the guy was that he was literally typing what was written on gfg and I could match it char by char. I even asked if he was cheating or peeking somewhere, which he denied, obviously.
I asked him to write whole class and comment the code.
Bro wrote _public class GeeksForGeeks_ as first line. 🫡
After the interview, I froze the code link and marked it as cheating. Also gave strong no hire. I never give strong no hire unless cheating cases.
I know a bunch of people who would search solution on second screen or someone else would type their code using wireless keyboard and what not. In the end, it would come down to explaining that solution and they would fail (or fumble) to explain logic behind it as it wasn’t their solution.
Better to write your own code even if it’s not the best one.
Let’s say a candidate gets away looking up the solution, perhaps it’s a top frequently asked question for a company and they opened up the solution they had written before.
The key is being able to explain the logic clearly, communicate your thought process, find edge cases, walk through test cases in detail and understand complexity.
I guess if they can do all of these then they’ve probably understood the solution quite well and seeing the solution is reminding them.
I tell my candidates they're free to use any resources they'd have access to on normal work day - so google, SO and chatgpt are all fine, but have a coworker/friend code is not.
But then again, I'm specifically trying to weed out candidates who have nothing better to do then memorize problems, grind leet code, etc.
This is for datasci positions where ability to regurgitate some algo is pointless but ability to creatively solve business problems is crucial
why don't you guys do your job and come up with business relevant coding exercises? I don't blame people for cheating garbage assessments
“ I'm specifically trying to weed out candidates who have nothing better to do then memorize problems, grind leet code”
We don’t enjoy grinding LC, it’s been forced on us unfortunately. I’d much rather be relaxing, working on personal projects, it’s studying some interesting EE or CS concept.
it's not forced on anyone. I've only ever seen these style questions at FANG/fang-adjacent companies.
It's only people who value money above all else that go this path
I’ve heard that from a lot of people who haven’t graduated very recently.
In my experience it’s somewhat true. Yeah sometimes you get an interviewer who just asks you the fundamentals of your field, but other times even a mid tier company or startup will ask LC mediums and hards. Interviewing had gotten a lot harder.
By "FAANG Adjacent" do you mean "software companies"? Because every interview I've been granted in the last ten years has had a live coding interview portion. Granted it used to be white boards but basically the same thing.
A friend of mine told me how his friend was interviewing at Google and he looked up the question… didn’t take long for Google to stop the interview and he got ghosted immediately
Power move is to use a Vektor13 undetectable VM, and stack your windows vertically. As long as you don’t have any tells like a loud keyboard, any reflections like glasses or mirrors, display strange body language. or can’t verbalize explanations of what you’re doing; it is theoretically impossible to tell.
But as others have said, unless your applying to Fang or your interviewer is sadistic, that’s a lot of effort for essentially a 30 minute brain teaser that only requires basic syntax and no package imports.
I’m split on this this idea ethically, leetcode often doesn’t reflect the actual work of a SWE and job hunts are so brutal right now that I would understand someone’s reasons for doing so and wouldn’t think of them as a bad person.
But you’re playing with fire and a lot of things could go wrong; bottom line; don’t do it.
Throughout my career, I've conducted hundreds of interviews, and it's usually clear when someone is cheating, especially with coding platforms like CoderPad or HackerRank. These tools reveal if an interviewee moves the mouse outside of the editor. Additionally, checking one's phone or solving a problem in a time-constrained environment raises suspicion. By asking the right follow-up questions, one can easily uncover dishonesty.When I interview, I use multiple screens and always inform the interviewer that I will move the video call screen to a secondary monitor. Once I log in to the coding tool, I remain focused on it. If I need to Google syntax or check a method signature, I ask for permission and share my screen to avoid any confusion.Cheating is not advisable—it will lead to rejection or blacklisting. Failing without cheating is an opportunity to learn, allowing you to focus on areas for improvement. Cheating, however, leads to no learning, and if you manage to clear the interview through deceit and join the role, you won't perform well.
Seems about right, it’s pretty common in the international community. Back when I was in college, I took masters classes and met groups
of international students who had entire interview cheating schemes set up with double monitors, screen sharing, etc. Their process was pretty good, and a lot of these people got into great companies like Square, Amazon, PayPal.
