Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job applicant fraud?
In the past month we've seen a dramatic, seemingly coordinated, increase in engineering applicants whose resumés and backgrounds appear qualified, but who refuse to use their cameras during Zoom interviews and who often can't answer specific questions about their backgrounds. We've wasted a significant amount of time on comms and interviews with over a dozen of these candidates. Anyone else experiencing anything similar?
418 comments
Earlier this year, I interviewed this guy who gave me really strange vibes. He would stall for a good 15-20 seconds after each question I asked... and then spit out a perfectly worded answer. I google'd some specific, peculiar phrases I remembered him saying after the interview and found that the phrases came straight out of places like the Kubernetes documentation, word for word. He was googling my questions and then reading the documentation aloud to me.
His resume said he'd worked for a company called "Data Service Group" (https://dataservicegroup.com/) for the last 5 years or so. Their website contains this sentence: "Over the past decade, our customers succeeded by leveraging Intellectsoft's process of building, motivating."
Wait... Intellectsoft isn't the name of this company. Did these "Data Service Group" people steal Intellectsoft's website?
Turns out, if you Google the quoted sentence above, you get TONS of websites for other fake companies that all contain that sentence:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Over+the+past+decade%2C+o...
I'm still not really sure what was going on with that as we politely rejected him and never heard from him again.
If you look up the company on LinkedIn, it appears to be made up of hundreds of immigrant DevOps engineers: https://www.linkedin.com/company/data-service-group/
His resume said he'd worked for a company called "Data Service Group" (https://dataservicegroup.com/) for the last 5 years or so. Their website contains this sentence: "Over the past decade, our customers succeeded by leveraging Intellectsoft's process of building, motivating."
Wait... Intellectsoft isn't the name of this company. Did these "Data Service Group" people steal Intellectsoft's website?
Turns out, if you Google the quoted sentence above, you get TONS of websites for other fake companies that all contain that sentence:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Over+the+past+decade%2C+o...
I'm still not really sure what was going on with that as we politely rejected him and never heard from him again.
If you look up the company on LinkedIn, it appears to be made up of hundreds of immigrant DevOps engineers: https://www.linkedin.com/company/data-service-group/
> His resume said he'd worked for a company called "Data Service Group" (https://dataservicegroup.com/) for the last 5 years or so. Their website contains this sentence: "Over the past decade, our customers succeeded by leveraging Intellectsoft's process of building, motivating."
> Turns out, if you Google the quoted sentence above, you get TONS of websites for other fake companies that all contain that sentence
It looks like that text is part of the default template for a commercial WordPress theme named Engitech[1]. If you check the live preview and browse to the "Main Home" template, you'll find it there.
I wonder how many of these "companies" paid the $59 licensing fee? :^)
[1] https://themeforest.net/item/engitech-it-solutions-services-...
> Turns out, if you Google the quoted sentence above, you get TONS of websites for other fake companies that all contain that sentence
It looks like that text is part of the default template for a commercial WordPress theme named Engitech[1]. If you check the live preview and browse to the "Main Home" template, you'll find it there.
I wonder how many of these "companies" paid the $59 licensing fee? :^)
[1] https://themeforest.net/item/engitech-it-solutions-services-...
I noticed something similar when I looked into a "website optimization agency" offering their services to one of my customers. Their website was a nearly 1-to-1 clone of the content of another website whose company name they accidentally left in the footer. That company's website however in turn used a slightly different design and after digging a bit I found that it was a vanilla copy of a themeforest template down to the stockphotes and everything. So it was a copy of a copy of a template.
Their tactic seemingly consisted of running the website through a free tool like Lighthouse, picking one or two low hanging fruits and then presenting them as world-ending problems they can fix for cheap. I'm sure the follow-through would have left the site in a worse state and suspect they may actually have a backchannel income via SEO backlinks or malware as the price they would initially quote seemed low even for a country like Pakistan.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are actually layers of these Potemkin company websites used for various purposes.
Their tactic seemingly consisted of running the website through a free tool like Lighthouse, picking one or two low hanging fruits and then presenting them as world-ending problems they can fix for cheap. I'm sure the follow-through would have left the site in a worse state and suspect they may actually have a backchannel income via SEO backlinks or malware as the price they would initially quote seemed low even for a country like Pakistan.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are actually layers of these Potemkin company websites used for various purposes.
