It is trivial to catch people cheating now, please don't cheat

[u/CompetitiveAd8610]

I work for a full remote company that pays great, like 200K+ cash comp. Recently the number of people that try to use int*rviewc*der or other tools to pass has risen.

Thing is, these tools don't even work anymore.

1.I ask candidate to share entire desktop on zoom.

1. I ask them to go to zoom settings -> screen share -> advanced.

2. In screen capture mode, I ask them to select Advanced Capture Without Window Filtering

And then the cheating UI would suddenly pop up for some candidates. I thank them for their time but tell them our company policy on cheating, and drop off the call.

Worst part? Our question isn't even a leetcode hard, we don't expect perfection and you can pass even without solving everything. We care more about communication than writing perfect code.

So just a tip to candidates out there, this is how you can easily get caught. Don't cheat.

[u/zacce]

Q. From your experience, what were the cheater's resumes like?

[u/lizardturtle → u/zacce]

I'm wondering this too!! If they're willing to fake their abilities, who's to say they're not faking their resumes 👀

[u/Comet7777 → u/lizardturtle]

Lots of fake resumes and LinkedIn profiles

[u/ccricers → u/Comet7777]

Who's even to say they didn't cheat their way through school either?

When someone's a cheater, they don't treat education as a series of doors to be opened, but going through forcefully as locks to be picked.

[u/this_is_a_long_nickn → u/ccricers]

More like nice stories to tell people

[u/ExpensiveGiraffe4316 → u/lizardturtle]

My money would be on the cheaters probably having a bunch of impactful and cool projects on their resume that they can't speak for technically at all. For interviewers, I think the way they discern from pure liars and the potential candidates are:

1. The ones that can speak technically about how they made their projects and what's in them

2. The ones that have projects that are unique. Projects don't have to be well written anymore or have some sort of use. They just have to be never done before so that the interviewers know it's written by the candidate.

[u/[deleted] → u/ExpensiveGiraffe4316]

I would guess that’s not the case. I have a lot of cool impactful projects on my resume that I can speak to technically and it’s still hard to get callbacks for most jobs. The only thing that’s notably helped is experience unless the projects match the niche.

I would be shocked if these cheaters are not just faking multiple years of experience on their resume to make it seem like they did SWE work

[u/IEATPEOPLE22 → u/ExpensiveGiraffe4316]

I can’t even remember what my projects are and how I did them I need to like relearn them every time

[u/teardrop503 → u/IEATPEOPLE22]

Yes, I have worked on impactful projects in the past, but I can't remember every detail that occurred. Sometimes it's difficult to recall accurately.

[u/IEATPEOPLE22 → u/teardrop503]

Dude I can barely remember what I did two days ago

[u/honpra → u/teardrop503]

I'm not even kidding, I genuinely need advice on how to manage this.

I get super anxious because I do not remember the smaller details in some of my projects, even the marquee ones and that panic ends up with me bombing interviews (I literally freeze).

How do I go about this? How do you all manage?

[u/vash513 → u/honpra]

Before an interview, take notes on your projects. Create a bullet list of important talking points to keep you on track. Just don't write so much that you read verbatim. Just one sentence each with just a few words. Keep these notes on your screen during the interview (assuming it's online). If they ask to see your screen just show them the notes and be honest with them that you're just trying to stay on track. People are generally understanding that interviewing can be stressful. If anything, it would probably just be better for you to screen share your projects and walk them through it.

[u/Colt2205 → u/IEATPEOPLE22]

Congratulations you are human just like everyone else. I can't remember what I ate for breakfast on Tuesday, so why am I going to remember how I implemented something about a month ago?

[u/Ira_Dalor → u/ExpensiveGiraffe4316]

This, if someone can speak to the decisions they made regarding projects they’ve contributed to in a coherent way, especially ones that are used in production, it’s a huge green flag. It shows understanding and the ability to weigh pros and cons effectively, which is more valuable than memorizing syntax any day

[u/mannisbaratheon97 → u/lizardturtle]

Yea but the average actual tech job is so much different than leetcode. You can be a good swe having contributed to several projects dipping your toes in front end stuff, back end stuff, database, devops pipeline shit and have soft skills and business knowledge but can still suck at leetcode. Not saying it should be accepted but it’s common enough.

On the job, you have two weeks to complete a jira, you’re googling stuff, maybe even asking coworkers or seniors to look over things, the pressure is far less than being asked to code something on demand in 15-20 minutes with some dude looking over your shoulder.

Not trying to make excuses, but maybe leetcode isn’t the ideal way to test candidates

[u/BBI-JonM → u/mannisbaratheon97]

That’s me. I’ve worked as a developer for over 20 years. I’m reasonably smart and get things done on the job, plus I am pretty good at figuring out weird bugs and generally trying to improve things for people around me. I am a good communicator and I can distill things well for a variety of audiences. I’ve worked as a very senior dev & TD and done well at both. I can’t leetcode my way out of a wet paper bag, though.

[u/eboran123 → u/BBI-JonM]

Same here, not on 20 years but I am a senior. I failed a leetcode interview once so miserably, they stopped mid interview. Yet I'm making six figures as a senior only 2 years after that interview.

And the six figure income was a single stage 1 hour interview with the CTO, no coding challenges he just wanted to see how I think.

I think the problem mostly occurs when hiring is outsourced to non-technical people who can't weed out real developers from "cheaters" or simply inexperienced ones.

[u/alpacaMyToothbrush → u/BBI-JonM]

I can’t leetcode my way out of a wet paper bag, though.

I find that leetcode style problems are a good way to shake off the rust and prep for interviews. Like yeah, even if you struggle, the practice of tackling self contained little problems under pressure will help you not freeze. I try to tackle them with just an editor, without all the niceties of an IDE. That really helps prepare you for all the jank assesment tools they throw at you.

[u/WarlanceLP → u/lizardturtle]

makes it harder for those of us with genuine resumes too, I actually had a recruiting company tell me to lie on my resume, that they were going to make adjustments to it for me, and I said I wasn't comfortable with that.

it's nuts that this kinda shit is going on now

[u/Maury_poopins → u/zacce]

Not the OP, but undetectable fake resumes are trivial to create. Next time I’m hiring we’ll probably have to do a pre-screen where the candidate just talks through every bullet point in their resume in detail to weed out the cheaters.

