It's strange to me that anyone would care about people cheating at job interviews and not say CEO pay that's 1,000X the average employee. More power to those who can balance things in their favor against those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

But to answer your question subjectively, yes, in my experience cheaters will cheat. If they used unethical methods to get hired that's a strong indicator that they will also cheat their way to raises and promotions.

Alphabet's CEO makes about 1000x the average googler, but that's only about 1% of salaries. What I mean is that for every $100 a Googler makes, about $1 goes to the CEO. It's not like top executives are claiming ing most of the value for themselves, the majority of the value a worker generates is returned to them in their compensation.

When people cheat at the job interview and end up on my team or interacting with me but are not competent at the job, that directly and negatively impacts me and my work life, as well as my productivity. The fact the CEO makes more money than me does not directly impact me (although it does indirectly through larger society).

I like being part of a team that is high performance and competent and linked to other high performance and competent teams. Cheating makes this less likely and damages the quality of the work life and creates the need for more process that slows does the productivity and performance of the team in order to account for and hedge against incompetence.

Go lick a boot. Especially as long as life as a working working person is a social game overseen by bosses which you must win to survive, there is absolutely no moral precedent for so-called fairness. Get real.

> The "free market" is so good at problem solving! I hope the entrepreneur who thought of this made a tremendous profit!

> But I was always assured the US has the greatest healthcare system in the universe because it's privately profited from!

It's just low-quality stuff, man. Keep it on /r/politics, I'm begging you.

Wouldn't that be good for you and others who feel the same as you? Like, shouldn't you actually encourage "bootlickers" if you have this kind of devil may cry, realpolitik view of morality? Otherwise I'm just competition right?

There are no wrong answers here, I really just want to understand what you think better.

Doctors may care about treating patients, but hospitals only care about one thing -- money. Pressuring doctors into pursuing unnecessary treatments are one of many ways hospitals try to increase revenue.

People are tremendously impacted, for good or ill, when prescribed pain medications, ADHD medications, anti-depressants, etc. Many of these people are harmed. Many of the doctors who caused them harm simply do not care.

Then before you know it, you have to take a pill to take a pill. Then down the road, you have to take a pill to take a pill to take a pill.

I'm no medical Calvinist either, but I am not sure that polypharmacy should be the end goal if it can be avoided.

However, when learning for exam, it is cheating, because exams define minimum set of stuff that you should have in memory at that point.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/125/The_Golden_Rule_Revisit...).

Meaning, don’t be a cheater unless you want to live in a society of cheaters. Slightly different meaning from “do unto others” which is about interpersonal reciprocity.

> Immanuel Kant famously criticized the golden rule for not being sensitive to differences of situation, noting that a prisoner duly convicted of a crime could appeal to the golden rule while asking the judge to release him, pointing out that the judge would not want anyone else to send him to prison, so he should not do so to others. On the other hand, in a critique of the consistency of Kant's writings, several authors have noted the "similarity" between the Golden Rule and Kant's Categorical Imperative, introduced in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (See discussion at this link).

The Golden Rule conveys 99% of the idea. No one cares about the remaining 1% except for people who have time to waste. We get it. We get the point Kant is trying to make.

Kant's wording scales up to include the emergent properties of a society which operated according to that rule.

The Golden Rule doesn't cover cases like, "Should I throw this trash in a lake." because there's no concrete person being "done unto". Kant's rule does: Would you want to live in a world where everyone threw trash in the lake? Probably not.

"Would you go to a surgeon who cheated their way through medical school?"

However, I think you're being a little naive if you think the days of "yesteryear" were somehow different in man's capacity and willingness to do what he needs to do to survive.

    I mean in every facet of life we're basically awash in never before seen capacity to benefit from dishonesty.

    it isn't inherent to the discipline of technology itself anymore.

    Like, there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA

The reality is that humans have not fundamentally changed in hundreds of thousands of years. If we're doing it today, you can bet we were doing it yesterday and that we'll be doing it tomorrow.

Any policy, technology, process, etc must take that into account.

I definitely wish that's not how it was, and I don't think that's how it should be, but we have to work with what we have to work with.

There are plenty of ways to get people to rise to their best selves, rather than sink to their worst selves, as they are in context while competing for high paying jobs, and we should always try to induce the best outcomes possible.

I think this what you're getting at by suggesting we don't just give up, despite knowing what we know about human nature. But we also shouldn't deny the hard truth that humans won't anyways behave the way we wish they did.

It's hard to speak quantitatively about qualitative things, but that' something that enters the discussion as soon as words like "more" or "less" are uttered.

In any case, you're absolutely correct that I'm definitely naive because I'm limited to just my lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmMqMYgswsA&t=609s

Even evolution does that. check out Endosymbiosis

Robbing a loaf of bread so your children can eat is very different from cheating on a test/interview for a job with a kingly salary. One is doing what one needs to do to survive, and morally justifiable. The other is pathetic and craven.

Except the honest competitor who was passed over for the position, or the promotion?

- nature is inherently competitive. - civilization and culture temper this but requires vigilance to maintain.

The second implies that some cultures may be more effective at tempering nature’s excesses than others… and also that it can change in a way in which it becomes less or more effective, or at least effective for different things…

I think this part is a crucial part, that many comments here miss. Honesty is not useful if it's not rewarded, consequently if cheating can be rewarding, because of non-vigilance. We see this not only among humans but also in animals/birds, and in general nature.

I remember listening to a podcast recently that compared boys and girls in school. The takeaway was that girls generally try to do all of the work, whereas boys were far more likely to take short cuts to success. And this was the reason why boys were doing better in university and afterwards. The conclusion of the podcast was that we should be encouraging girls to try to take the same shortcuts as boys. It's a learned skill to know exactly what needs to be done to get what you want.

Maybe that's what's going on here. Rules, whether we like it or not, can be broken.

Regardless of gender it's useful to teach people endurance, prioritization, and how to judge when it's best to do everything vs only some things.

edit: I just realized there's a great irony here. I salute you, while recognizing that honesty and intellectual rigor is not valued in the world. I guess that's why it's valued so highly by people like me?

This is just my personal take, but I like the Plato way of thinking about this. If we were to invent an evil person who succeeds at everything, including being perceived as good by their peers, and also invent a good person who fails at everything and is unfairly or coincidentally perceived as evil by everyone, the "good person" still wins.

He argues that's because to be "good" requires to know separate it from bad, and that essentially knowing good from bad is what wisdom is. This, he argues, comes from having some kind of access to the truth, and the truth is the end-all-be-all. He believes that truth is more powerful, than power itself.

Finally, he argues that truth is more powerful than power because with power alone you only have the ability to achieve your aims but not the ability to know if they're good for you or bad for you. So finally he says this is why tyrants are always such sad people.

I don't know if we can fix a broken system in the sense that the wise people will always have the power, but I do find his argument persuasive and I know which of the two I prioritize. That's why when people act out in these ways, like cheating on interviews but also other things, I just accept it as you laid out earlier. Rules can be broken. It's not ideal, but it's fine.

Which a lot of the blind demographic are from

Spend time in Honduras or Brazil to see what low trust looks like.

So, how long are we waiting...?

I'll preface this comment by saying, I recognize that the injustices in Honduras and Brazil are not at all like what we see in the U.S. But my comment is about the perception of justice in the U.S. by common citizens (in my opinion).

This is a very privileged take. Vast numbers of people in the United States of America do not believe this to be true.

The sides don't matter. Leftists believe that black people can be executed at will. Rightists believe that white people can be imprisoned for life, for doing their job (police) or defending themselves.