My employer hired a guy from this company! I wasn't involved in the interview process but was tasked with mentoring him. His resume was covered with DevOps buzzwords and he obviously said the right things in the interview, but the guy could barely move a mouse around the screen...
He took extremely long to do anything and then when he presented the work, it was very wrong and obviously copied from a bunch of stack overflow answers.
To this day I'm astounded my employer hired him and even more so that it took 2 months to fire him. Just think, he was on a senior salary for a couple of months for doing nothing... not a bad scam if you can do that a few times a year.
He took extremely long to do anything and then when he presented the work, it was very wrong and obviously copied from a bunch of stack overflow answers.
To this day I'm astounded my employer hired him and even more so that it took 2 months to fire him. Just think, he was on a senior salary for a couple of months for doing nothing... not a bad scam if you can do that a few times a year.
That illustrates perfectly my question regarding people like this: What do these people think is going to happen if they're hired?
In your case, sure he had a salary for two months, but that can not be the plan? Do people just expect that if they are hired, they'll sort of figure it out along the way? If that's the case, then maybe go for a more junior position and hope there is good on the job training.
Years ago, I worked as a test engineer. One issue that repeatedly turned up when trying to get information about one of the tools we used, was that forums, mailing-lists, you name it, would get swamped by Indians who just wanted the answers to some standard hiring quiz. They just wanted to memorize the 150 or so answers, so they could get a job. Knowing those answers wouldn't help me in my day to day work, or at least very little, so what did they expect would happen if they got hired? Sure you can scam your way though a job interview... Then what? Your new colleagues is going to notice your shortcomings rather quickly.
In your case, sure he had a salary for two months, but that can not be the plan? Do people just expect that if they are hired, they'll sort of figure it out along the way? If that's the case, then maybe go for a more junior position and hope there is good on the job training.
Years ago, I worked as a test engineer. One issue that repeatedly turned up when trying to get information about one of the tools we used, was that forums, mailing-lists, you name it, would get swamped by Indians who just wanted the answers to some standard hiring quiz. They just wanted to memorize the 150 or so answers, so they could get a job. Knowing those answers wouldn't help me in my day to day work, or at least very little, so what did they expect would happen if they got hired? Sure you can scam your way though a job interview... Then what? Your new colleagues is going to notice your shortcomings rather quickly.
If you can scam your way into a few jobs at a time, and keep a revolving door of jobs, you might be able to hold upwards of 10 jobs simultaneously and collect paychecks from each of them until they fire you.
This sort of experience frustrates me to hear. I'm out here trying my damnedest to be knowledgeable, well-spoken and engaging during interviews, and failing to get an offer. Someone with a buzzwordy resume and Google for interview answers gets hired instead...
Why even try?
Why even try?
> This sort of experience frustrates me to hear. I'm out here trying my damnedest to be knowledgeable, well-spoken and engaging during interviews, and failing to get an offer. Someone with a buzzwordy resume and Google for interview answers gets hired instead...
Blame the automated candidate selection process that these very tech companies helped create and standardize in order to be 'ultra efficient in on-boarding qualified' candidates; this is the problem with just slapping AI to something as a branding exercise without considering the underlying mechanics and unintended consequences.
I guess be glad you got to even speak with a Human at this point because so many are just getting binned for not having the right buzzwords in their resume to pass the first screening.
Blame the automated candidate selection process that these very tech companies helped create and standardize in order to be 'ultra efficient in on-boarding qualified' candidates; this is the problem with just slapping AI to something as a branding exercise without considering the underlying mechanics and unintended consequences.
I guess be glad you got to even speak with a Human at this point because so many are just getting binned for not having the right buzzwords in their resume to pass the first screening.
He would stall for a good 15-20 seconds after each question I asked... and then spit out a perfectly worded answer. He was googling my questions and then reading the documentation aloud to me.
If he's just Googling everything then he sounds like a senior developer to me!
I'm half-joking. Obviously you want people who understand the problem you're asking, and who have a good knowledge of the domain, and who can answer based on their experience and knowledge, but if a few lines from the documentation answer your interview question then it's a bad interview question.