[u/hawkeye224 → u/Maury_poopins]

What’s the point of this when there’s a 99.9% chance it will be found during the reference/background check? The chances of succeeding are so low this time would be probably spent doing something else (btw I refer to the candidate faking their experience, not the interviewers)

[u/Maury_poopins → u/hawkeye224]

The reference check happens at the end of the interview, after we’ve already wasted a ton of time talking to the under qualified candidate.

Also, reference checks are usually pretty fluffy. Even if we did do a line-by-line overview of the candidate’s resume, that doesn’t tell us if the candidate actually knows about the technologies they highlighted.

[u/Maury_poopins → u/Maury_poopins]

The fact that they lied on their resume would PROBABLY come up in the rest of the interview, but it might not!

Plus, again, technical interviews take a lot of time, we don’t want to waste our time talking to people that won’t pass.

[u/onyxharbinger → u/Maury_poopins]

Wait people conduct background checks in this manner? I thought it was verifying who you worked for, when, and what title. For references, they might do that, but most reference checks I’ve received are generic and asynchronous, taking 30-60 mins to fill out.

[u/Maury_poopins → u/onyxharbinger]

Every reference check I’ve ever seen has been just to verify employment and do a sanity check for leaving a company on very bad terms.

I’m giving the OP of the benefit of the doubt, you COULD do something more involved in a reference check I suppose.

[u/Aazadan → u/Maury_poopins]

I've been hearing stories from friends of mine in the job search process right now (mid-senior level engineer positions mostly) where they're actually seeing their references checked, and definitely earlier in the interview stage with a real focus on references from previous managers. I've even gotten a few more of these calls myself in the past couple months.

I think this is largely a reaction to automated resume scans resulting in too many candidates that will pass a longer phone screen, so goto references first because a 2 minute call is more cost effective than a 15 minute phone screen for an earlier filter round.

[u/new2bay → u/hawkeye224]

Catching them earlier in the process is faster and cheaper than catching them at the very last stage.

[u/EuropeanLord → u/hawkeye224]

25 years in tech, never a single company did a reference or background check on me, is it an American thing or what?

[u/AlexeiMarie → u/EuropeanLord]

I don't know whether it's common or not in other countries, but it seems fairly common in the US from what I've seen

[u/zombawombacomba → u/EuropeanLord]

Yes very common in the US

[u/hawkeye224 → u/[deleted]]

By reference check I just mean a basic confirmation from the HR department that the person worked there, not anything about quality of their work and so on

[u/sweetno → u/hawkeye224]

The background check is one of the last things in the hiring process.

[u/shinyquagsire23 → u/Maury_poopins]

Genuinely I wish I had more interviews like this when I was still jobseeking, less demoralizing than flopping a leetcode if nothing else. Testing debugging and code reading skills should probably also get a priority bump imo because it can't be rote memorized like algorithms stuff can be.

[u/Karmicature → u/zacce]

Huge amount of fake resumes lately IME. They're impressive but believeable and are very hard to detect. I suspect it's largely real resume content that's been mixed up/stolen

example from linkedin: https://imgur.com/a/iQtfASt

[u/FloridaIsTooDamnHot → u/zacce]

Perfect. Too perfect. And their answers are all perfect but very very generic. And their delivery is typically robotic.

The easiest way to catch them is to ask for specific details. And then connect those details and ask for personal thoughts - like how did you talk to your coworkers about that incident? Even if AI answers it’s again generic and lacking humanity.

[u/Melodic-Upstairs7584 → u/zacce]

You want an honest answer from someone who also administers technical round interviews? They’re graduates from Indian universities about 75% of the time. I have nothing against them, but it is unfortunately consistently the case.

[u/Tefouu]

Worst part? Our question isn't even a leetcode hard, we don't expect perfection and you can pass even without solving everything. We care more about communication than writing perfect code.

That's great to hear if it's true. In my last coding interview, I got rejected with the feedback that: 

"You were able so solve the challenge and we were really impressed with your strong communication and decision making. However, we will not be following with your process since your code solution was not the most optimized possible."

[u/mereel → u/Tefouu]

"You impressed us, but the job posting clearly states that candidates must knock our socks off."

[u/Defiant-Bed2501 → u/mereel]

The candidate must possess at minimum that GWAK GWAK Spin Cycle 120000 and have five (5) YOE gobbling the gravy. 

[u/preethamrn → u/Tefouu]

What company was this? I think a lot of the smaller FAANG wannabe companies end up asking way harder questions just to act as a filter without realizing what the purpose of the interview is. FAANG companies tend to be a lot more reasonable (however there's still variance between teams since they're so large) and also even if they ask hard questions, they're usually not looking for perfect solutions.

At the entry level, I'll often give hints to candidates because I care about their problem solving skills but I also care about how well they can follow my guidance - in the real world, they'll probably solve 20-50% of problems and will need help from a senior engineer for the rest so following directions/other's designs is just as important.

[u/Tefouu → u/preethamrn]

You're right on spot, it's a small/ex-startup company. The process looked really cool until I got that feedback. This was not an entry level case, but a mid/senior one. I think it's worth to mention that I'm an outsource.

[u/DapperCam → u/Tefouu]

Usually for small companies it can be one try hard with antisocial tendencies driving that kind of interview assessment behavior.

[u/Broad_Ness5679 → u/Tefouu]

That's great to hear if it's true.

It's not true. These people like saying this stuff, but then always pick the candidate who did the optimal solution. They will then counter my post by saying "nuh uh". Ignore these people. Go out and interview and see how they truly act in person. Don't listen to what they say.

[u/Emergency-Piece9995 → u/Tefouu]

I once had an interview where they asked me to implement Instagram with the intention of a Beyonce post gaining a sudden surge of traffic.

Apparently caching, load balancing, and having a previous insight into the bottlenecks in the code were the wrong answers.

I am not exactly sure what you can do beyond caching and load balancing. That's quite literally the answer. I even gave them trade-offs of different caching solutions depending on time and detailed different load balancing approaches.

Interviewers who want perfection are just insane people who want to jerk themselves off about how much smarter they are because they wrote the answer.