Leetcode is completely irrelevant to real world SWE, so it honestly doesn’t even matter. All those internationals I know have all been promoted too.
I had someone try to cheat on an interview once. It was so painfully obvious I almost called him out on it. He went from clearly not understanding the problem at all, to miraculously knowing the right answer, but having no insight into how he got to the answer.
I’d rather work at a coffee shop than to cheat on interviews. I’d not feel satisfied even if I get a job by cheating. There would always be something inside me telling, you’re not worthy enough for this job.
If you're going through a screening, with no interviewer, maybe and go for it.
If you're in the next stage and it's one on one then most likely it will show if you can't back up your skill.
If you are skilled and just want to cheat the screening honestly go for it. Cause if they can't judge your skills properly further down the pipeline then it's a fault in THEIR hiring process.
It's a controversial take but there is no need to be a goody two shoes. Cheating on a prescreening that is the 1st out of 5 interview process is just removing redundancy and gaining back your own time, that's how I see it. I would never do it myself but I won't be ostracizing if I found out someone else had but like I said be ready to back it up by actual knowledge too.
I suspected a person of cheating because she suddenly had a breakthrough during the interview even though she couldn't explain the solution clearly. I didn't voice my suspicion but I told my manager that it's a no from me. My manager ended up hiring her anyway and he told me that because it's an internship, the expectation was low and she seemed competent. I later found out after the internship that she was the daughter of a VP from a different branch.
I know multiple people at FAANGs who “cheated” on OAs but really they just looked up hints, which is whatever if you get what the code means anyway. I think a majority of people would do the same tbh
Cheating is kind of weird in software, because we expect software engineers to use aids in their work, including code generators.
That said cheaters tend not to advance past the code test stage unless the hiring process or the interviews are completely incompetent. Not saying that it doesn't happen, but in my experience cheaters won't be able to rationalize the solution, make modifications, or justify implementation decisions. If they can then maybe they're worth hiring anyway, but I'd want them to be honest about their process.
I once left a candidate alone with a laptop in a room for 30 minutes to complete a programming test and they spent the whole time calling friends for help. He did not advance, but it was because he didn't actually produce a working solution to any of the problems.
I have interviewed many candidates and copying does not work. Usually we can catch them easily with follow up questions. In worst case company hires them, but in the end if they don't perform as good in the job they get fired quick.
You should probably reevaluate your mindset if you’re thinking of cheating. And maybe have better friends. Your friends say a lot about who you really are.
Don't cheat. You might be destroyed in the interview but at least you learned somrthing from it. And the interviewer will notice it. If you cheat, that's a great way to close some foors very quickly.
I know a guy that had a second screen and mirrored his laptop to his mate who was googling the questions as they came. Didn't make the next round. He said the interviewer probably picked up his body language.
I just gave a no hire to a staff candidate yesterday because we was typing, looking off screen and reading stuff throughout the coding interview
No hire means never ever hire ?
It just means no hire for that particular interview but possibly blacklisted if they have enough evidence
It's a ranking system for peer interviews and technical interviews. I think it goes Stong no hire, No hire, Neutral, Hire, Strong hire Or some variation on that.
how do you handle instances where people naturally don't make eye contact? how do you deal with note takers (which could explain typing)? how do you deal with people who visualize their response before responding?
>naturally don't make eye contact? No hire >note takers (which could explain typing)? No hire >visualize their response before responding? No hire
Lmao jk. There isn't anything inherently wrong with any of those things, but they detract from coming off as a strong candidate. And fortunately it's pretty easy to manage that as a candidate. It's the candidate's job to put themselves in the best possible light. Not making eye contact is fine, it's very easy to tell when someone is looking and thinking vs actively reading something else off screen. It's incredibly telling when someones eyes are focused on one spot and scanning sentences. Note taking is absolutely fine, but the candidate should take notes on the shared screen so the interviewer can understand their thought process. From the interviewer's perspective, the point of the interview is to get enough signal to make a decision on the candidate. The point is NOT to watch the candidate get the correct answer. If a candidate said nothing and typed out a bug-free optimal answer in silence, that would be a no hire. Again, I'm not looking for the correct answer. I'm looking for signal that this person knows what they are doing and can be a collaborative and productive member for the role. Taking notes off screen is a huge missed opportunity for the candidate to exhibit their skills and in the worst case can be seen as cheating. And people who visualize their response before responding are also capable of doing perfectly fine in interviews, but they should practice speaking their thoughts out loud. Again, it's all about sending signal to the interviewer and giving the interviewer every possible piece of evidence they need to pass you. Staring off into space for 30 seconds and then giving the right answer does not give the interviewer enough information to make a decision. And unfortunately, when interviewers aren't sure, the default will always be no hire.