What if the candidate had an exceptional memory and had simply memorized the docs? Would that have been acceptable? Of course not. Your job as an interviewer is to ask questions that looking something up in the docs won't answer. After all, when you're in the job, Googling something is a perfectly acceptable strategy.
If he's just Googling everything then he sounds like a senior developer to me!
I'm half-joking. Obviously you want people who understand the problem you're asking, and who have a good knowledge of the domain, and who can answer based on their experience and knowledge, but if a few lines from the documentation answer your interview question then it's a bad interview question.
What if the candidate had an exceptional memory and had simply memorized the docs? Would that have been acceptable? Of course not. Your job as an interviewer is to ask questions that looking something up in the docs won't answer. After all, when you're in the job, Googling something is a perfectly acceptable strategy.
Even so, I'd expect an candidate to say something like "this is something I know <some details> but I'd have to look at the docs for in depth information about the detail you're asking". That would convince me that he knows what he's talking about. Googling for every question and then reading back verbatim what's in the docs sounds shady to me.
This whole problem seems like it would go away with more sophisticated interview questions. Interviews should be precisely about stuff that you can't just google. Googling information is pretty much a required basic competency nowadays, right next to reading and writing.
One would hope so, but as someone who has a support aspect to their role I can guarantee you that this competency is lacking in an astonishing proportion of people. From the lowliest admin to the most senior dev with a PhD in computer science there are people who are entirely incapable of googling for information (or reading the effing manual). Don't even get me started on C suites
From my own perspective (on the other side of support) I can add that often I delegate things merely because I don't have time, not because I can't resolve issues myself. For example, I could always go ahead and spend hours reading a tool's documentation to fix a particular issue that would seem obvious to someone more versed in it, but why not just give it to the guy who can do it in one minute because that's his main job? I don't mean to say that there aren't incompetent people out there, but to me tech support is more of an accelerator for my own work, not some magic holy grail that enables it.
I have no issue with that type of support request, that's the job of support. It is when the question is something that can be answered by typing the question into Google, clicking on the first link, and following the steps. We're talking about things like amending a time sheet in a particular system, changing a customer or supplier address, resetting their password etc. Non technical questions. I genuinely don't understand why people find this so hard to do as a first step. It would actually save them time. It's like some people have absolutely no problem solving abilities, which is worrying when a lot of them are devs!
Even with those things there's a lot of leeway when it comes to shitty design. Yes, changing a password or address should be trivial by all means, but I've seen tons of apps that needlessly complicate even basic stuff. After getting enraged for wasting time on this a few times, I too would delegate it to support without even bothering to try sooner or later, just because I won't even risk a potential rabbit hole / time sink.
Being able to look up stuff is important but there is also a baseline of knowledge that is really important. If I'm working with somebody in a meeting and they need to stop every 30 seconds to look up a term or concept then we aren't going to be able to collaborate effectively.
Tell me with a straight face that this ever happened to you.
I'd reach out to Crowdstrike with the domains names (https://dataservicegroup[.]com). This follows the MO of APTs out of North Korea: https://www.wired.com/story/north-korean-it-scammer-alert/ If you share the list of similar phrases and the domain names that pop up when you search for those phrases the Crowstrike researchers can (a) probably help confirm which group(s) you're dealing with or at least (b) write up an analysis piece on yet another APT trying to gain a foothold in sensitive systems via the ol' fake candidate mechanism.
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I do feel that if its possible to google interview questions in 20 seconds they are bad interview questions.
interview fail: googled answers to questions
daily job: google answers to questions.
daily job: google answers to questions.
Although I think I get the intended humour, the daily job certainly shouldn't be to Google answer to questions.
Google to get to documentation... Sure. Reading documentation.. Sure. Ability to understanding it and how it is used, that's what would be missing, and what is suggested the interview question failed to pick up on.
Google to get to documentation... Sure. Reading documentation.. Sure. Ability to understanding it and how it is used, that's what would be missing, and what is suggested the interview question failed to pick up on.