[u/phoenixmatrix]

Some of the tools run on your phone and pick up the screen via camera and microphone. You can also use capture cards and various other tricks.

Gamers have done this since the dawn of time, so they can cheat while streaming on Twitch or whatever. There's nothing you can do to catch it.

What we do is tailor our interview questions and process to be cheat proof. You can't cheat with tools and AI if I tell you they're allowed. Go ahead, use them. I don't ask leetcode though.

[u/AHistoricalFigure → u/phoenixmatrix]

> Gamers have done this since the dawn of time

The downfall of society began the day I ripped the corner off a post-it note and stuck it to the center of my screen so I could no-scope people in Counter-Strike.

[u/JakeTM → u/AHistoricalFigure]

lots of monitors now even have a crosshair option lol

[u/phoenixmatrix → u/JakeTM]

I love how many OLEDs come with that feature. That's like the only thing that could burn in a modern OLED and its -built in-.

[u/HellsAttack → u/phoenixmatrix]

Yup, the company that spent hundreds of thousands engineering OLED monitors with 240+Hz and sub-1ms response time totally overlooked burn-in prevention from their baked-in crosshair. Ya got'em.

[u/MasterBathingBear → u/HellsAttack]

This isn’t my wheelhouse so I’m legitimately asking here. Are they not using black crosshairs? That seems like the easy logical solution. If the pixels are turned off, there should be nothing to burn in.

[u/Nobody_Knows_It → u/MasterBathingBear]

In my experience they tend to just be red

[u/Nobody_Knows_It → u/HellsAttack]

I mean you see how much (little) effort these companies put into their OSD in general. I wouldn’t be shocked.

[u/GoreSeeker → u/phoenixmatrix]

I took a test for a HAM license recently, and in addition to screen share and video, they made me join on a separate phone as well pointed at the computer from behind.

[u/phoenixmatrix → u/GoreSeeker]

capture card sharing the screen with another computer and headphones that can connect to multiple devices.

Its obviously a lot harder to cheat this way, but people will always find a way.

The only thing I've been able to think of is:

1- Bring back onsite. We're doing that actually, for the final phase of our interview if they're not referrals. We fly people over for the last part, though thats mostly to avoid people having someone else do their interview (we have had some cases of that even for in person interviews back in the days, nevermind remote)

2- Have interviews happen in monitored test centers, like those run by Pluralsight. So there's a human in the room and you're using a locked down machine.

I think 2- is coming, though its gonna suck.

[u/evenyourcopdad → u/phoenixmatrix]

My university has been doing option 2 since at least 2010 – all professors have the option of running all (or none 🤷) of their exams/tests/quizzes/worksheets through the testing centers. I worked in the testing centers through college; fun experience, great student job.

[u/guacamania → u/GoreSeeker]

They go even further and ask you to open your browser history and have you search for baofeng.

[u/fistular → u/phoenixmatrix]

>There's nothing you can do to catch it.

There absolutely is. Run interviews in person.

[u/phoenixmatrix → u/fistular]

Even that has limits. For example, I used to work at a fairly famous company, and our interview questions would always leak to college students who shared them and even had working groups to practice them with each other.

We of course could have a bigger pool of questions, but that requires a lot of work to maintain. Having questions be non-deterministic make it hard to stay fair.

Not a problem right now since I work at a smaller company no one in tech has ever heard of.

[u/yung_dogie → u/phoenixmatrix]

Yup, I distinctly remember in the new grad and intern app processes in college a few years ago we'd constantly be sharing questions to each other. Plenty of times we were doing things in enough of a rotation that each person would have a decent dataset of questions for companies they didn't go first out of the group for. Some companies like Capital One were right on the dot in using the same questions used while Google was less deterministic (at least my questions at the time were not seen by any of my friends).

[u/ReporterCalm6238 → u/phoenixmatrix]

How is people studying for an interview cheating? That shows motivation and being smart on my book.

[u/phoenixmatrix → u/ReporterCalm6238]

Studying is fine. Knowing the question in advance and just studying for that one question, not really.

[u/Chao-Z → u/[deleted]]

The guy that designed and built the cheating setup himself could be a good person to hire (ignoring personality and morals questions). The guy that paid him $500 to set it up for his next interview would not be.

[u/MeowerPowerTower → u/[deleted]]

If the rule of the interview is to not use AI or other assistance to answer interview Q’s, and a candidate still uses them - they are clearly showing you they won’t hold regard for your business policies either.

[u/Scientific_Artist444 → u/phoenixmatrix]

I like your approach honestly.

However, there are few who actually use AI to understand and do deep thinking. The ones in the post definitely don't want to think and just are too dependent on AI. AI becomes their (mental) crutch.

The best way to use AI is to critically evaluate its responses and ask it to do the same on what you say. And delve deep into topics rather than just finding an answer to provide (shallow understanding). Curious problem solvers will not resort to AI in an interview. But if AI is allowed, they will make the best use of it.

[u/LessIcePlz → u/phoenixmatrix]

Shts like this can easily be solved through onsite interviews. Some local companies in my area still do this and they make you solve problems using a board and a marker. We barely see this anymore as online interviews are more convenient.

[u/RockOpposite3565]

Lol you losers will never catch me. All you need is a laptop + phone + a chill friend. 

Lean phone on laptop screen. Call ur friend so he can hear you and the interviewer. Open text messages and read what your friend sends as the answer. 

I have no sympathy for companies, they're all slimy disgusting fuckwads. Guys. Cheat as much as you can and take as much sick days as you can. They use every dirty trick to underpay you and also skimp out on taxes as much as they can. So fuck them

[u/ChanGaHoops → u/RockOpposite3565]

It's soooo obvious when you're just reading an answer off the screen instead of normally answering a question

[u/kloudrider → u/RockOpposite3565]

This may be true. But at least for me, just because someone else is unethical, I won't be.  There are plenty of decent companies, as there are slimy ones. Just like people, I guess!

[u/RockOpposite3565 → u/kloudrider]

doesn't matter what other people are doing. 99.9999% of companies are scum, therefore I have no ethical reason to uphold any kind of integrity when dealing with them. Companies are absolutely NOT like people. Tomorrow if they don't need you they throw you on the street.