I'm honestly surprised to hear this take. Up to this point, you may be disagreeing with me, thinking I'm crazy, or whatever. But consider the three letter agencies. CIA, FBI, ATF, doesn't matter how you spell them. They have supranational powers which are not balanced by any civilian or even political oversight whatsoever.

People are allowed to inject drugs in the streets (where it's illegal), menace, defecate in the streets, expose themselves, rob, steal, and nothing at all really happens.

Americans haven't woken up yet, but the rule of law is already dead.

> In business there is no cheating, there is only making money and not making money.

This attitude is very common among people I know. You ask "how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that." We muddle through, is the answer.

This is the attitude that turns business from being something that is for the greater benefit of all into something that more like a cancer, harmful to all.

If business is not at least in part about the greater benefit, then we need to stop wasting so many resources supporting it.

The agriculture revolution has been a disaster for the human race. Or at least the individuals within it.

Yes, there was starvation, but if we're all starving, who cares, really? Better we all starve than to have a despot in power starving me while he eats fat. Eat his fat instead.

Plantations is a bit vague but to assume Cotton; people benefited tremendously from cheaper clothes. A lot of the early industrial revolution was weaving machines which wouldn't be possible without a lot of cotton.

Robber barons is a bit vague but to assume railroads; people benefited tremendously from trade. Our cities are built with a lot of materials that aren't locally sourced.

---

Things have trade-offs but to say there were nothing positive about something that has negatives is very dishonest.

At the expense of killing millions?

< Plantations is a bit vague but to assume Cotton; people benefited tremendously from cheaper clothes. A lot of the early industrial revolution was weaving machines which wouldn't be possible without a lot of cotton.

At the expense of killing and enslaving millions?

Columbus wasn't a business but if you take a look at why he got funding [1] you'll see its very clearly for the greater good (of the crown). Of course, the inhabitants of the land being colonized are not taken into consideration but they're also not the one giving Columbus his funding.

I think you need to think a bit longer about this. If slavery wasn't useful economically why did so many civilizations engage in it?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbu...

If a paint company is dumping waste in the river we get them to stop. They push back and say "if you stop you won't have paint" and we work out a tradeoff.

Some businesses have hacked the system. For example finance is a service business but some people who just use it for self-enrichment have managed to persuade others that that is for the public good. That won't last forever, but certainly will take a long time (many more human lifespans I suspect, unfortunately) to damp out.

Fortunately it doesn't look like your comments have been dominated by this, but still, we've had to ask you this several times in the past. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23863318 (July 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618278 (Nov 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158037 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19539635 (April 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018671 (Sept 2018)

I also have gotten about as many upvotes as downvotes.

But really? Going back to 2020, 2019 and 2018?

If you'd please just not post any more generic ideological comments and/or flamebait, that would be good.

My basic take is that low trust societies encourage cheating and dishonesty and think if you're honest and honorable that you're a naive rube asking to be taken advantage of. For my part, I've never cheated in any interview, in anything at school, and never lied on my resume, yet being in tech which is dominated by people who originate in low trust societies, I see how it becomes something insidious that creates extremely negative behavioral norms in corporate politics, where it's now acceptable for people to bald-face lie about project status, receipt of information, or the severity of an issue if it gets them ahead or makes someone else look bad and deflects the blame.

Luckily, my professor was right though, despite exposure to a lot of negative behaviors I don't like, don't respect, and don't endorse, I did excel and I continue to excel above my peers, especially those who cheated. Cheating ultimately cheats oneself, but it's very galling that it's now becoming accepted as okay behavior in American society due to cultural shifts aligned to low trust societies we do business with. The Blind app demographics make it unsurprising to see this there or that it's essentially universally supported in the comments there. I am honestly unsurprised that most of the comments on HN support it. There's absolutely an attitude of "lie now, and figure out how to make it not a lie before investors or customers notice" in the startup world as well. Frankly, it disappoints me deeply that so much our society has become one big grift, especially as someone who entered the tech industry when it was still dominated by honest nerds doing cool stuff.

Either the code is short, or it isn't.

Either the chair supports your weight, or it breaks.

I think I enjoy these pursuits as an antidote to the kind of software I have to deal with on a daily basis - it's the kind that is so complex there are "no obvious deficiencies", so being able to retreat to domains where there are "obviously no deficiencies" is a treat.

I'm an ok-ish web developer, and would love to fine some niches to specialize in like you mentioned.

* Compilers/DSLs/language runtimes/static analysis

* Distributed systems (on my list of things to learn, know basically nothing)

* More generically: high-performance code, doesn't have to be fintech-fast, but designing and maintaining code that makes excellent use of hardware resources

Switching to "dumb" jobs made my life a lot happier. While it's easier, the demand exceeds the supply. Easier career growth, and better colleagues (no egos, etc).

So, my one example disputes your claim. :)

Because of this statement, I feel like I finally understand the aversion in the woodworking community to pocketholes and CNCs.

Its not an aversion to the technique per se, its an aversion to the kind of person who uses them for everything.

Well, it's very easy to make a chair that works a couple times. Whether it holds up for a week or a century is another matter.

At any rate, being from a "low trust society" can also motivate someone to go in the other direction because they have seen the injustice that is a consequence of cheating and dishonesty.

If he stayed, he wouldn't have been as successful as he is now.

Personally, my parents are such people - they left Poland in the 1970’s and excelled in America. One of the best things that our country has done since is that we have climbed into a higher-trust category in the 90’s. This has gradually limited that brain drain mechanic. While things aren’t perfect, there are far fewer such people leaving our economy and it has done wonders.

However, everywhere in the world this is a continuous battle that will always have to be fought and won over and over again. The lying and the cheating always creeps back into every system.

Man, you crushed it here, so true.

Everyone seems to have come out of the pandemic convinced that they need to tighten whatever screws they have to get theirs. And that triggers other people to do the same thing. Cheating enters the realm of possibility because people (correctly and incorrectly) believe others are doing the same thing.

It's gross and feeds on itself. I'm not sure what will help it get better.

I'm not sure why anyone would expect "the average Joe" to maintain some semblance of integrity when very few successful individuals do the same. The overall message is pretty clear - if you want to succeed, you will need to cheat.

Many humans seem to be incredibly short sighted

I want to believe this, but I'm not sure it's always true. Timing of opportunities matters a lot. Someone who is not as skilled in programming probably cheated their way into a FAANG job during the height of the pandemic and made absolute bank, perhaps being able to sock away $200k-$300k since then. That money could then be invested and start compounding, leading to a materially different outcome from someone else who played it by the rules and was better.

The long-term for the cheater might be to simply find a less demanding job and continue riding the prestige hike they got when they snuck into the FAANG job.

When did this wonderful meritocracy exist? Where?

I think back to Jobs and Woz, and how he got him to hack a project to win a contest, and then didn't tell Woz and kept the money. It's been here since day 1.

Less adult time per child means a generation with far less formation.

It has to collapse before it gets better, but it will take centuries to get back to Rome levels of violence and back stabbing.

Also child sexual and physical abuse has reduced during this same time frame. "According to David Finkelhor who tracked Child Maltreatment Report (NCANDS) data from 1990 to 2010, sexual abuse had declined 62% from 1992 to 2009 and the long-term trend for physical abuse was also down by 56% since 1992." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse

We have a lot of problems, but your understand of the issues are poor.

No fault divorce makes it vastly easier to divorce for a lot of reasons and making it unnecessarily hard to leave can foster situations where it becomes abusive because they don't get along that well and can't just up and leave because they want to.

Abuse isn't always reported, and abusers often manipulate or lie.