That's an illusion. Almost all of a coder's daily work is stuff that has been done already about a hundred thousand times. Every time I'm coding on easy mode (eg some sort of personal project where I have all the leeway) I can get through all of it just by googling $language how to $x ... been doing exactly this workflow recreationally during times when I don't feel like exerting myself for years now. It's neither slower nor does it provide worse results than in situations where I'm dealing with technologies I know inside out. With the tougher stuff, you should be consulting your colleagues anyways. If no one knows - then you research together... on google.
> interview fail: googled answers to questions
> daily job: google answers to questions.
But you have to cram to make it seem otherwise... seriously one of the most interesting things I have ever seen was a HR person say that they had a stack of CVs but self-selected for those who were able to use 'know how to google when stuck' remarks on their applications.
I think we should just be honest and come clean and state that it is impossible to gatekeep like this while at the same time then expect people to be 'efficient and self-starters' and know how to use stack overflow at the same time. We have built these immense, entirely contradictory, ways of virtue signalling in this Industry that this is the outcome you get and can come to expect from optimizing for this vetting process--in-person interviews only partially elongated the farce of it being a good way to parse through applicants.
Because the truth is you know they are doing this for 2-5 other potential employers and have to do the same there and this is the most 'efficient use' of their time to solve a problem: googling it.
But you have to cram to make it seem otherwise... seriously one of the most interesting things I have ever seen was a HR person say that they had a stack of CVs but self-selected for those who were able to use 'know how to google when stuck' remarks on their applications.
I think we should just be honest and come clean and state that it is impossible to gatekeep like this while at the same time then expect people to be 'efficient and self-starters' and know how to use stack overflow at the same time. We have built these immense, entirely contradictory, ways of virtue signalling in this Industry that this is the outcome you get and can come to expect from optimizing for this vetting process--in-person interviews only partially elongated the farce of it being a good way to parse through applicants.
Because the truth is you know they are doing this for 2-5 other potential employers and have to do the same there and this is the most 'efficient use' of their time to solve a problem: googling it.
This is why I used to use interview questions that were useful to research by googling and see how effectively resourceful people were with finding relevant information quickly. it’s also a skill and it’s apparent when someone is googling and skimming results way out of their element
I was that thinking of a cool idea, where the conversion was translated in real time and gpt3 was giving you answers to common questions like give me an example of when XYZ
You could also do interview questions.
You could also do interview questions.
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Or the candidate clearly showed an aptitude for the job!
My favorite bit is this:
"4k+ ACTIVE CLIENTS, 35+ PROJECTS DONE...10 GLORIOUS YEARS"
I imagine then, there's at least 3965 clients that aren't super happy. At 3.5 projects completed per year, it's going to be a long road.
"4k+ ACTIVE CLIENTS, 35+ PROJECTS DONE...10 GLORIOUS YEARS"
I imagine then, there's at least 3965 clients that aren't super happy. At 3.5 projects completed per year, it's going to be a long road.
Not at all, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation if you fit an exponential growth model to the numbers given.
You see, they must have started with one client, in year one, and thereafter achieved an average growth rate of 151.33% per annum.
My Excel model:
You see, they must have started with one client, in year one, and thereafter achieved an average growth rate of 151.33% per annum.
My Excel model:
Year Clients
1 1
2 3
3 6
4 16
5 40
6 100
7 252
8 633
9 1592
10 4001
Clearly, they forgot the "k" in the "35+ PROJECTS DONE". Would be even funnier if they misplaced it, and instead said "10k+ GLORIOUS YEARS".
The Warhammer 40k jokes for this just write themselves, don't they?
Incredible, I never knew I needed a Warhammer 40k / Office Space crossover until this moment
To the DeepFakeMobile!!
To the DeepFakeMobile!!
This is the best I could get in five tries with DreamStudio.ai: https://imgur.com/a/0MlOlFU
The other attempts just got me either something looking like a regular startup meeting or WH40k figurines with a regular meeting happening in the background.
The other attempts just got me either something looking like a regular startup meeting or WH40k figurines with a regular meeting happening in the background.
Wow, that company is 73% at Unix Administration AND 80% at Network Solutions. If only they were 70% at Python I'd have hired them for a project. I need a company with those stats.
you're taking a gamble unless you engage a company with at least 25% elemental and regulatory resistances
So all these Indian outsourcing companies like Infosys, Wipro and TCS (just like FAANG, they accronymize to WITCH) hog the American H1B immigration system by submitting an application for as many candidates as possible, and get a large number of H1Bs approved and send their employees to the US.