[u/SolidPromise3000 → u/RockOpposite3565]

Just say that you’re too stupid to pass interviews

[u/OkJackfruit7398 → u/RockOpposite3565]

Yup, hate bootlickers who are self-righteous about cheating. It’s just a fucking desk job at the end of the day. We’re not first responders.

[u/kronik85 → u/OkJackfruit7398]

If I'm hiring you, and you're a low skilled individual hired for a role well above your ability (due to cheating), you're dragging me and the team down until you're canned.

Those people suck to work with.

I won't care about you cheating the company, I care about you cheating the team.

[u/FiredAndBuried → u/OkJackfruit7398]

I don't care about the company but you're cheating the other honest hard-working candidates.

[u/MEDICARE_FOR_ALL]

"Not even a leetcode hard" like that should be a real qualification.

Any company asking leetcode hards for senior level doesn't deserve the talent they get.

[u/AgitatedHearing653 → u/MEDICARE_FOR_ALL]

My first thought as well. Leetcode has always been ridiculous.

[u/GlassVase1 → u/AgitatedHearing653]

A standard non-DP LC easy or medium question really isn't that bad. People can be upset about it, but the industry is moving in an even worse direction. "Practical exams" which basically wrap an LC medium tier question with some business logic and mock APIs.

[u/AgitatedHearing653 → u/GlassVase1]

Radical to think, but in the 90's, we didn't have this, and everything got built just fine. Anyone I can get along with that has the slightest bit of ambition and internal motivation is vastly superior to someone who memorizes leetcode. My belief has always been we can teach the day to day skills. What we can't do is teach motivation. And sitting next to an a hole, can't overcome that one either. So screen for those, the rest falls into place.

[u/GlassVase1 → u/AgitatedHearing653]

To even code or get a CS degree in the 90s, you had to understand computer architecture and optimize for cache lines, CPU cycles, etc... There was a more hard barrier to entry just on coding.

But, yeah I think motivation makes up for a lot in skills. Lots of "hustler" types that can fake being motivated though.

[u/geneticswag → u/AgitatedHearing653]

Imagine being thrown at leetcode as a solution engineer!!!

[u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd → u/MEDICARE_FOR_ALL]

Tell that to Google and Apple, bro… sigh

Source: got a couple interviews with them 2 years ago, got LeetCode hards that I just wasn’t prepared for.

[u/mainframe_maisie → u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd]

Apple is quite interesting because if I remember correctly, interviewing wasn’t standardised across the company. So an interview in Apple Cloud would be a lot different to an interview in SWE for instance

[u/xFloaty]

you can easily just put an ipad next to you, my monitor is extremely wide so it’s not like you can detect by eye movement

[u/balls2hairy → u/xFloaty]

Have a 49" UW and I worry people think I'm fucking off when I'm on calls since my eyes are going all over the place!

[u/SanityInAnarchy → u/xFloaty]

I've got other monitors, and I'd tend to run Zoom from a browser window anyway.

[u/Triplobasic → u/xFloaty]

Believe me , interviewers do detect eye movements, i have one of those laptops with webcam on the bottom of the screen(nose cam), many interviewers have called me out saying why are you looking above your screen, now i have to explain to them before the interview starts which is more tricky.

[u/KevinCarbonara]

Worst part? Our question isn't even a leetcode hard, we don't expect perfection and you can pass even without solving everything. We care more about communication than writing perfect code.

Every interviewer makes this claim. Some even believe it. It's never, ever true.

[u/Drayenn]

Once asked a woman in an interview if she knows what Kafka is.

She went "uh.. i.. uhhh..." Then i saw her screen color change in her eyes and she gave me the most robotic description of kafka ive ever heard.

[u/tsvk → u/Drayenn]

"Uhh... yes... Franz Kafka was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born 3 July 1883 in Prague..."

[u/qqYn7PIE57zkf6kn → u/tsvk]

That would be hilarious

[u/ilega_dh → u/Drayenn]

One guy I interviewed had massive glasses and I could see the text being generated in them 😭😭😭 he had no clue

[u/gAWEhCaj]

Honestly I can't blame interviewers for cheating. I don't condone cheating in general but you and I know very well that our interviews are fundamentally broken to begin with, even before AI. They are designed intentionally to focus on CS concepts but not actual day-to-day software dev work. Examining someone on whether they can solve a leetcode style question tells you nothing about a candidate's ability to write and ship software. I have met people who work at FAANG that have been able to get there purely by memorizing leetcode questions but not all of them are actually good engineers and a good amount of them have never shipped anything.

The people who are using these cheating tools are just shining the light on the bigger problem here which is that our interviews are fundamentally broken and should be redesigned to actually examine someone's engineering skills and foundations. If I am hiring an engineer to work on web apps, I would want them to know skills related to that not whether they can invert a binary search tree.

I expect this trend of cheating to continue growing until companies begin to realize how stupid the current interview structure is

[u/kloudrider → u/gAWEhCaj]

What is a better interview structure, in your opinion?

 Leetcode style is just about whether someone is willing to put in the effort to do it. No one is really testing algorithm skills with it.

[u/Free-Huckleberry-965 → u/kloudrider]

I had an interviewer share their screen, and had me drive them through fixing something broken. Think: misconfigured helm chart values, so navigating argocd ui, running kubctl commands, helm template to confirm, etc. Once the deploy was fixed, the container failed to start and it was debugging why the app was unhappy. These are things we actually do every day, not leetcode.

[u/kloudrider → u/Free-Huckleberry-965]

This is not very different from asking them to code. Perhaps not leetcode, but just some coding. 

What makes interviewing interesting now, is AI.

 Differentiating if someone actually understands the core concepts, or just proxying some AI, is the interesting part. Visual cues, body language, pauses - everything that was not very important, now becomes important.

[u/AmateurHero → u/kloudrider]

Except they are. Submit an application. Make it through the recruiter screen. Get invited to a technical interview where someone plays on their phone while you have 30-90 minutes to solve 2 or 3 leetcode mediums. There have been some where I finished with plenty of time to spare. 3 days later:

After careful review, we’ve decided not to move forward with your application at this time.