Twice as many children are raised by single mothers today compared to 50 years ago. Maybe that’s the more relevant statistic? (Yes there are hero stories where one could argue this doesn’t matter…)

I've gotten negative performance review feedback from management that was word for word from the 'things I think I can improve'. I've gotten passed over for jobs and promotions because I don't do a good enough job of 'selling' my experience.

Basically, the most successful software engineers I've met also have the ability to bullshit with the best used car salesmen, and it's hard to argue my unwillingness to do so hasn't held me back.

Is this a lack of confidence?

> I've gotten passed over for jobs and promotions because I don't do a good enough job of 'selling' my experience.

Selling your experience IS an important skill. Other factors may have played a part too.

> successful software engineers I've met also have the ability to bullshit

Is it their bullshit that gets them to be successful? Or is it that they're more friendly, tactful, and and positive?

To be clear, I don't doubt that you're telling it as you see it. I'm just wondering if your perceptions match the reality.

If someone is always talking about how bad they are at something, then I'll interpret that as the person being negative, lacking confidence, and pessimistic. That's not the kind of person I'd want to be around in general, let alone hire.

I was always raised that you don't brag about yourself, you don't take credit for things you didn't really do, and you don't over promise and under deliver.

As I've gained experience, I've learned that people can take self deprecating things as gospel and as a worker it's your job to talk up your abilities and invitations to identify 'things you can improve' have to be spun in a positive way. As much as I hate to admit it, salesmanship, presentation, and ones ability to 'smooth talk' seems to get you further than raw technical ability. I don't hold it against devs that are able to do that, it's just been an adjustment for me.

There are those who constantly put in overtime to put out fires that they created. To management, these seem like hard-working, dedicated folks. Meanwhile those who design things well, don't have fires to put out, and leave on-time every day seem lazy. All too often the first group is given praise instead of the second group.

This is a point of unfairness that is rampant in the industry. I don't know of any way to solve it, besides each person being their own promoter, hype man, sales man.

If you disagree, tell me which of the two groups you are in?

Scarface just said "can't generalize to everyone" which is true and not the original point made.

Usually I try including at least a few links, but in this case I think anybody who has read these threads right here on HN should remember those numerous posts and discussions? I remember comments from educators who wanted to do something but the higher-ups prevented it, for example, or reversed the decision. Unfortunately I don't know what to search for to find these kinds of comments again.

EDIT: Found one very quickly after just a little cross-reading of one cheating related thread, the reply to this linked comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32533086

Quote:

> The amount of cheating was insane. He started academic dishonesty proceedings against many of the students but the department pressured him to "work it out."

It's not just the students either: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2019/06/21/americas-l...

fwiw - I think Americans value integrity a lot more than most other places, and academic cheating is not nearly as common.

Of course, but the commenter I replied to made a specific statement, first sentence, making it sound to my reading - and I don't think I'm reading something into it that isn't meant to be there? - as if it's a lot less in the US. But even a little bit of searching, and every single time the topic comes up here, which usually is for higher education so I'm not making any statement about anything below, ends up with a lot of comments, and no opposition to them, saying there is a lot of cheating there.

Examples:

https://academicintegrity.org/resources/facts-and-statistics

> McCabe’s original research and subsequent follow-up studies show that more than 60 percent of university students freely admit to cheating in some form.

https://proctoredu.com/blog/tpost/5dk67zrns1-academic-dishon...

> The level of cheating in high school according to statistics is extremely high. One of the most thorough studies, carried out by Dr. Donald McCabe, reveals that about 95% of polled students (both undergraduates and graduates) admitted to having cheated in some form.

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031255390/reports-of-cheatin...

Therefore, it surprised my that the original commenter made such a strong statement.

The worse penalty possible for cheating (IF you get caught and IF the teacher/professor even cares, which was not by any means universal) is getting a grade of 1 (out of 10) on that specific item (exam, project etc. ).

This is even true for the national country-wide exams you take in 8th and 12th grades: if you are caught cheating, you get a 1/10 on that specific exam, but can still take all the rest, and will be forced to re-take the one you cheated on in the next session.

The only thing treated more seriously were bachelor's/master's/PhD theses, where you could face plagiarism charges. But even this is mostly theoretical, especially for the bachelor's, since only some cursory verification was ever performed, at least at my university (one of the biggest ones in the capital).

My impression from reading HN, where the topic came up numerous times over the years, was that that is not so. See the link I presented as example, I saw a lot such stories, right here in the discussions, but also in some articles. Not just the US, I also remember similar anecdotes about management preventing punishment from Canada even when a professor initially tried to do something.

If it is not representative I apologize, I go by what I read mostly here, and it was a lot over the years.

There certainly seems to be an official stance against cheating, e.g. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=201609211...

It's just that I saw so many stories from or about educators who tried and it went like in that link I included, especially when many students were caught.

"Why Professors Don’t Do More to Stop Students Who Cheat" - https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-professors-dont-do-mor...

> Some who have tried say that administrators, fearful of lawsuits, don’t back them up

> “In the majority of cases of trivial cheating, I think most professors turn a blind eye,” says Donald L. McCabe, the associate provost for campus development at Rutgers University at Newark, who has studied the issue. “The number who do nothing is very small, but the number who do very little is very large.”

It’s a xenophobic lie, like if Americans don’t celebrate lying on positive euphemisms like “fake it till you make it” or “being a good salesman”

For what it's worth, "fake it till you make it" is far from being universally seen as positive, and (car) salesmen are seen as one of the most untrustworthy and least liked professions (just above telemarketers and members of congress). [1]

1: https://thehill.com/business/3812900-here-are-the-most-and-l...

I mean, the whole reason why people also lie in other areas. Which also explains why people of “low trust” societies might lie more rather than “it’s in the culture of those dirty foreigners”.

Most Americans that I know don't consider those phrases to reflect positive values at all. They're used disparagingly against people who really think like that.

I assure you that “the good old days” weren’t so good for my still living parents growing up in the segregated south.

As far as “not everything being related to race”, tell that to my parents who grew up in the 60s and 70s when everything was related to their race.

They literally weren’t “trusted” to drink out of the same water fountain, go to the same schools or swim in the same pool.

The only people who long for “the good old days” when “trust” was high are those who benefited themselves or whose parents benefited from systematic and de jure discrimination.

The good old days when you could live off of one income came about because Europe was recovering from a war and we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.

The Old Testament also offers an approach to dealing with rampant cheating in society: trust in God to provide you with what you need. It's not an exact match for classmates cheating, but David had to deal with a literal existential crisis by a king who believed falsehoods about him, and dealt with it by trusting God and refusing to kill the king (that is, using the king's methods to secure himself). Many of the psalms appear to record the emotional process he went through.

https://www.bible.com/bible/1359/1SA.15.3-23.ICB

Even with David, when David sent one of his soldiers to die on the front line so he could have the soldier’s wife, God let David’s baby die.

The Old Testament God wasn’t exactly the loving and forgive your neighbor type.

If that correlation exists, it may point to an alternative hypothesis to the GP claim that the issue is rooted in those coming from "low trust" societies and due to an internal mechanism.

By definition, being forced to drink out of separate water fountains is putting people on the opposite side - ie opposite poles.

The example of inter tribal slavery doesn't actually apply to what I'm talking about. Slavery, and highly destructive, unprovoked raids which sometimes concluded with massacres of women and children were normal in the Americas. Is enslaving a member of another band or tribe a violation of trust? Is engaging in unprovoked war raids a violation of trust? These practices would not come as a surprise to anyone living within raiding territory of a warlike people. Trust can only come into play when a party to an agreement, whether tacit or explicit, has an opportunity to violate what was agreed upon.