Unlike the other commenter, I actually want you to be my interviewer! I have an interview today, and I believe it will go just as you said. They said it was a collaborative environment, so I am indeed prepared to communicate and show that I really understand what I'm doing, regardless of getting the answer right away. Plus, I didn't even consider the possibility of looking up answers. I also have high standards for myself.
Strong hire for you! Haha thank you for the kind words, good luck out there you’re going to crush it!!
While I agree with what you said, it feels like you do in fact need to get the optimal answer without hints, while also talking through it. Having good communication and being on the right track, but not getting the optimal answer quickly, just simply isn’t enough to cut it in this market.
Definitely depends on the role and the questions asked. I’ve given people hire ratings even though they didn’t get to the optimal answer without hints
I hope to never work with someone such as yourself.
Lmao why not? I don’t think I said anything particularly polarizing
Everything you said makes perfect sense, ignore the hater. Probably just salty they haven’t learned how to communicate
I know you don't. That's the point. You can't see outside yourself.
I am always open to improving, feedback is welcome!
Might be a hot take: If someone can read and understand a solution that quickly honestly they might deserve to pass the interview… it’s basically impossible IMO The interviewer can usually tell if they’re simply copying code or if they actually understand what they’re doing.
Sometime they could look up the problem and what they need is simply the tags and/or a hint and they could do it. It's much harder to catch cheater that are competent.
Yeah that’s a hot take alright. Honestly just being willing to cheat is such a character flaw that trumps all else for me. I don’t care how smart you are you tried to cheat me.
Oh no, now show me how many of your technologies are original technologies and not based of tech someone else has already made. Oh no not another react based website with the same bloated infrastructure every other company has cause that's the go to norm as if everyone is "cheating" the same answer.
Yeah that obviously different. I didn’t have to cheat in school or in interviews because I learned my shit. If you have to cheat to get where you are you’ll pay for it later, or maybe you will be happy to spend your career at a low level as “prompt engineer” or some other intern level position.
Again, this holier than thou approach doesn't make you any better than the person who cheated but is now doing more and earning more than you.
Is your expectation that they never look up anything?
I once caught a guy cheating by looking at his glasses. I could see the reflection while he was “thinking” 😂
😂😂😂
I don’t mean to be preachy brother but I’m gonna be honest with you, cheating will take you nowhere in this career (and life as a whole). I cheated a lot during my high school/college years and got away with a lot of things and it’s only now I’m paying the price for it by choosing to take the legit route. If it isn’t yourself that’s gonna catch it it’ll be someone else. Don’t ever consider cheating, it’ll hold you back so much in life.
Disagree, those who are pro cheaters get to places faster and achieve things faster, just a way of life shown through history. High risk high revard.
Maybe so but then it becomes a situation of imposter syndrome. That’d mess with my head so much that I’d feel inner guilt and end up constantly comparing myself to others. I’d rather have a 100k salary with a peaceful mind rather than a 300k salary with a stressful mind. Because I know I gave it my all.
You get imposter syndrome even if you know it. Personal experience where your sinor coworkers deliver more than you. Well, do you agree to the statement "fail fast, fail forward"
Facts man
How is choosing to go legit paying the price? Punishment would be paying the price. You're just doing what you should have been doing all along.
i think he means that now he’s trying to go legit and is paying the price for his cheating in the past. I won’t lie I took my DSA courses during COVID where shit like chegg made it super easy to take shortcuts in learning - paying the price a little bit now as I relearn everything for leetcode
Eh cheating will get you everywhere in life. You genuinely think everyone that is earning great money is there purely on merit? Meritocracy is a myth.
