Here's the thing: 95% of cheaters still suck, even when cheating. Its hard to imagine how people can perform so badly while cheating, yet they consistently do. All you need to do to stand out is not be utterly awful. Worrying about what other people are doing is more detrimental to your performance than anything else is. Just focus on yourself: being broadly competent, knowing your niche well, and being good at communicating how you learn when you hit the edges of your knowledge. Those are the skills that always stand out.

Well, cheaters only cheat because they suck and they know it. Otherwise cheat would not be a rational approach.

If that were true we would never hear of top level athletes using performance enhancing drugs.

That's different. These candidates are not trying to get an edge on qualifying for the top dev position in the entire world.

Top athletes do it because they're essentially at the limits of human performance and those drugs are the only edge they can reasonably get.

Kids at my tiny high school football team did steroids to get an edge - no chance at a scholarship, either.

Different people have a different threshold for cheating no matter the stakes. I imagine some people vheat even if they know the answer - just to be sure.

It's much more widespread. Minor league player uses PEDs to make the major leagues. Middling major leaguer uses them to be an all-star. All-star uses them to make the hall of fame. In the context of programming, if some kind of cheating is what's necessary to nab a $150k job, a whole lot of people are going to cheat.

I don't approve of cheating but I think you're underestimating how hard some interview questions can be. Even competent people don't know everything and could draw a blank, in which case they would benefit from cheating despite being competent.

Not just difficult, but there's just so many of them (for the same company ofc). You could ace 3 interviews and not even be half way through the process. You have to be continually on top form for days/weeks on end.

Right, last offer I got required 7 (non-HR) steps over a 4-month period, where around a dozen technical people got involved.

I don't/won't cheat, as I am a rather anxious person who can't really handle "covert ops". But at this point I totally understand those who do.

A lot of these people also have a policy that even one person can fail you. So if you do 8 interviews with 2 people each, then there's up to 20 people in the process that can ruin it for you.

I think LLM performance on previously seen questions like interview questions is too good for it to be allowed. I wouldn't mind someone using an IDE or API docs, but you have to draw the line somewhere. It's like how you can't use a calculator that can do algebra on a calculus test. It just doesn't accomplish the goal of testing anything if you use too much tech, and using the current LLMs that all suck in general but can nail these questions that have a million examples online is bad. I would much rather see someone consult online references for information than to see them use an LLM.

I've only heard of candidates getting dropped like that after they've done something horribly inappropriate(like cheat).

Yeah, we found this when we started doing take-home exams: it turns out that a junior dev who spends twice as much time on the problem than what we asked them to doesn’t put out senior-level code - we could read the skill level in the code almost instantly. Same thing with cheating like that - it turns out knowing the answer isn’t the same thing as having experience, and it’s pretty obvious pretty quickly which one you’re dealing with.

Yea but I also suck in 95% of FAANG like interviews since I'm very bad at leetcode medium/hard type of questions. It's just something that I never practiced. It's very tempting at this point to trow in my towel and just use some aid. No one cares about my intense career and the millions I helped my clients earn, all that matters (and sometimes directly affects comp rate) is how I do on the "coding task".

> I suck in FAANG interviews... it's just something I never practiced.

Well, sounds like you know the solution. Or set your sights on a job that interviews a different way.

I think it's mostly leetcode "easy", anyway. Maybe some medium. Never seen a hard, except maybe from one smartass at Google (they were not expecting a perfect answer). Out of a dozen technical interviews, I don't think I've ever needed to know a data structure more exotic than a hash map or binary search tree.

The amount of deliberate practice required to stand out is probably not more than 10-20 hours, assuming you do actually have the programming and CS skills expected for a FAANG job. It's unlikely you need to do months of grinding.

If 20 hours of work was all that stood between me and half a million dollars a year, I'd consider myself pretty lucky.

Right. Almost any time somebody fails an interview it is not because of "very hard questions" but because they did not prepare properly in a sensible manner. People don't want whiteboarding, no programming questions, no mathematical questions, no fermi problems etc. which is plain silly and not realistic. One just needs to know the basics and simple applications of the above which is more than enough to get through most interviews. The key is not to feel overawed/overwhelmed with unknown notations/jargons which is what the actual problem is when people run away from big-O, DS/Algo, Recursion, application of Set Theory/Logic to Programming etc.

On the other hand, if 20 hours of leetcode practice is all that stands between you and half a million dollars a year, isn't that a pretty good indicator that the interview process isn't hiring based on your skills, talent and education, and instead on something you basically won't encounter in the workplace?

Agency?

10-20 hours is assuming you’re qualified for the job and just bad at leetcode. I think many qualified people could pass without studying, especially if they’re experienced in presenting or teaching.