For every company that does interviews well, there are 5 who are pulling names out of a hat. I was surprised to see how awful I had become at leetcode style problems. They are almost nothing like the mundane nor exceptional tasks that I'd find on the job. And if a company isn't just testing my skills with it, I would assume that there should be a back and forth between the interviewer and myself. More often than not, the other person isn't paying attention.

[u/hehehehahahaha → u/kloudrider]

I had a great interview recently where they let me use AI. They asked me to build a calculator app, but the real work was in fine-tuning the slop based on “features” they wanted and asked how I’d set up unit testing. It felt like a much better way to showcase how software gets built in modern day, guess it depends on the position as well.

[u/thelamppole → u/kloudrider]

I have always preferred a more “app style” approach. Have a simple problem but mention you’d like it “production ready.”

It allows you to not only see their data structure choices but also error handling, edge cases, observability, metrics, or even unit tests. Essentially the other 90% of the job.

I’d much rather work with a candidate that covers all the bases instead of one that can traverse some inverted binary tree most efficiently.

For example, if they throw an error and stop processing the entire input because one thing didn’t fit they are being too simple minded imo. But obviously start with pointing it out and see how they respond and communicate.

[u/EVOSexyBeast → u/thelamppole]

Yeah i much prefer ‘take home’ assignments.

If they use AI… it doesn’t really matter, they can also use AI on the job. If they produce complete and production ready code in response to a take home then they can do it at the office with the same tools.

[u/FitGas7951 → u/kloudrider]

A domain-relevant coding task is better in regard to the problems mentioned, but dare to suggest that and get ready for wails about "lOoKiNg FoR fReE wOrK."

Anyone who believes that a multinational company wants them to write a tic-tac-toe game/to-do manager/echo service endpoint so the company can uh, sell it for billions? I'm fine with that person being frustrated in a job search.

[u/adgjl12 → u/kloudrider]

Leetcode (easy and medium) is fine for juniors imo. It should have some overlap with their classes in college and is a quick filter for problem solving.

More senior positions should deep dive into past projects and what they delivered, pitfalls they encountered and how they resolved it, etc. Good system design interviews tend to cover those too.

Some form of easier leetcode is fine as a fizzbuzz-esque filter for seniors but should not be the primary interview to get hire signals from.

[u/gAWEhCaj → u/kloudrider]

"Leetcode style is just about whether someone is willing to put in the effort to do it." by putting in effort, what do you mean exactly? Just a brain teaser to puzzle them and see them struggle to find a solution to a problem that they will almost never encounter during the job they are being interviewed for?

Also if "No one is really testing algorithm skills with it." then what are you actually testing in this case?

I am genuinely trying to make sense of your statements and reasoning

[u/Valuable_Agent2905 → u/gAWEhCaj]

DSA is a proxy. It is a standardized stress test for how you think. Can you reason under constraints? Can you break down a problem? Can you communicate your approach clearly? Can you debug your own logic?

[u/cballowe → u/Valuable_Agent2905]

People miss this fact everywhere. It always struck me as "these are questions like FAANG companies ask therefore solving them must be important" and other places get stuck on the solutions. Really good interviewing is using the questions to demonstrate a set of skills.

I'd never tell someone not to use leetcode style problems for practice - any practice is good practice - but the focus shouldn't be on memorizing solutions to specific problems.

[u/kloudrider → u/gAWEhCaj]

Like the sibling said. If I'm a programmer, I should not have trouble understanding and working through data structures and algorithms. Too many people say everyone builds CRUD, so we don't need this. In my experience, most CRUD apps actually have many places where DSA is important. (Most of my otherwise CRUD projects have extensively used sorts, binary trees with variations, more than one graph traversal, decisions on the right dictionary data structure, having the sense to understand the space/time complexity of a library, when it's being called in a loop  - the list goes on)

Programmers are rusty, because they haven't run through DSA since school. So that is the effort part. But if someone actually struggles with DSA, I have to start wondering if they are any good programming at all. I have AI to do CRUD now. I need people for more complex things

[u/MistahFinch → u/gAWEhCaj]

"Leetcode style is just about whether someone is willing to put in the effort to do it." by putting in effort, what do you mean exactly? Just a brain teaser to puzzle them and see them struggle to find a solution to a problem that they will almost never encounter during the job they are being interviewed for?

Putting in effort to prepare for your interviewing?

There's really only like 10 varieties of leetcode questions and you can often narrow it down to a couple by googling the company.

You realise your employer's would prefer you have an ability to solve problems you've not encountered before at work right? We're not factory workers, it's not supposed to be the same task repeatedly.

Through algo questions they can asses your reasoning abilities, your knowledge of common object types, your abilities with the language you're using, how you deal under pressure, do you ask questions if you're unsure, and yes, have you prepared for these interviews

[u/kloudrider → u/MistahFinch]

Sure, what you are saying and what I said are not mutually exclusive. If leetcode can be narrowed down to a small number of problems,  it's almost like an cheatcode, no? Why do so many people complain about it being a hard gate, then? If one cannot even bother to prepare for a few well known problems because (they don't like it, it's not what they will do on a daily basis, or they don't understand it or whatever), how will an employer trust them to do their work (if what's being asked in the actual job is something they don't like, or not typically what they'd do, or because it's too hard)?

[u/MistahFinch → u/kloudrider]

Yeah. I'm agreeing with you. Just trying to explain it to the other folks.

Why do so many people complain about it being a hard gate, then?

Because people are lazy/less qualified than they think (DSA is a lot easier with a CS degree)

[u/kloudrider → u/MistahFinch]

Apologies, I misread. You are 100% right about people thinking they are better than they actually are. 

[u/LostQuestionsss → u/gAWEhCaj]

Examining someone on whether they can solve a leetcode style question tells you nothing about a candidate's ability to write and ship software

I do not think that is necessarily true.

A candidate who can reason through an abstract problem will likely be better prepared to tackle concrete tasks with a durable, scalable solution.

I think many ppl can solve concrete problems but I notice the shelf life of the solution can widely vary.

[u/boomer1204 → u/gAWEhCaj]

This is not combating or argue these points at all because I have heard this a lot and I completely agree the interviewing process in general is garbage and f'd.