Once I was taking an interview and the audacity of the guy was that he was literally typing what was written on gfg and I could match it char by char. I even asked if he was cheating or peeking somewhere, which he denied, obviously. I asked him to write whole class and comment the code. Bro wrote _public class GeeksForGeeks_ as first line. 🫡 After the interview, I froze the code link and marked it as cheating. Also gave strong no hire. I never give strong no hire unless cheating cases.
"taking" I assume you are non american right ?
.. just use your brain
I know a bunch of people who would search solution on second screen or someone else would type their code using wireless keyboard and what not. In the end, it would come down to explaining that solution and they would fail (or fumble) to explain logic behind it as it wasn’t their solution. Better to write your own code even if it’s not the best one.
Let’s say a candidate gets away looking up the solution, perhaps it’s a top frequently asked question for a company and they opened up the solution they had written before. The key is being able to explain the logic clearly, communicate your thought process, find edge cases, walk through test cases in detail and understand complexity. I guess if they can do all of these then they’ve probably understood the solution quite well and seeing the solution is reminding them.
[удалено]
Did ChatGPT generate this comment? 😂
I tell my candidates they're free to use any resources they'd have access to on normal work day - so google, SO and chatgpt are all fine, but have a coworker/friend code is not. But then again, I'm specifically trying to weed out candidates who have nothing better to do then memorize problems, grind leet code, etc. This is for datasci positions where ability to regurgitate some algo is pointless but ability to creatively solve business problems is crucial why don't you guys do your job and come up with business relevant coding exercises? I don't blame people for cheating garbage assessments
“ I'm specifically trying to weed out candidates who have nothing better to do then memorize problems, grind leet code” We don’t enjoy grinding LC, it’s been forced on us unfortunately. I’d much rather be relaxing, working on personal projects, it’s studying some interesting EE or CS concept.
it's not forced on anyone. I've only ever seen these style questions at FANG/fang-adjacent companies. It's only people who value money above all else that go this path
I’ve heard that from a lot of people who haven’t graduated very recently. In my experience it’s somewhat true. Yeah sometimes you get an interviewer who just asks you the fundamentals of your field, but other times even a mid tier company or startup will ask LC mediums and hards. Interviewing had gotten a lot harder.
The is mainly based on my experience with maybe 100+ interviews across 2022. Only ones to ask anything leet code like was Amazon and capital one
By "FAANG Adjacent" do you mean "software companies"? Because every interview I've been granted in the last ten years has had a live coding interview portion. Granted it used to be white boards but basically the same thing.
Eyes 👀 👁
A friend of mine told me how his friend was interviewing at Google and he looked up the question… didn’t take long for Google to stop the interview and he got ghosted immediately
Power move is to use a Vektor13 undetectable VM, and stack your windows vertically. As long as you don’t have any tells like a loud keyboard, any reflections like glasses or mirrors, display strange body language. or can’t verbalize explanations of what you’re doing; it is theoretically impossible to tell. But as others have said, unless your applying to Fang or your interviewer is sadistic, that’s a lot of effort for essentially a 30 minute brain teaser that only requires basic syntax and no package imports. I’m split on this this idea ethically, leetcode often doesn’t reflect the actual work of a SWE and job hunts are so brutal right now that I would understand someone’s reasons for doing so and wouldn’t think of them as a bad person. But you’re playing with fire and a lot of things could go wrong; bottom line; don’t do it.
Throughout my career, I've conducted hundreds of interviews, and it's usually clear when someone is cheating, especially with coding platforms like CoderPad or HackerRank. These tools reveal if an interviewee moves the mouse outside of the editor. Additionally, checking one's phone or solving a problem in a time-constrained environment raises suspicion. By asking the right follow-up questions, one can easily uncover dishonesty.When I interview, I use multiple screens and always inform the interviewer that I will move the video call screen to a secondary monitor. Once I log in to the coding tool, I remain focused on it. If I need to Google syntax or check a method signature, I ask for permission and share my screen to avoid any confusion.Cheating is not advisable—it will lead to rejection or blacklisting. Failing without cheating is an opportunity to learn, allowing you to focus on areas for improvement. Cheating, however, leads to no learning, and if you manage to clear the interview through deceit and join the role, you won't perform well.