Saying "Every nation ever has always tried win zero-sum interactions with other nations" conceals that there were actually vast differences in the way colonialist powers conducted themselves in relations with Native American tribes. The (at the time British) Canadian government honored treaties much more often and in better faith than US authorities.

My point is that in-group relations is not the same as out-group relations. High trust is about how you treat members of your in-group. Enslaving foreign people is most certainly a "low trust" move (how can I possibly enter an agreement with you when I know you might just show up one day and enslave me?) but it's fully possible and consistent for the perpetrator to belong to a high trust society.

Your example of the Maori is perfectly analogous to what happened in Canada/ But regardless of how things turned out, why did the British honor treaties when they had no incentive to do so? How do you account for this difference in a world dominated by purely rational decision making when interacting with those outside of your culture?

That said, I don't really want American culture to continue down this "if the ends justify the means" trend that we've been on. We're not cut out for it! We'll get our lunch eaten.

The perfect storm of incompetence created the system we inherited from our forefathers. It benefits Americans, but maybe the wealth is also killing us due to massive obesity and sedentary lifestyles on top of a greedy litigious society.

No system is perfect.

That's usually why the first port of call when some corruption is detected is Finding What's Weird and the second is Not Like The Rest Of Us.

San Francisco's city government is hopelessly corrupt and visibly so for someone who has lived under other obviously corrupt governments. But that is not even apparent to faraway Republicans who are the only ones who will say it is.

But those people are similarly ignorant of the massive corruption of their own local government.

It has taught me a new path of success for corruption: that of hiding in plain sight among those of your identity.

The reality (speaking from experience) may be that international students are a lucrative market and getting a reputation as being hard on cheating will make them choose to go elsewhere.

I'm calling for schools to just create a "international student focused" campus where they can collect all the rich international students, let them party and cheat for 4 years, collect the outrageous tuition, and shield the indigenous students from their bullshit.

Fortunately, most of your comments have been fine so this should be easy to fix.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

There's no reason to not-cheat unless you absolutely don't have to and what's the maxim about good programmers, they're so lazy they'll figure out a work-around to save themselves some time? Even if it's stuff they know already? Once you're into the system there are mutual shared interests and political efforts that can support such a career.

It's a shame that being a decent person is not sufficient reason.

Sadly, the time horizon is far too long, and the individual short term benefit far too high for this to be (currently) working out as hoped..

0: https://ncase.me/trust/

This is why it's important for in politics and media for them to police their own behavior, because without it there are too many mistakes for a trusting society.

One thing that isn't shown though in the games sandbox mode is for the players to be able to change the rules and reward structures, which is more akin to our society. This would create a much more hard to predict dynamic.

I strongly disagree with that professor. Dishonesty does not have to be, and absolutely should not be, respected. Even if it is a "cultural difference" [citation required].

Taking issue with the 'absolute' part: The cultural context does impact what gets respected, though. For example, having an organization that avoids nepotism is generally respected in the U.S. There are other countries/cultures that do not, at least to the same degree. From their perspective, the more respectable act is to help out those in your tribe/family when you are in a position to do so.

My point being, in the U.S. there is an agreement (implicit or explicit, depending on the context) that hiring will be fair, above board, and based on meritocratic principles. Nepotism undermines this and is, in the distinction I was trying to draw, dishonest from the standpoint that an organization will say one thing ("We hire based on merit") and do another ("We hire based on connections"). Other cultures do not necessarily play this game and make it quite well known that you will be hired based on your network above most else.

Edit: I should also add that I realize by low-trust OP meant the academic term for kinship-based society but my worry is that tying low-trust with cheating students from a country that gets its image tarnished because of various other reasons like low-wage labour and tech scams might paint a different picture to those who don’t know about the term or OPs intent

It doesn't mean that individuals from that society are less trustworthy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

> The Index only measures public sector corruption, ignoring the private sector.

I say all that to say, that I stand by the truth of my observations, but I do not intend for those observations to in any way imply that it would be acceptable to discriminate against people from India, or anywhere else, on the basis of their origin or ethnicity. I do not discriminate in this manner, as it is just as ethically reprehensible, incorrect, and dishonorable as the behavior I was pointing out in my original comment. I have worked with many Indian colleagues throughout my career that were excellent engineers, managers, and otherwise decent people.

Just to clearly state it, I do not in any way think that any individual person I meet from India is any more likely to cheat or otherwise be dishonest than any individual person I meet from anywhere else. India is far from the only low-trust society in the world, and in general most of the countries in the world qualify as low-trust societies. These are academic terms, and it is entirely expected that there is a higher variance in behavior for individuals in low-trust societies versus high-trust societies, so if anything honestly referring to India as a low-trust society implies within it that there is a higher variance of individual behavior and it's even less accurate to generalize about the behavior of Indian people.

I would be happy to work with anyone who loves computer science and embraces the cool things that we can do with technology to reshape the world and improve the human condition, no matter where they originate from.

It doesn't invalidate the easily observable phenomenon of widespread cheating in low trust society like India. This is also a huge problem for universities around that accept students of wealthy parents from these countries which cause grade inflation. Multiple articles have been written around this in mainstream publications.

Agreed. I am very carefully saying that I stand by my own observations as well. The point is that, while these behaviors may be commonplace in a particular society, it does not mean any given individual person from that society engages in these behaviors. We should always be careful of the heuristics we apply to people and work to treat every individual as an individual.

Not being careful here can actually create a form of category error. It's similar to the expectations of visitors to the US that everyone is walking around openly carrying guns and shooting each other constantly due to what's in the news or the statistical probability of a shooting occurring compared to other countries in the world. If you have a 4x higher chance of being involved in a shooting per capita in the US vs a random Western European country, both numbers could be minuscule chances (and are). Just because this type of dishonest behavior is more commonplace in low trust societies, and in this case in India in particular, the population is so large that it still represents a small fraction of the total number of people and you have to be careful not to indict everyone within the society on the basis of the behavior of a few. 15% of the Indian population would be the same as half or more of the US population, but there's a very big difference in categorization between something that is the behavior of a minority of a population vs half or more of the population.

That's all I'm saying. Treat individuals as individuals.

Except we're not talking about individuals here, but social phenomenons.

I looked up where Indians feel about trust here: https://ourworldindata.org/trust

Indians self-rank at 17% - the US at 40%, Canadians at 50%.

India has been a low-trust society for a long long time and remains so. Every Indian I know would admit this in private. Back in 90's there was an Indian grocery store in Fremont, CA owned by a Gujarati gentleman. He had a poster on the wall that offended many of his countrymen. It said, "100 mein sey 90 beyimaan, fir bhi mera Bharat Mahan!". Roughly translated it says 90 of 100 Indians cheat but still my India the great.

Sounds a lot like academia, to be honest.

But you're fighting an uphill battle to expect people not to possess prejudices based on what is statistically likely. People will believe the evidence of their eyes.

The most you can hope is that people not act on their prejudices before getting to know you. And, as unfair as it is that you can't change it, you'll have to find ways to live with the reality that there are people who will act on their prejudices before they get to know you and know that you're really different.

This is covered by the HN guidelines, which ask: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

I could imagine a criticism of btilly's post on the basis that it didn't really meet the GP's experience, didn't show empathy (though I think he was trying to be helpful, not mean), and didn't contribute anything positive, just "you'll have to find ways to deal with it". A better comment might have been more constructive and less coldly generic. But those aren't the criticisms you've offered.

Instead, you crossed into personal attack and snark with your last two sentences. Those things are definitely against the rules here, so please don't do them. It's always possible to make your substantive points without that, and you're of course welcome to do that instead.

No matter how low in the barrel HN is or you feel it is, there's always room to sink lower! That's why we have guidelines—to try to stave off further sinking. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and posting in the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it.