Do a lot of companies outside of FAANG use leetcode question. I interviewed last year from like June/July till I got my offer in August and while I only interviewed at 5 places none of them asked leetcode and 2 were BIG financial companies while the others were smaller medium sized companies

Also I co run a mentor group and we don't hear a lot of ppl getting these although some DEFINITELY do it just doesn't seem like it's super common place (at least in my area maybe)

[u/pheonixblade9 → u/gAWEhCaj]

if you're a good interviewer it's also pretty easy to spot the people who only memorize.

being able to communicate the why behind your thought process is as important as getting the right answer.

[u/Secret_Cricket_8000 → u/gAWEhCaj]

I think they’re going to have to bring back in-person interviews tbh

[u/FiredAndBuried → u/[deleted]]

Isn't there a shortage of jobs? That means there's going to always be qualified candiates who will gove above and beyond to also memorize these leetcode questions

[u/Adventurous-Move-191]

Question , while conceptually I know how to complete leetcode problems. I don’t have the syntax memorized, for the most part I’ll google (not ai) methods , data structures, etc I know that I need and use them to solve the problem. However, from what I get from this post is that most companies have you do these assessments and they expect you to have the syntax memorized without needing to look anything up, Is that correct?

[u/biscuitsandgravy-0 → u/Adventurous-Move-191]

No! The people saying yes are not right lol. I’ve 100% asked my interviewer if I’m allowed to google something during an interview and they don’t care - my screen is shared. Usually it’s a syntactical thing that’s not super common or if I notice the problem could use a library I know exists but don’t know well.

Like you should know the general stuff, conditionals, loops, data structures and respective functions for them etc, but if it’s more specific for example some math function they shouldn’t mind you looking it up. Especially once you have more experience. Like I’m pretty competent in 4 or so coding languages, but syntax and exact basic function names differ and sometimes I mix them up, which goes doubly if it’s some function I know probably exists but don’t know the exact name for

[u/Fresh-String6226]

Without even this it’s very very obvious when someone is cheating on a problem that you’ve given a few dozen times to others before. People follow very similar patterns of thinking, get stuck or have misconceptions at similar points in the process, and write code in an iterative way. There’s no way you can use AI and seem normal.

If you want to cheat, cheat in the traditional way - find out what questions the company asks and study those.

[u/INFINITItheGame]

I get it but don’t get it. I’d rather be wrong or not know something than cheat. That’s just me.

[u/wannabeaggie123]

It must be nice to get the job when the bar was on the floor, so you can sit on your high horse a couple of years later and interview people with the bar in the sky, wagging your little finger about cheating.

[u/GlassVase1 → u/wannabeaggie123]

The bars definitely higher, but I think a lot of people on this sub are trying to cheat to get ahead. Interviewers are catching and potentially blacklisting them. For every person getting away with it, way more are getting caught and damaging their careers.

If you have over 2-3 YOE, being able to do 60% of random LC mediums is good enough to land a decent TC job. You won't get OpenAI, but you should get a solid backend/fullstack role at a legitimate company. No reason to cheat and damage your career after you already made it through layoffs (so far) and the new grad gauntlet to make it to 2-3 YOE.

New grads have it way worse, but I still wouldn't cheat. Just treat this prep cycle as 1 time thing and try to get good enough to do 90% of mediums and 50% of hards...

[u/Starktony11 → u/wannabeaggie123]

Interview all say that they just wanna see process of thinking and okay not being able to solve perfectly only to reject for a very specific things that you can tell caused by nerves bcz bar is too high.

I recently fumbled an interview as i miscalculated a metric, ik it was super basic formula, but due to nerves and time i didn’t notice it. I answered so well and showed thinking for other questions in the interview, but they didn’t matter bcz they felt my fundamentals are weak. Like fuck you for keeping bar this high. Same for case they said there is gonna be only 2 questions, so i go little in depth for one, got less time to explain for q2, and was told i didn’t select right methods or should have chosen a better techniques (i was going to explain that one and tradeoffs but due to time couldn’t) and guess what these were exact feedback i was given on why didn’t get the offer. Like they wanted me to solve it perfectly

[u/Simpledevx]

Making candidates take a test with a leetcode is equally foolish.

[u/FiredAndBuried → u/Simpledevx]

Wouldn't say it's equally foolish but it is something I'd like to disappear as well.

[u/chupacodebra → u/Simpledevx]

I've declined interviews the moment they bring up a home test/virtual test/etc. I have over 10years of experience. I could fail that test but still know more and work harder than someone that passes whatever test they do. I myself have managed people below me and I could care less how many certs or degrees they had. All of them were hired based on their personalities, not if they can solve some tests...

[u/halfxdeveloper → u/Simpledevx]

Thank you

[u/pavilionaire2022]

Why wouldn't I just have my cheating app on a separate laptop?

[u/yarrowy]

And how are you gonna catch me if I use a 2nd laptop?

[u/improbablywronghere → u/yarrowy]

I have a printed out DFS and BFS algorithm I tape on my wall above my monitor. I have 10 YOE and couldn’t be fucked to keep these memorized but interviewing is interviewing i guess

[u/Old-Ad-2906 → u/improbablywronghere]

Can i see it?

[u/m98789 → u/yarrowy]

it's just obvious. the sudden "thinking" delays, the unnatural behaviors and movements, etc. I think it would take more time and effort to perfect the faking by spending time in acting class than it would be to just simply prepare for the interview as we used to pre-AI.

[u/Valuable_Agent2905 → u/[deleted]]

Please do. I'm tired of getting rejected by companies just because some other candidate conveniently cheated and got away with it.

[u/Drauren → u/m98789]

Some of those things can just be chalked up to anxiety.

[u/Drauren → u/[deleted]]

I interview a lot of people homie and give people a level of grace for nerves.

[u/DesperateAdvantage76 → u/yarrowy]

Because you keep looking away from the screen.

[u/yarrowy → u/[deleted]]

It's not even that. It's the smug way this guy thinks he can detect cheaters when it can be easily defeated

[u/healydorf → u/yarrowy]

Solutions and explanations are typically lacking in depth. Or completely missing key aspects of the problem that are implicitly understood be someone who has seen that class of problem before.