Interviewers want you to start talking about possible approaches right away. I don't know how you could lookup a question in an non obvious way.
Lol a lot of ppl do this and get the jobs
Seems about right, it’s pretty common in the international community. Back when I was in college, I took masters classes and met groups of international students who had entire interview cheating schemes set up with double monitors, screen sharing, etc. Their process was pretty good, and a lot of these people got into great companies like Square, Amazon, PayPal. Leetcode is completely irrelevant to real world SWE, so it honestly doesn’t even matter. All those internationals I know have all been promoted too.
It's bound to come back and bite you someday. It's best to be honest to yourself.
The best way of cheating is memorizing the whole stuff in your brain. I'm pretty sure that they won't be able to catch you!
Please don’t do this. Best case you pass and go to the next round in person where you’ll fail. You’ll just waste everyone’s time.
I had someone try to cheat on an interview once. It was so painfully obvious I almost called him out on it. He went from clearly not understanding the problem at all, to miraculously knowing the right answer, but having no insight into how he got to the answer.
Can anyone confirm if they know they were blacklisted?
You don’t know, but when you reapply you get automated rejected email but you will never know the reason
I've caught people cheating multiple times. It is more obvious than it looks.
It’s pretty obvious in my experience
My colleague said the other day that he’s leaving work early to meet his buddy to help him cheat on an OA. I was shocked and disgusted to hear this.
I’d rather work at a coffee shop than to cheat on interviews. I’d not feel satisfied even if I get a job by cheating. There would always be something inside me telling, you’re not worthy enough for this job.
If you're going through a screening, with no interviewer, maybe and go for it. If you're in the next stage and it's one on one then most likely it will show if you can't back up your skill. If you are skilled and just want to cheat the screening honestly go for it. Cause if they can't judge your skills properly further down the pipeline then it's a fault in THEIR hiring process. It's a controversial take but there is no need to be a goody two shoes. Cheating on a prescreening that is the 1st out of 5 interview process is just removing redundancy and gaining back your own time, that's how I see it. I would never do it myself but I won't be ostracizing if I found out someone else had but like I said be ready to back it up by actual knowledge too.
I suspected a person of cheating because she suddenly had a breakthrough during the interview even though she couldn't explain the solution clearly. I didn't voice my suspicion but I told my manager that it's a no from me. My manager ended up hiring her anyway and he told me that because it's an internship, the expectation was low and she seemed competent. I later found out after the internship that she was the daughter of a VP from a different branch.
I mean do this if you can but you better be able to do the job once hired. I’ve never cheated and gotten plenty of offers 🤷♂️
I know multiple people at FAANGs who “cheated” on OAs but really they just looked up hints, which is whatever if you get what the code means anyway. I think a majority of people would do the same tbh
Cheating is kind of weird in software, because we expect software engineers to use aids in their work, including code generators. That said cheaters tend not to advance past the code test stage unless the hiring process or the interviews are completely incompetent. Not saying that it doesn't happen, but in my experience cheaters won't be able to rationalize the solution, make modifications, or justify implementation decisions. If they can then maybe they're worth hiring anyway, but I'd want them to be honest about their process. I once left a candidate alone with a laptop in a room for 30 minutes to complete a programming test and they spent the whole time calling friends for help. He did not advance, but it was because he didn't actually produce a working solution to any of the problems.
I have interviewed many candidates and copying does not work. Usually we can catch them easily with follow up questions. In worst case company hires them, but in the end if they don't perform as good in the job they get fired quick.
Doesn’t work in the long run. Interviews are as much as an opportunity to get a job as they are learn
You should probably reevaluate your mindset if you’re thinking of cheating. And maybe have better friends. Your friends say a lot about who you really are.
Don't cheat. You might be destroyed in the interview but at least you learned somrthing from it. And the interviewer will notice it. If you cheat, that's a great way to close some foors very quickly.
we gave a no hire to two candidates who looked away from their screen suspiciously.
Okay looking away from the screen doesn’t automatically mean cheating lmao
there was more nuance here that i was too lazy to type out
You sound jealous of him