Please do not mistake differing opinions for ignorance.

My father grew up in a time and place where they were persecuted by the KKK for being Irish. I have a half-brother on that side who lives on a native reservation. My half-sisters on the other side were half-Chinese at a time when public opinion absolutely condemned interracial marriage. I have close friends from many different cultures, who have arrived in a wide variety of difference circumstances. Including my wife, who was a refugee from the Soviet Union.

All this has taught me that the more real the problems that you face, the MORE important it becomes to focus on that which remains within your control, while trying to shrug off that which isn't. You'd absolutely be in the right to go around being upset at the world for being unfair to you. But your justified outrage amplifies your problems, and makes your life worse.

The positions that you put down as "suck it up" are therefore the best advice that I know of to improve things. To the extent that individuals and groups do that, they make their lives better. Both in the short term, and the long term. I have seen the truth of this, both for my family and for my friends.

I hold this position based on experience, not ignorance.

If it still sounds crazy, I highly recommend reading https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv.... In particular for its "backwards law". Which says that trying to hold on to a good thing is a bad experience, and accepting a bad thing is a good one. Nobody wants the bad thing to be true. But if the bad thing is true, the act of consciously recognizing and accepting it is far better than the alternative. (The rest of the book is full of other good advice that flies in the face of common preconceptions.)

I was shocked when I went back and started to work alongside many of the students in group projects. About 3/4 of the class were from India or Nepal. When I would meet up for group projects on Comp Sci security labs, I was shocked that everyone's instinct when we would start was to immediately google or use Chegg to find the lab done by other students and essentially copy it. I got frustrated because many of the times, my group would resort to cheating before even understanding what the lab wanted us to do, it was instinctual.

I didn't see this in the few groups I had with other American-born citizens. I feel guilty to even suggest a difference like this and I am conscious of cultural bias, but it was impossible to ignore the dichotomy between these groups.

Up to this point i have chalked the difference to an age gap. Many of my classmates are young and have zero work experience yet. They want their degree as a piece of paper to get a job. By contrast I already have a high-ranking and high-paying position and extensive resume. I am not looking to use my Masters as a rite of passage, but I truly want to go back to school to deepen my knowledge academically at some scientific concepts that you won't find in YouTube videos or through personal study. I am there to learn, not just pass a class. So when given these labs, I see them as opportunities to learn something to apply in my current career and my teammates just want to get it done so they can get a job. But this doesn't explain why the American-born teammates who were also young were willing to learn and not resort instantly to cheating, so it likely is deeply cultural.

The explanation provided by the professor assuaged your concerns, but their salary was funded in part from the tuitions paid by the cheaters.

The 'grift' is a collaboration between the academic institutions that tolerate cheating and award degrees and GPA scores, and the cheating students that game the process.

What he meant to say was "they pay sticker price"

Pull the bandaid off and just admit it -- we're just becoming one of those "low trust societies". And it has nothing to do with who we're doing business with, and it is due to our own culture.

Disagree from my experience.

When I was a TA in grad school, I had a PhD student who clearly had access to the instructor's solution manual. His answers were copied verbatim. If the solution's manual had an error, so did his answer. If the professor assigned a problem not from the book, he wouldn't answer it. I debated reporting him to the professor, but didn't want the drama and figured what your professor did: He'll do poorly on the exams (I was right), and poorly in the work place.

He got his PhD, got a fairly senior position, and quickly rose to be the director of a well known company's research division.

He probably was smart - he did get the PhD from a top ranked university. But I strongly suspect he gamed the system at his company just as he gamed the system there.

In grad school, I had a close friend. Clearly a very bright, skilled guy. Was kicked out of the PhD program when it was discovered he had been fabricating data (Nature was right about to publish his paper when he got discovered).

He went off to another top ranked university and got his PhD in the same area. I don't know how/why he had the balls to do it, as surely his former advisor would be in close proximity (conferences, etc) - and at least within my university his advisor was quite open about my friend's malfeasance.

He then got a research position at the top company in his field. Got promotions, and then quit and founded a startup that is doing well, and is known to some in this crowd here. If all goes to plan, he'll have his exit and be quite rich.

Now I don't know if he cheated in his second PhD or on the job, and I'm still in touch with him. But ... no - cheaters often continue to do well after graduating.

It’s the same philosophy of “it’s not bribing it’s lobbying.”

I mean I'm sympathetic to your experience, the treatment you're describing is unfair, but... that also sounds pretty racist.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh-high-school-dropout-...

On any given day, Huh does about three hours of focused work.

Either we can accept some amount of arbitrariness, and that there are plenty of opportunities (try again next year?), or everyone who didn't make it can decide to cheat (they're probably good enough right?)

Which of these responses makes sense to you?

This Is unfortunately generally true. It generally happens because well intentioned functioning people, allow the sociopaths to take over (because it's unpleasant to confront them) , even in tiny groups. I think this can be stalled by an ever vigilant group. People who are willing to take on the job of constant vigilance in addition to their regular tasks are few and far be in between. Consequently such groups are very few and probably are never even public, hence we never hear of them.

Look at this "personality type" as you call it: People who bullshit their way through life, self-promote, swindle, grift, fake it til they make it, hustle, exploit people's good intentions, take credit for the work of others, and so on... They aren't weirdo sociopaths who simply go get an MBA. They're CEOs, SVPs, business and political leaders, the ultrarich. They're Presidents and Senators. They are the elite, the few who our society is set up to most highly reward. Of course people who want to get ahead are going to emulate this behavior. It's practical. It works in the world that we have set up.

I'd love to live in the Star Trek world. I'm one of those naive suckers who thinks hard work in the trenches should be rewarded. At work I often sit there doing the dirty gritty work that needs to get done, while peers write bullshit presentations and get face-time with the execs, and schmooze their way to promotion after promotion, and it sucks. If I was younger and had a lot more ahead of me, I'd probably cheat and grift like the rest of em, and if I could send a message back decades to 20-year-old me it would probably be "lose the ethical spine and take whatever you can."

I think it's more than likely that they've spent their whole lives trying to accumulate power without ever having cultivated the sense of how to use it. Sort of how in so many places all around the world people of less means seem to be so happy. Obviously there are exceptions abound and I'm not trying to present a quantitative argument one way or another.

Just that the people who live well aren't always the ones who are living "well", if you take my meaning.

I obviously can't be the judge of them and say "all the people I know that are like _that_ are fundamentally unfulfilled", but I can say about myself that the times where I had acted in that way didn't make me any happier, if I were to be honest with myself.

Play the politics to get the things you need, by all means. But if life is a jungle then you're better off with a machete and your own skills (which can never be taken away from you) than a heavy bag of looted gold and a head full of fantasies about why you rightly own it.

If you go buy some wood and build a piece of furniture, you have created something of value that is more than what it was before, and the elite have nothing to say or benefit from it.

And if buying is a bridge too far, you can go into the woods, cut down a tree, and drag it home and fashion it into something.

Yes, entropy means everything will eventually slump into the heat-death of the universe, but here and now we can fight entropy and make our world, even if just the local world of where we live, a bit better.

Ethics mean an entirely thing when you are older and you have loved ones that need to be cared. A little dishonesty can mean the difference between opportunities for your children or sending your children to a community college.

I'm also sympathetic with the cheaters. Everyone knows that these leetcode interviews are pretty dumb. Most people probably pass by memorizing everything and forgetting the stuff right afterwards. It's testing willingness to grind rather than ad hoc problem solving capabilities. If someone is capable of doing the job and just figuring out a way to get through the gatekeeping, I don't care. I know many people that cheated on exams at some point but are pretty legit otherwise.