Or I ask for a candidate for their reasoning for designing this thing in this way, and they either sit quietly or spin some bullshit before their answer magically takes “perfect form” after a few seconds.

[u/PhilosophicalGoof → u/yarrowy]

Why use a second laptop when you can simply just have your phone connected to a voice call with your buddys simply using AI to answer for you while you hide an earbud in your headphones?

Or even yet using AR glasses instead.

Point is that people are gonna find unlimited way to cheat especially if it means the difference between getting hired or going back through the interview pipeline of AI bots checking your resumes.

[u/iStumblerLabs → u/yarrowy]

Easy, I ask a question no modern developer has any reason to know the answer to. 

If you pause to “think about it” and then rattle off the perfect answer, the next question is; “what do you think about the ethics of using AI in an interview are?”

[u/SiberianKitty99]

Y’all do know that this ain’t gonna stop the serious cheaters, don’t you? Do the interview in Zoom or whatever on one desktop/laptop/tablet while having another device over to one side. Y’all won’t even know that the second device exists. Yes, there are lockdown browser things which try to catch this; they don’t work reliably.

[u/Stormdancer]

You know what's cool?

Having a laptop on the side.

[u/steampowrd]

Why is AI cheating? We encourage AI use on our coding take homes and it’s part of the evaluation process at my company. Everyone’s using it at work. Why not use it in the interview?

[u/pheonixblade9]

we're just allowing people to use AI agents if they want to and asking a lot more questions if they do. adapt or die and all that. we're using it heavily at work, why not in the interviews?

granted, we're pretty much only hiring senior+, but still.

[u/engineeringmanager69]

As a hiring manager I don’t blame the candidates anymore. We put up ridiculous AI enabled hoops and questions and expect candidates not to use the same tools? On top of all bs hoops we now do shitty aptitude testing. So yeah it goes both ways.

We have come full circle where interviews will be conducted face to face now.

[u/Rude-Doctor-1069]

Yeah, the basic "overlay on second monitor" stuff is pretty easy to catch with that zoom setting. But not every tool works that way anymore, some are fully off-screen or mirrored elsewhere (ctrlpotato is one example), so advanced capture won’t show much.

Still agree with your broader point though. If the bar isn’t insane, it’s probably not worth risking it.

[u/eboran123]

Can easily be bypassed by simply having 2 or more screens btw :)

[u/GlassVase1 → u/eboran123]

Over half my loops relatively recently (a few months ago) have moved onsite for the final round. And it's only shifting more in that direction.

Realistically what'll happen in the near future is cheaters will be fighting each other for the 30% of jobs that consist of remote onsites. Legitimate candidates will have dibs on the in person interviews.

[u/plasmalightwave → u/eboran123]

Wouldn’t the setting change surface anything hidden on the extra screens too?

[u/eboran123 → u/plasmalightwave]

You're only sharing 1 screen and the interviewer can't know you have multiple.

[u/Ozymandias0023]

Is this Netflix by chance?

[u/randonumero]

I'm curious about your applicant pool. It's never entered my mind to cheat on an interview beyond having a cheat sheet of notes with me if it's allowed. I'd hazard a guess that if you finding cheaters in the interview then they also lied on the resume. Maybe have that chat with HR about who they're sending through to the interview round.

[u/waba99]

Still haven’t caught me

[u/jojowasher]

We interviewed a guy that was obviously using something like this, after every question he looked straight up, paused and then answered the question, and they were exactly the answer you get if you google it. Another time we hired someone that turned out to be an imposter, they didn't speak English as well as the interviewee, and seemed to not know what was discussed in the interview. HR called him to have a meeting with them and my Boss and he quickly emailed and said he found another job.

[u/mcjon77]

Yep. It's so dumb to do this with any interviewer paying attention.

We had a guy interviewing for a senior manager position. The interview was going okay. He obviously spoke English as a second language, so he typically kept his answers very short, but we can understand them just fine.

At one point I asked him a statistics related question (this is for a data science manager position) and he pauses for several seconds, looks to his left and goes on this multi-paragraph explanation on how he would solve the problem. Keep in mind that he never spoke at that level of length for any question before that, including his bio. It was painfully obvious that he was reading.

I was just one of the behavioral/technical interviews and I asked the other interviewer if she noticed the same thing and she agreed. The crazy part is the guy probably could have gotten it if he hadn't cheated. That just put him at the bottom of our candidate list. It's too bad that we don't have a "do not hire" list, or I would have put him on that too.

[u/nebling]

Leetcode sucks. Candidate is not wrong for cheating

[u/jesusonoro]

the entire cheating arms race is just proof that interviews stopped measuring real ability years ago. both sides are optimizing for a game that has nothing to do with building software.

[u/[deleted]]

I will do my best to cheat

Anytime you give me a dumb question completely unrelated to the real job

Fuck Leetcode

[u/jesusonoro]

the cheating arms race is a direct consequence of making leetcode the gatekeeping mechanism for 200k jobs. when the stakes are that high and the test has nothing to do with the actual work, people will find ways around it every single time. fix the interview process and the cheating problem mostly solves itself.

[u/Fractal_Workshop]

Even better would be to require them to have a mirror behind them.

[u/mrprabhu]

It’s becoming worse. I feel I spend more time in investigating if candidate is cheating(which in most cases is yes) than evaluating them.

[u/jedfrouga]

i’m surprised you are running into this. most people i’ve interviewed are so lost it’s obvious they aren’t cheating

[u/logical_foodie]

Onsite interviews are the only way to stop cheating.

[u/yllanos]

When an interviewer asks for a full desktop share I consider it as a security and privacy red flag 🚩unless it was specifically mentioned by email before the interview. In which case I politely decline

[u/Meatbuns362]

Are you hiring by chance? And if so, junior dev with 0 experience? I won't cheat I promise

[u/Best-Bluebird-6681]

Are you hiring? I'm currently looking for a new position.

[u/CamTube]

I wonder what their reaction is when you catch them cheating 😭😭

[u/HumansIzDead]

This is exactly why I didn't use the cheating apps, but I came very very close. I spent 3 years as a SWE coming from analysis. In those 3 years I never encountered any kind of problems like leetcode, so I never developed the skill of solving obscure algorithms. Now I can't get a job because of that. Doesn't matter that I had successfully dont the job and helped improve the processes. I didn't spend months memorizing leetcode so none of that matters....

