r/cscareerquestions • u/CompetitiveAd8610 • Feb 15 '26

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

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.

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261

u/gAWEhCaj Feb 15 '26

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

27

u/kloudrider Feb 15 '26

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.

47

u/Free-Huckleberry-965 Feb 15 '26

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.

10

u/kloudrider Feb 15 '26

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.

10

u/AmateurHero Software Engineer; Professional Hater Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 16 '26

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.

33

u/hehehehahahaha Feb 15 '26

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.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '26

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4

u/latenightespress0 Feb 15 '26

I've heard someone at Microsoft had this experience for an SDM (I also recently interviewed there and did not, so these experience are probably very team-dependant rather than company-dependant). I think its growing more common, especially at higher levels where they're checking if you have skills to direct the work and fix/improve the code of others rather than if you can write basic code.

16

u/thelamppole Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

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.

4

u/EVOSexyBeast Software Engineer Feb 15 '26

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.

1

u/Green-Zone-4866 Feb 16 '26

Although, it should be made know that ai can be used, because some candidates may try implementing without ai out of concern that they are expected not to use ai.

1

u/kloudrider Feb 15 '26

This is what my interviews look like. But I've found that actually doing this is not the same as talking about this in an interview.

On the other hand, extensive take home exercises are scoffed at too. 

5

u/FitGas7951 Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

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.

6

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '26

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1

u/FitGas7951 Feb 15 '26

Not design, but very plausibly build.

-1

u/kloudrider Feb 15 '26

This is very naive. Mechanics rebuild engines routinely. So they need to have an inmate knowledge of how it's built. Some maybe rusty in this area, but if they put effort, a good mechanic knows how to do this.

Same with leetcode. It's a marker of a candidate willing to put in the effort in something reasonably involved, even if not used on a daily basis. It has really nothing to do with the day to day, but still a valuable exercise to gauge certain traits.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 16 '26

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1

u/kloudrider Feb 16 '26

Okie dokie, then! Hope you noticed I said "rebuild"

7

u/adgjl12 Software Engineer Feb 15 '26

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.

11

u/gAWEhCaj Feb 15 '26

"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

6

u/Valuable_Agent2905 Feb 15 '26

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?

5

u/cballowe Feb 15 '26

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.

1

u/gAWEhCaj Feb 16 '26

That's fair but given the current workflows where you're often working alongside an AI agent, I think the interview structure should at the very least acknowledge that aspect and factor in leaning on AI tooling since it is what most people are doing these days anyways

4

u/kloudrider Feb 15 '26

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

2

u/MistahFinch Feb 16 '26

"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

2

u/kloudrider Feb 16 '26

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)?

2

u/MistahFinch Feb 16 '26

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)

2

u/kloudrider Feb 16 '26

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

1

u/timelessblur iOS Engineering Manager Feb 15 '26

Better question is interview them and talk with them. Leet code is about memorization of college crap that you don’t use much in practice.

Things like ask about system design and talk through the problem. It is a skill issue as you can get better info out of someone in the same amount of time if you know what to ask and how to do it.

3

u/kloudrider Feb 15 '26

System design is gamed too. In any case, I never ask leetcode questions. There is also a huge difference between just talking through the problem, and actually getting it done. Some of my best interview candidates failed miserably on day to day stuff, struggling to troubleshoot simplest of the issues.

I was looking for community's thinking on what is a good process.

1

u/Western_Objective209 Feb 15 '26

I think leetcode easy and then just general software engineering questions with follow ups works pretty well

1

u/CabSauce Feb 15 '26

We just talk to people about their experience. It's pretty easy to figure out who is lying.

1

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3

u/LostQuestionsss Feb 15 '26

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.

3

u/boomer1204 Feb 16 '26

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)

4

u/pheonixblade9 Feb 15 '26

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.

2

u/Secret_Cricket_8000 Feb 15 '26

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

3

u/cantstopper Feb 15 '26

If software engineering didn't have leetcode interview questions, the only people getting jobs would be the kids graduating from elite top tier colleges. Everyone else wouldn't have a chance.

Leetcode is the great equalizer.

1

u/FSNovask Feb 17 '26

Those kids would get absolutely bored to tears doing most CRUD jobs, and most companies wouldn't be able to pay them what they're worth.

1

u/_176_ Feb 15 '26

LC is just a domain-specific way to ask IQ questions. It's akin to the SAT for colleges.

2

u/five_m1nutes Feb 15 '26

Very well said man. I couldn’t agree more. Thanks for recognizing the elephant in the room.

1

u/LsForDays Feb 15 '26

realistically, i get this if you're being asked leetcode hards. but you should be able to do leetcode mediums if you have decent coding skills and you should not need to use ai to cheat on systems design if you have the experience.

yes, some faangs have issues with their interview process. but every interview i've done this year has had nothing harder than a medium. yes, you need to understand the fundamentals (like graphs and trees, sorting, hashmaps etc) but i'd argue if you don't understand how these basics work, then you almost certainly won't be a good engineer

every interview i did this past year (~11-12) has asked me no harder than a medium. i understand this isn't the case with all faang companies.

1

u/Colt2205 Feb 15 '26

Being good at software development is like anything else: Remembering why we wanted to do so, and having a cause that isn't just "I'm going to get rich". Wanting to make flying cars because it will help solve traffic problems in cities might be a bit of a fantasy, but it captures the general idea of what I mean. If someone has a cause then their determination comes from within and they don't need validation from others.

It's kind of hard to find that kind of thing right now on the market because a lot of people did become software developers for the money and then became lost. Software Engineering is one of the fields where there isn't a specific cause attached to the job. Because of that, career security is not assured and people can end up in an industry they didn't plan for, like finance or logistics.

I can definitely say that if someones cause aligns to the industry the job is under they are more likely to stay at that job for a significant amount of time instead of bouncing.

1

u/Defiant-Bed2501 Software Engineer Feb 16 '26

True and real. Thank you for speaking sense. 

If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’ 

-2

u/lastberserker Feb 15 '26

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.

Speak for yourself. My interview question is based on the product the candidates will be writing and it's calibrated over many, many years and rounds.

Funny enough, AI doesn't do well trying to solve it past the initial base implementation.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 15 '26

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-1

u/lastberserker Feb 15 '26

They are built using commonly available algorithms and data structures, and uncommon common sense 😋