> Look at this "personality type" as you call it: People who bullshit their way through life, self-promote, swindle, grift, fake it til they make it, hustle, exploit people's good intentions, take credit for the work of others, and so on.

There are a lot of psychological and societal mechanism that tend to punish this behavior. I'd rather be financially well enough off but honest rather than a super rich asshole.

> I'm one of those naive suckers who thinks hard work in the trenches should be rewarded. At work I often sit there doing the dirty gritty work that needs to get done, while peers write bullshit presentations and get face-time with the execs, and schmooze their way to promotion after promotion, and it sucks.

For myself, I decided that the best way is to be competent and do the hard work, but also to set boundaries, to ensure that my work is visible, to communicate ideas and feedback with execs and to fight against the fakers. You won't get anything if you don't ask for it. Taking down obvious fakes can take a while if the execs are too gullible, but it's worth doing.

If your execs are idiot assholes rather than competent people with some integrity, you should probably look for a job elsewhere.

Right, but this is why ST:TNG is such a nice show to watch, because it's the kind of show that some of us, at least, want to live in. Whereas Star Trek Discovery is a terrible show to watch, because it's not. Who wants to watch a show about a bunch of unlikable characters that fight each other and backstab? (Apparently a fair number of people these days, or else the show would have died quickly.)

>Like it or not, we live in a zero-sum dog-eat-dog world

If you want to see the best depiction of the universe we live in, watch the Star Trek episodes about the Mirror Universe (esp. the "In a Mirror, Darkly" 2-parter in Enterprise). Those episodes show humans as they really are in our universe, unlike the moral and conscientious humans depicted in ST:TNG.

I certainly agree though that cheating is a sad thing to build your life on, regardless of whether the system is broken or not. Obviously there are exceptions to this as things get more extreme, but a strong desire to work at amazon is not what I would call extreme lol.

*In fairness an alternative explanation is that the promotion process is also broken and rewarding the wrong things.

The fact that people can just cheat in these interviews and not get PIP'd within 6 months, at an organization notorious for PIPing its under-performers, does illustrate how bad the screening process it. Not only do they need to shift back to in-person interviews, they also need to fix their process to actually test skills.

If we're being honest, LC style interviews aren't even about testing skills, it's trying to proxy for testing raw intelligence (or at least the ability to remember and regurgitate lots of facts). If companies could just IQ test people and hire by IQ, there'd be a lot less weirdness in interviews, but that's illegal (and probably rightly so).

> The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination, but also practices that are > fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business > necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot > be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.

(apologies for the dated and offensive language, starring it out seemed like it would imply a different and more offensive term so I left it as is)

My reading of it is that IQ tests aren't broadly illegal, but the employer would have to demonstrate that it's somehow related to job performance. E.g. one employer refused to hire people with too high of an IQ, and the courts ruled that was a reasonable (if unwise) justification [2].

I'm doubtful any case challenging LeetCode tests on the same grounds would succeed. I think it would be exceptionally difficult to convince a court that solving coding problems is unrelated to a programmer's job performance.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

2: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

I bet many involved in designing and setting the requirements know exactly how it works but they'd use veiled language and never put anything down in written communication.

IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Maybe IQ doesn't exactly track "intelligence", or whatever that is, but it is certainly tracking something that is correlated to success.

You could probably screen candidates based on the question "Did any of your parents go to college? And if so, did they study or work in a STEM field?" and be roughly as predictable.

(This is terrible and you shouldn't do this)

high quality studies have found that the additive heritability of IQ is somewhere around 0.8-0.9, that's just totally incompatible with parental SES as the primary upstream cause. it's simply not debatable (and it wasn't debatable ten years ago either; this is hardly new knowledge)

No it's the other way around. Hinton, basically the father of "AI" and other real experts who are involved in the creation of LLMs are massively divided about the future. Hinton even says the AI actually understands you. The fact that there's division among the real experts (ie not you or me) shows theirs legitimacy in the defense.

There's a fierce artificial downplaying of AI when it comes to programming. A lot of people say that it's not remotely close to replacing programmers. I think this is the delusional group. It's not replacing us yet, but it's obviously close and the trendline is unmistakable.

I think it occurs because a lot of people's identity rests on their actual ability to program. They think they're superior programmers and the fact that a machine is on track to trivialize the skills they take so much pride in causes them to dismiss the technology in the face of actual experts who fear and question it. There's bias on both extremes and one Hallmark of bias is when one fails to address the division and actual controversy.

You have failed to address the controversy instead you categorize people who "defend" AI as people who don't "understand" it and you imply it's some psychological quirk or bias people have. I agree somewhat, but clearly not all who "defend" AI are like this as their are preeminent experts who are on the "defence" side. Instead I think your behavior is an exhibition of other common psychological defensive quirks and biases.

I think you don't realize how it's a dog eat dog world out there and people will do anything to succeed. Maybe your born with talent, so you worship and defend that talent with calls to uphold "integrity." Others, however, will do anything in their power to stay afloat in the face of your "talent." It's more about survival for humans then it is about integrity. Do people really want to live a shitty life getting sub 100k salaries only letting people like you take up all the high paying jobs in the name of "integrity"? No. No one does... not even you, but you have the luxury of talent or ability to master those interviews... that is the only differentiator.

I bet if you couldn't pass those interviews you would be in the same boat. You defend integrity not because you are a stand up person, but because you have the ability to succeed without violating your integrity. That's all.

One thing to note about people is often their truth strangely aligns with their circumstance in life. Why? Most people do not seek actual truth. Instead they construct the truth as a scaffold to support themselves and the weight of their sins. You are no different. I'm pretty sure you are quite good at the technical interview and That strange alignment with your philosophy on interview integrity is Not a coincidence.

Personally I'm unique in this regard. I'm good at interviewing but in my quest in seeking the objective truth of the world... I have, to my own detriment, constructed a life where my truth is not in alignment with what I am in actuality.

The grifters and cheaters of our world are an opportunity cost. Who knows how much more productive or fair the world would be if we didn't tolerate them? By allowing them to succeed, we deny a world where they wouldn't need to exist.

Careful, this kind of thinking leads to ideas which are unacceptable in the current world :)

> There's a fierce artificial downplaying of AI when it comes to programming. [...] I think this is the delusional group.

This could definitely be the case. I personally wouldn't bet against AI as in all of AI. I, like many, think it's a matter of time and technology, but I do think this particular moment in time, and this particular technology is over hyped. I'll just be candid about that. Still, one day? Yeah you bet, although it appears that we're at least one fundamental breakthrough short, so the technology will be different. Today's tech will still nonetheless be fundamental though.

> I think it occurs because a lot of people's identity rests on their actual ability to program. They think your they're superior programmers [...] causes them to dismiss the technology in the face of actual experts who fear and question it.

I can't speak to the first part, with respect to what one side's biases are, as I don't really know what they're thinking, but you're almost certainly right that there's bias on both the bear and bull cases for AI. Sometimes I think it's a simple as the "line goes up" thinking in crypto just for programming and that's all that people need. I just read a lot of comments that at times feel kind of desperate to defend LLMs and so I added that last part to my original comment to see if anyone felt like adding to that thought, which you have so thanks.

> You have failed to address the controversy instead you categorize people who "defend" AI as people who don't "understand" it and you imply it's some psychological quirk or bias people have

Well, in all fairness I didn't want to make my already very long comment any longer than it already was, however in my defense, with respect to defining the controversy vs. implying there's a psychological quirk - I have seen what you can call some very strange gymnastics around what is learning or what is intelligence in, again, sort of desperate efforts to make LLMs just something that they're not. It's in those situations that I was referring to the people clearly not understanding how they work. That being said, I also did imply there was a psychological quirk but that was just because I didn't have the space nor the ability to really articulate what else might be going there. I think in parts of your response though you conveyed a valid viewpoint.