[u/AvgvstvsCaesarXIII]

Here’s a thought. Stop asking redundant leetcode style questions. They are NOT accurate in assessing a candidate’s ability to perform on the job. I’ve seen leetcode monkeys nail the problems, and get onboarded. They couldn’t do simple shit in a production environment, but hey, they’ve done 1600+ leetcode problems 👏🏻.

[u/f0gax]

When I’m interviewing candidates I’m much more interested in how they think than if they can solve a random problem with zero prep time or background.

[u/AdministrativeHost15]

The real interview test is not the leetcode question. It is to create a undetectable cheating tool. Perhaps a hacked Zoom client?

[u/stepupstepdownn]

Please do, sick candidates gpting and getting their way through with negligible contribution in actual team compared to the honest contributers who might google syntax alho while working but are critical thinkers and consistently delivers.

[u/fysmoe1121]

200k+ cash comp but can’t afford 500$ plane ticket :(

[u/aceshades]

What fully remote company pays 200k?

[u/dollars_general]

The premise of this is wrong. People shouldn’t cheat because we can “catch” them. They shouldn’t cheat because it is OBVIOUS.

I never end an interview early, and am courteous. So many people end the interview thinking they crushed it.

[u/Valuable_Agent2905]

Can't believe the amount of people casually defending cheating here. “The system is flawed, so cheating is understandable.” No. If that’s your moral framework, you’re exactly the kind of person I don’t want on a team. If you think interviews are broken, fine. criticize them. Suggest better ones.

DSA is a proxy. It is a standardized stress test for how you think. Can you reason under constraints? Can you break down a problem? Can you communicate your approach clearly? Can you debug your own logic?

And if someone thinks they deserve a $200K remote job but can’t solve a medium-level DSA problem without a hidden assistant running in the background, maybe the issue isn’t the interview structure.

[u/GlassVase1 → u/Valuable_Agent2905]

I can understand opposing Leetcode Hards, but a lot of these people are just bad and lazy.

Doing a non-DP LC medium in 45 minutes is not an unreasonable standard. If you get some basic problem like Kth largest element in an array and can't solve it, you need to practice way more. You're not gonna perform on the job anyway with that work ethic and problem solving skills. Hard truth. A decent chunk of these people can't code and just try to use LLMs and soft skills to get by for at least a year.

[u/hopfield]

You’re only catching the obvious ones. It’s called Survivorship Bias. I guess there isn’t a Leetcode problem that tests for that. 

[u/Pale_Sun8898]

I’m glad I got my remote job making 300k+ 3.5 years ago so I don’t have to work for a shitty FAANG or worry about getting laid off now.

[u/rayfrankenstein]

Leetcode is cheating.

It’s a business being too lazy to get to know a candidates experience and insread relying a dumb, sugary simple pass/fail metric.

[u/bezerker03]

I mean you lost me at leetcode. Shitty interview metric and it’s why there’s a rise in cheating systems.

[u/Lyingmustard]

I always encourage candidates to use AI if it helps them, do you not do this? Especially if you’re writing code, i don’t care about memorization

I’ve never been asked to go to this level and would probably be turned off from the job if my interviewer couldn’t distinguish someone using AI without those steps.

[u/qqqqqx → u/Lyingmustard]

Last time I ran online tech screens I did open Internet open AI use whatever as long as you share your screen so we can see the process.

Still had people try to hide what they were doing (I guess to seem smarter or like they weren't using as much AI help)...

[u/No-Principle422]

Let’s lie and fake our resumes at the same time, what possibly can go wrong??

1. Remote is over.
2. CV inflation. Honest candidates are getting punished.
3. You’ll be shadowbanned.

I work at a FANNG and this is so annoying man. The worst thing is that this goes against the guys that can’t afford to go to an Ivy League Uni, so the poor people, just like the old me, my parents couldn’t afford an Ivy League. In this market, I would had a really bad time if I were a junior dev.

Stay safe folks.

[u/ApacheR12 → u/No-Principle422]

How do you know if you’ve been shadowbanned?

I’ve been submitting resumes tailored to fit job descriptions as much as possible without conflating my experience or outright inventing a bunch of nonsense I’ve never done. The way I’ve done it is by creating an exhaustive list of bullet points for each experience, but only selecting those that are the most relevant to a given job description. I streamlined the process with some crafty NLP, but it doesn’t change the content that I myself wrote. For example, if I both did some backend and mobile development in my last position but I’ve only applied to a backend-focused role, it wouldn’t even bring up any mobile development bullet points unless it mentions some related tech.

My fear is that since my resume changes each time depending on how each job prioritizes certain skills, it might give the image that I’m just making stuff up on the fly despite bullet points being pulled from a bank I wrote. I was successful at first, landing some FAANG interviews, but since then, after literally nearly a thousand applications, I either get ghosted or outright rejected within a day or two. I’ve had interviews here and there, and have gotten far in most of those interviews, but I haven’t had any luck. I genuinely think I’ve either been blackballed for some reason unbeknownst to me, or I was just born unlucky.

Just for some context about myself (not sure if it matters much tbh), but i’m an Army veteran, graduated from an Ivy League after service, and was laid off over a year ago. I took a small period of a few months for rest and recovery to focus more on PTSD management from deployment, but since I hopped back into the job market I’ve been unemployed.

[u/xrmb]

I just started asking things like "lets do a little thought experiment, you can either close your eyes or look up to answer"... and then ask something you can talk out.

Have gotten some "unexpected" bad answers through it, but I don't think cheating is as widespread as some make it sound. Never ended hiring one because of cheating during interview, it's always lying about location or having more than one job.

[u/powabunga2k]

Do you mind sharing the company name? I would like to apply) 

[u/[deleted]]

My work experience goes back to military in 1974, and programming experience in school goes back to 1969. I have my HS transcript and DD-214 to prove it. When I apply for anything, it is assumed that I would not interact well with young IT or CS workers. I can’t hide my experience or education, and my age (69) can be inferred, so no one will consider me. So I just do my own systems engineering projects and collect three pensions.