I would love to meet someone who was at ease, could explain code in detail (including talking about looping over arrays) and then NOT be able to produce that code.
The second one flat out cheated, but I bet they wouldn't have been able to explain the take home so you might have caught them.
Kinda weak speculation on my part but I guess I could be wrong. I've literally never met anyone like that.
What is the take home like? Maybe the code/answers have leaked somewhere?
The first one could also explain the code fine. Interviews 2 and 3 they were comfortable and able to design decent systems but fell over on code. This why I was given the task of "get any code whatsoever after you put them at ease"
What GP describes is more common than you'd think. Not surprising when the prize for cheating is a 6 figure job, and there's no penalty at all for getting caught.
In the gp scenarios they said they were able to Google almost all of the take home and stich the parts together. The overall solution/problem isn't Googleable, we checked.
Had other candidates totally ace the take home and flat out state first thing that they can't code and ask to switch to a non coding interview or to go home.
Some people spend a lot of time practicing to cheat. Given how much this industry pays it shouldn't be surprising.
Both of these happened 3 weeks ago when I was interviewing 32 candidates in a event. But several times in the last few years as well.
No I don't have statistics on this or pure confirmation... Kinda hard to get that info from suspected cheaters.
There are problems with every type of interviews a d they're hueristics for skill not a judge of skill.