> Maybe your born with talent, so you worship and defend that talent with calls to uphold "integrity."

First, thank you, but second I don't think this was the case. I am one of those people who actually thinks talent is usually overrated, as "good enough" + perseverance does at least the same job for less in most cases. If anything, I think talent is kind of a scapegoat whenever some great goal proves to be elusive.

> Do people really want to live a shitty life getting sub 100k salaries only letting people like you take up all the high paying jobs in the name of "integrity"? No. No one does... not even you, but you have the luxury of talent or ability to master those interviews.

I think I would just respond by saying that nobody is guaranteed something just because they want it, but all of those people have the same access as anyone else to leetcode and the internet or whatever else they need to do the work to pass the interview. Bearing that in mind, cheating is obviously understandable, but just because I understand it doesn't mean I would do it, personally. I definitely don't think that it's a good thing either, but I don't think I'm high and mighty about it either. Ultimately we all act the way that we do because we don't know any better. If I knew how to be smarter I would, but I don't so I'm kind of stuck where I'm at just like the rest of the world. I make mistakes and at times I can also be dishonest too. It's life. That said, it's not like I wholly embrace the moments in my life where my actions demonstrated my limitations, at least not when it became painfully obvious to me.

> You defend integrity not because you are a stand up person, but because you have the ability to succeed without violating your integrity

I appreciate your honesty about this and I don't think there's really anyway I can disagree with it. Maybe in another life, if I were in another person's shoes, I would act differently. I mean, that makes sense to me. I can't prove otherwise. That said, knowing what I know in this life, I stand by what I said.

The last thing I'll say is why I believe we should still make our best efforts to be good, at least within our ability. That is because living for the sake of accumulating power, at the cost of doing what you believe is right, is just not in one's own best interest. In the absence of understanding what is right and what is wrong, the power that we accumulate has the same opportunity to cause tremendous harm as it does joy.

Just think about why people always love really down to earth celebrities. We see them and think that despite all their money, power, and fame, they're happy and there's something comforting about that. Can the same really be said for the contrary? I know it's a silly argument because you kind have to keep an open mind to agree with me, but it's not as undeniable as 2+2=4. Still, that's what I truly believe and you don't know me or where I've been or what I've done. However, I wouldn't think this if I wasn't sincere about it. I have had my own mistakes and there have been times in my life, like anyone, where I've been immoral and I honestly came out the other end thinking the means didn't justify the ends. But it's up to you to believe me.

Anyways, apologies to everyone for the massive response. I wish I knew how to be more succinct in response.

Nature doesn't require that we be happy, only that we procreate. Excess resources often make us feel comfortable enough to procreate, despite any unhappiness we may feel.

I think you've nailed a sad reality.

Exactly. Every time I push back on people who dismiss LLMs as not understanding, they but don't seem to realize how little we know about the brain and what "understanding" actually means, mechanistically. So even with perfect understanding of how LLMs function, that tells us nothing about whether they actually understand.

If defined operationally as being able to reliably and coherently converse about topics, make connections, solve problems and respond in novel or surprising ways, LLMs these days are at or slightly above the average human. Way above in some respects, but still below in others. It won't be long before their capabilities undeniably surpass the average.

If everyone who cheated and passed performed so well that they got promotions then the world would be a much better place than reality where most cheaters fail hilariously.

If you can't even be bothered to give employees a real interview you don't care about the company and at that point the company is already bloated.

What kind of person are you that when reading a story and seeing 100 wrong things you pick out the one thing that is arguable and die on that hill? An VLLM sycophant?

This is work we're talking about. If somebody will pay $250,000 because somebody else can answer a trivia question, people will figure out how to answer that trivia question correctly.

I don't have any problem with it. If your business is getting suckered by people with some 2-laptop scheme, it's on you to fix it. Or if the 2-laptop people end up being good enough at the job, who cares?

Specially with people thinking that the interview process is broken, but somehow the promotion process is pristine and unhackable.

One nuance that may help explain how the change happened is how the status of CS has changed in the last 20 years. Maybe its just my age bias, but there seems to be a perceptible change of how CS majors are viewed by society and that changes the type of people attracted to that curriculum.

It used to be that CS and engineering majors were the nerds who, as you say, "simply thought making stuff was cool." Nowadays, though, as CS commands a disproportionately large salary and has a higher status marker. This tends to attract more people who are in it the reasons of status and money, rather than for a fascination with the work. Anecdotally, when I ask people why they got into CS a surprising number now say something along the lines of "because it pays well."

It's my opinion that change in perspective can bias how one views cheating. If the curriculum is just a means to an end (i.e., if school is just a means to a degree, which is just a gateway to a job/paycheck), it seems to make cheating more palatable.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's utterly depressing.

Even though we're both talking about SWE, whereas CS is a different thing altogether.

I don't see any real movement from older generations to do anything about that. They just keep complaining about the youth chasing money instead of some "passion." (Which ignores that the material conditions have completely changed in the last 20 years)

Somebody can still quite easily work in CS and find affordable and high quality living. But maybe not in SV. I’d even argue you can work on more interesting problems. But people overwhelmingly want to work in SV because of the status it confers.

Not lower class people moving into middle class.

Promotions often have nothing to do with merit. It takes a lot of political manoeuvring, back room dealing, negotiations, packet building, documentation, positions trading, making allies to building support/consensus etc etc.

People who cheat are exactly the kind of people who are likely to win big in these processes.

Now we're in 2023 - where making money is cool and building things is just a necessary evil to achieve that.

Software is full of cheating. I am really convinced that maybe 85% (that's actually being generous) of developers have no idea what they are doing. They know enough to complete some tiny agile tasks and push a few lines into a pull request. These people are either suffering from imposter syndrome, deliberately cheating, or just don't care. All the real decisions are made by that last 15%. That's why almost nobody can writing software anymore without a plethora of open source software deliver most of their product for them.

In my mind if you aren't part of that last 15% you are cheating whether or not its deliberate. Everybody wants to get paid.

If you want to reduce the amount of cheating in software then the industry must be willing to impose minimal standards of acceptable practice. The industry is not willing to do so.

There are a couple of reasons why such prolific cheating is allowed (and even encouraged):

* Developers are not taught to plan. I take this for granted being a military guy, but seriously I have seen many children with a greater planning ability than many developers tasked with a new product effort. Its like the abstractness of software completely destroys any capability to put simple steps in order. This is why many businesses will offload this to business analysts and project managers.

* Developers are not taught to write. Although many of these people have bachelor's degrees so many cannot put their thoughts into even a simple bullet list.

* There are no ethics in software. The closest thing for most developers might be something like an NDA at initial on boarding. Otherwise, ethics is entirely off loaded to a legal team who mandate areas of compliance.

* The goals of hiring/employment often do not align to the skills required to perform product delivery. This indicates employers have completely lost faith in candidate preparation and/or candidate availability and are just willing to take what they can get. Typically that means dumbing things down to widen the pool of availability.

* Many developers are grossly entitled. The most important word for most developers: easiness. Comparatively nothing else matters, and they will fight you to death on this.

> It sounds like you find cheating shameful for vague moralistic reasons that you have not disclosed.

That's absolutely right. I didn't elaborate at all.

> That's why almost nobody can writing software anymore

Honestly though I think that writing software is just hard.