If you’re totally unqualified, 20 hours of leetcoding won’t get you a job at Meta.

I don't know, I kind of feel like leetcode interviews are a situation where the employer is cheating. I mean, you're admittedly filtering out a great number of acceptable candidates knowing that if you just find 1 in a 1000, that'll be good enough. It is patently unfair to the individuals that are smart enough to do your work, but poor at some farcical representation of the work. That is cheating.

In my opinion, if a prospective employee is able to successfully use AI to trick me into hiring them, then that is a hell of a lot closer to the actual work they'll be hired to do (compared to leetcode).

I say, if you can cheat at an interview with AI, do it.

The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply.

What you’re suggesting here isn’t any different than submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications.

> The employer sets the terms of the interview. If you don’t like them, don’t apply.

What you're missing here is that this is an individual's answer to a systemic problem. You don't apply when it's _one_ obnoxious employer.

When it's standard practice across the entire industry, we have a problem.

> submitting a fraudulent resume because you disagree with the required qualifications.

This is already worryingly common practice because employers lie about the required qualifications.

Honesty gets your resume shredded before a human even looked at it. And employers refusing to address that situation is just making everything worse and worse.

You make a valid point that while the rules of the game are known ahead of time, it’s strange that the entire industry is stuck in this local maximum of LeetCode interviews. Big companies are comfortable with the status quo, and small companies just don’t have the budget to experiment with anything else (maybe with some one-offs).

Sadly, it’s not just the interview loops—the way candidates are screened for roles also sucks.

I’ve seen startups trying to innovate in this space for many years now, and it’s surprising that absolutely nothing has changed.

>I’ve seen startups trying to innovate in this space for many years now, and it’s surprising that absolutely nothing has changed.

I don't want to be too crass, but I'm not surprised people who can startup a business are precisely the ones who hyper-fixate on efficiency when hiring and try to find the best coders. Instead of the best engineers. When you need to put your money where you mouth is, many will squirm back to "what works".

> Honesty gets your resume shredded before a human even looked at it

Does it? Mine is honest, fairly normal, and gets me through to interviews fine. What are common lies and why are they necessary?

Or he can simply choose to ignore the arbitrary and often pointless requirements, do the interview on his own terms, and still perform excellently. Many job requirements are nothing more than a pointless power trip from employers who think they have more leverage than they actually do.

Yea, exactly.

If a candidate were up front with me and asked if they could use AI, or said they learned an answer from AI and then wanted to discuss it with me, I'd be happy with that. But attempting to hide it and pretend they aren't using it when our interview rules specifically ask you not to do it is just being dishonest, which isn't a characteristic of someone I want to hire.

I would like to be paid though. What do I care about the terms of the interview as long as they hire me?

What is being suggested here is not participating in the mind numbing process that is called ‘applying for a job’.

Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud.

That doesn’t make any sense. The best engineers I know can’t pass these interviews because they started working long before they became standard.

That doesn’t matter. If the current qualification bar is “must do X” and you fake it, you’re committing fraud.

Being paid for even excellent performance is a fraud.

> Wanting to be paid under false pretenses is the definition of fraud.

What? No, it isn't.

Regardless, if the job requirements state "X years of XYZ experience" and you have to have >X years of experience, then using AI to look up how to do a leetcode problem for some algorithm you haven't used since your university days is absolutely not "false pretenses" nor fraud.

If the interview process says, “you must do X without using AI” and you use AI and hide it, you’re committing fraud.

Nope.

You're absolutely right. Ditching the pointless corporate hoops, proving you can do the job, and getting paid like anyone else is what truly matters. Most hiring processes are just bureaucratic roadblocks that needlessly filter out great candidates. Unless you're working on something truly critical, there's no reason to play along with the nonsense.

If you lie about your qualifications to a degree that can be considered fraud, employers can and will sue you for their money back and damages. Wait till you discover how mind-numbing the American legal system is!

I’m sorry is the job “professional Leetcoder”?

Nonsense. I don't endorse lying about qualifications, but employers don't sue over this. Employment law in most US states wouldn't even allow for that with regular W-2 employees.

> What do I care about the terms of the interview as long as they hire me?

well that's the neat part... they aren't going to. All this AI stuff just happened to coincide with a recession no one wants to admit, amplifying the issue.

So yea, even if I'm desperate I need to be mindful of my time. I can only do so many 4-5 stage interviews only to be ghosted, have the job close, or someone else who applied earlier get the position.

> What do I care about the terms of the interview as long as they hire me?

Because committing fraud to get hired is a pretty shitty way to live your life

On principle, what you’re saying has merit. In practice, the market is currently rife with employers submitting job postings with inflated qualifications, for positions that may or may not exist. So there’s bad actors all around and it’s difficult to tell who actually is behaving with integrity.