> must be willing to impose minimal standards of acceptable practice

Yeah this is an interesting idea. Like how attorneys have to pass a bar. I don't really know how it would go, but I do believe that the industry already has a hard enough of a time hiring and this would just make things that much harder. Some organizations though seem to have a knack for improving their new hires by a lot, so it's not like all these organizations are evil, just most are probably incompetent. Again, software is hard.

> The goals of hiring/employment often do not align to the skills required to perform product delivery.

Yeah, I would say in general that bad incentives are abound.

I think a lot of the points you brought up are products of strange market dynamics. For so long companies haven't really felt the weight of gravity and have had so much investor money that it feels like a lot of what one could consider fundamentals have been tossed out the window in favor of other things. This is where perverse incentives start to manifest in my view.

I think an alternative to higher standards would be lower pay. I am convinced that would weed out many of the people who don't actually care about software engineering. IMO, the majority of software development is not that difficult and lots of companies are overpaying for people who are just plumbing data from point A to point B and using libraries they didn't develop and have a weak understanding of.

Not sure how the listed points would be mitigated by cheating.

Further:

> There are no ethics in software.

Well, speak for yourself, but obviously many developers are greatly concerned about the license of their product as well as well as of the tools they use.

> Many developers are grossly entitled. The most important word for most developers: easiness. Comparatively nothing else matters, and they will fight you to death on this.

Well, many might be, but insisting on easiness might well have another reason: it's always more difficult than it seems in the beginning and if a project ought to have a chance of becoming successful it ought to seem easy. That's just speaking from experience. If you want to get to the moon, you better plan for an Apollo-size budget and a few explosions.

Sorry to say, but it never was. Anti-cheaters have always been the extreme minority in every profession since the dawn of man.

I am curious to hear more about what you mean by this.

I crave living in a high trust society. I've attempted to act as though I do (though not with complete success), but reality often rebuffs me. I am discouraged by the high (and seemingly increasing) "capacity to benefit from dishonesty," especially as I feel powerless to meaningfully affect this trend/condition.

It sounds like you see ways in which society can shift to be higher trust. Can you elaborate?

I could easily say "ethnic Chinese" and be accurate, but what about the mid-IQ Frat guys from the "fly-over" states? all pale skins.. So I thought about it at the time and it seemed like sports teams, fraternities, strong social ties with a lot at stake.. those groups, not ethnicity, were a common theme.

In my own wanderings, since travelling internationally and gaining some maturity, I believe that calling out an ethnicity is indeed racist in a mild way. I agree with both "lots of students from India cheated" and "I am concerned about ethnic stereotype" .. both have some basis in reality.. We as animals are wired to see "us" and "other" .. so.. you have to choose to apply some sense and mercy, or not.

It functions because the premise, that interviews actually work as filters to choose the best candidates, is false.

It also works because finding the answers for a question is a skill, likely more valuable at work than memorizing a dozen of algorithm implementations.

The current interview culture is a joke.

Quite possibly that some commentators think that way, but I doubt that cheaters suddenly stop cheating after the interview, particularly not if it worked out so well for them. I rather think they'll continue their path of alternative facts; blaming others for failures, mis-attributing successes, mis-charecterizing their contributions, lying, gas-lighting, bullying and even squeezing their colleagues out of their job. There might be work environments where this is a net positive for the organization, but I can't think of one right now.

And when real people are faced with a broken system which penalises honesty and rewards cheating, many will choose pragmatically rather than idealistically.

* Candidates now lie about experience. * promotions are given for loyalty, not contribution. * Companies cheat on hiring using false job descriptions and fake career carrots. * Your performance at work does not matter. Advance your career by interview prep, not excelling at your role. * Prestige (ex-FAANG, Ivy league degree) matter more than hard work.

I've noticed that tech companies are now filled with people who have zero interest in computer software. Management at tech companies is comprised of non-technical people.

Sometimes there's good reasons for this

https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...

Cheating is okay because most interview processes is BS to start with. In most cases the interview itself is a dog and pony show, often reflecting the outright incompetence of the interviewers or organizations that are hiring.

> I guess the silver lining is there will probably be incredible opportunity down the road to combat this,

You are being naive here. Many people value honesty in principle, but are not willing to enforce it in practice. For example if they catch a close, likable colleague or friend in the act of cheating, they will not fire them.

check out the flags at the top of the list.

So, what happens when a company succeeds is that the competent people eventually either get tenured, or they get forced out by bozos (I'm using this as a term of art. Look up the bozo effect.) Eventually, the bozos win, and the company becomes unable to do anything other than extract monopoly rent. Then, some technology or regulatory shift arrives, and the incumbent gets forced out by a startup, or they somehow shed their bozos for a while.

So, if you are competent and honest, you have three choices:

- Learn how to be productive despite the promotion criteria. This is the path to tears and burn out, because most of your colleagues will only be good at gaming interviews / promotions, and your attention will be split between that and doing your job (and probably their jobs), placing you at a significant disadvantage.

- Somehow become the tenured engineer on top of this mess, and try to create pockets of competence in the organization. Ruthlessly detect + fire the bozos. This isn't fun either.

- Leave for a startup that's targeting a weak and foolish incumbent, and then leave when the startup grows up and becomes the weak and foolish incumbent (a good sign that this is happening is that the founding engineering team is leaving, or that your boss's boss is incompetent.)

Note that the last option is the lowest stress one for technically strong engineers. It is very hard to fake your way through knowing what you are doing when the entire company has direct visibility into your work.

If you can somehow solve the above problem then you can build a company larger than any of the FAANGs.

It seems like you are implying that a person who gets an MBA is the type of person who would cheat on a test. This fits with a ubiquitous contempt for MBAs and also project managers that comes up a lot on this site. There is a lot of room for criticism of business schools and middle managers in tech. But if you really think of people like that as more likely to be dishonest you are being irrational.

The business domain is interesting, and intellectually deep and rewarding, but without the money, all interest goes away. The money is the point.

With tech, there are complicated technical mechanisms. They still exist to make money, but, there are many layers of translation in between. And it seems easier for humans to be interested in computers in a more pure way, because of these layers between. Kinda like how a gift card "feels" more personal than cash even though it's a strictly worse gift.

So I think business school attracts many more "ends justifies the means" types of people because of these inherent properties.

In the US we associate business and management with money, so maybe you are right. I tend to think people are people and you get "ends justify the means" types in managers, entrepreneurs and even engineers.

> I don't see how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that

My brother in Christ, the world barely functions as it is right now. We have a war going on because of one man's misguided attempt at recapturing his country's former glory as an empire, we've had planes fall out of the sky because of boneheaded engineering decisions demanded by MBA types (737 Max), we had a massive train derailment / chemical spill in Ohio caused by other MBA types not wanting to properly maintain the trains and tracks, we are maybe a few weeks away from the most economically powerful country on Earth defaulting because our moronic leadership can't agree to pay our debts (NOT because of an inherent inability to pay)... I could go on. The world is chaos, and it's pretty much always been that way.

> there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA, but Computer Science and Engineering were considered too hard to really be worth the effort.

This part of your reply really, really grinds my gears, because to me it's sort of saying that MBA's can cheat all they want, but CS and Engineering grads should be 'chaste' and not cheat... because reasons. NO. The MBA's took over the technical companies and fucked everything up, but we're just supposed to keep doing the 'right' thing? NO. Fuck them, we should get ours.

Is it sad that this is the current state of affairs? Absolutely. Would the world be an immensely better place if NO ONE was unethical, and no one cheated? Hell yes. But that world doesn't exist. And the people who have the power to bring such a world into existence are not entry level engineers.

Yes. That's what Christ teaches. We live in an unjust world and we make it better by holding our moral ground despite the enormous pressures to sell out.

People with integrity get run over.