> If you don’t like them, don’t apply.

Due to the prevalence of the practice this is tantamount to suggesting constructive unemployability.

People were up in arms about widespread doping during the Lance Armstrong era. But the only viable alternative to doping at the time was literally to not compete at all.

I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used. My company has never used leetcode-style questions, and likely never will.

I work in security, and our questions are pretty basic stuff. "What is cross-site scripting, and how would you protect against it?", "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach this?" Stuff like that. And then a follow-up or two customized to the candidate's response.

I really don't know how we could possibly make it easier for candidates to pass these interviews. We aren't trying to trick people, or weed people out. We're trying to find people that have the foundational experience required to do the job they're being hired for. Even when people do answer them incorrectly, we try to help them out and give them guidance, because it's really about trying to evaluate how a person thinks rather than making sure they get the right answer.

I mean hell, it's not like I'm spending hours interviewing people because I get my rocks off by asking people lame questions or rejecting people; I want to hire people! I will go out of my way to advocate for hiring someone that's honest and upfront about being incorrect or not knowing an answer, but wants to think through it with me.

But cheating? That's a show stopper. If you've been asked to not use ChatGPT, but you use it anyway, you're not getting the benefit of the doubt. You're getting rejected and blacklisted.

>I dunno why there is always the assumption in these threads that leetcode is being used

because it matches my experience. I work in games and interviews are more varied (math, engine/language questions, game design questions, software design patterns). I'd still say maybe 30% of them do leetcode interviews, and another 40% bring in leetcode questions at some point. I hate it because I need to study too many other types of questions to begin with, and leetcode is the least applicable.

> "You're tasked with parsing a log file to return the IP addresses that appear at least 10 times, how would you approach this?"

Out of curiosity, did anyone just reply with `awk ... | sort | count ... | awk`? Its certainly what I would do rather than writing out an actual script.

Nobody has yet, but if they did I'd probably be ecstatic! We specifically tell candidates they can use any language they want. A combination of awk/sort/sed/count/etc is just as effective as a Python script!

I once got a surprise leetcode coding interview for a security testing role that mentioned proficiency in a coding language or two as desirable but not essential.

I come from a math background rather than CS and code for fun / personal projects, so don't know the 'proper' names for some algorithms from memory. I could have done some leetcode prep / revision if I had any indication that it was coming up, though the interview was pretty much a waste of time. I told them that and made a stab at it, though they didn't seem interested in engaging at all and barely made eye contact during the whole interview.

I wouldn't call it cheating but most of the time it's just stupid. For majority of software developer jobs would be more suitable to discuss the solution of the more complex problem tham randomly stress out people just because you think you should.

> It is patently unfair to the individuals that are smart enough to do your work, but poor at some farcical representation of the work. That is cheating.

On the other hand, if you have 1,000 candidates, and you only need 1, why not do it if the top candidate selected by this method can do well on the test and your work?

It’s unfair but it meets their objective of finding a high in candidate. Google admits they do this.

The companies that do this only do it because they can. They have to have hundreds of people applying. The companies that don’t do this basically don’t have many people applying.

> it feels like there’s nothing I can do except do the same.

Why does it feel like that when you’re replying to someone who already points out that it doesn’t work? Cheating can prevent you from getting a job, and it can get you fired from the job too. It can also impede your ability to learn and level up your own skills. I’m glad you haven’t done it yet, just know that you can be a better candidate and increase your chances by not cheating.

Using an LLM isn’t cheating if the interviewer allows it. Whether they allow it or not, there’s still no substitute for putting in the work. Interviews are a skill that can (and should) be practiced. Candidates are rarely hired for technical skill alone. Attitude, communication, curiosity, and lots of other soft skills are severely underestimated by so many job seekers, especially those coming right out of school. A small amount of strengthening your non-code abilities can improve your odds much faster than leetcode ever will. And if you have time, why not do both?

Note also "And the majority of the time the answer is incorrect anyway."

I haven't looked for development-related jobs this millennium, but it's unclear to me how effective a crutch AI is for interviews--at least for well-designed and run interviews. Maybe in some narrow domains for junior people.

As a few of us have written elsewhere, I consider not having in-person interviews past an initial screen sheer laziness and companies generally deserve whoever they end up with.

sounds cheesy, but keep being honest. Eventually companies will realize (as we have years ago) that automating recruiting gets you automated candidates.

But YMMV. I have 9 years and still can get interviews the old fashioned way.

> it feels like there’s nothing I can do except do the same. Otherwise I’ll remain jobless.

Never buy into this mentality. Because once you do, it never goes away. After the interview, your coworkers might cheat, so you cheat too. Then your business competitors might cheat, so you cheat too. And on and on.