The salary for these employees isn’t exactly great. If I’m not wrong they still work through these witch companies and get their wages garnished. So these employees generally try to jump ship once they come to the US.
A second pool is the metric ton of immigrant students who come study an MS in vaguely computer related degrees - typically CS MS degrees are a bit more discerning but one example is this MIS degree from a BUSINESS SCHOOL in TAMU that’s just an Indian immigrant degree mill churning out people without much coding abilities at all.
Both these groups now go to these “consultant firms” in the US which take their money, fill out their resume with fake experience and train them to pass your interviews. I have heard all manner of illegal crap including person A attending the interview (even in person) and person B actually turning up for work. How many times have you looked closely enough to confirm it’s the same dude anyway.
These people are shrewd. Doing all of this does take brains. They’re just shit at coding. Some do actually improve over time but some never do.
Source: Indian dude who had college roommates, relatives, friends, acquaintances, etc all do various versions of these shenanigans.
Only way to protect yourself is to have a culture fit interview component, confirm their LinkedIn history isn’t super shady and have at least an informal verification step post offer to ensure you don’t let a rat into the ship.
The salary for these employees isn’t exactly great. If I’m not wrong they still work through these witch companies and get their wages garnished. So these employees generally try to jump ship once they come to the US.
A second pool is the metric ton of immigrant students who come study an MS in vaguely computer related degrees - typically CS MS degrees are a bit more discerning but one example is this MIS degree from a BUSINESS SCHOOL in TAMU that’s just an Indian immigrant degree mill churning out people without much coding abilities at all.
Both these groups now go to these “consultant firms” in the US which take their money, fill out their resume with fake experience and train them to pass your interviews. I have heard all manner of illegal crap including person A attending the interview (even in person) and person B actually turning up for work. How many times have you looked closely enough to confirm it’s the same dude anyway.
These people are shrewd. Doing all of this does take brains. They’re just shit at coding. Some do actually improve over time but some never do.
Source: Indian dude who had college roommates, relatives, friends, acquaintances, etc all do various versions of these shenanigans.
Only way to protect yourself is to have a culture fit interview component, confirm their LinkedIn history isn’t super shady and have at least an informal verification step post offer to ensure you don’t let a rat into the ship.
Half a decade ago at a large energy company, there was a group that had ramped up hiring of a lot of contract developers for full stack greenfield app dev (not Salesforce or SAP, etc). Lots of us employees were pulled into interview candidates that staffing agencies were throwing us. Many turned out great, but 2 in particular were suspected of being different people from the interviewee. There was a month or more since the interviews and the people managing the teams often weren’t the same as the people who had participated in the interviews but after comparing notes, we realized that the people on the phone were certainly more astute than those who had come on-site (this was before video interviews had taken off). All of these teams were using IntelliJ and one of the team leads I managed expressed concern about how he noticed a contractor assigned to his team was using Windows Notepad to write Kotlin for his Spring Boot server controllers. He also heard of some other developers seeing this guy with his laptop on the far side of the large floor quietly talking on a cell phone for an hour or so. I think we let him hang out for almost a week before we told the staffing agency.
I find it strange that there appears to be international networks within American universities. I have noticed a large number of people from the same countries, attending similar vague programs (like you mentioned), writing theses with advisors from their home country.
It makes me wonder if they are just getting into a completely different program with the "American university" name. Do you have any insight into this?
It makes me wonder if they are just getting into a completely different program with the "American university" name. Do you have any insight into this?
> It makes me wonder if they are just getting into a completely different program with the "American university" name.
Not op, but I can answer this.
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer:
Most non-terminal Masters degree programs are degree mills, even at well known universities. These are almost always pay-to-play with few opportunities for scholarships, TAships, or whatever.
Most “real” students will enter a doctoral program and take a masters if they decide a doctorate is not for them.
Note that there are exceptions, especially for folks who are changing their career/degree path from undergrad, but these are relatively rare in my experience (at least at good schools).
A few simple examples from Harvard:
- the LLM law degree is a cash cow for the law school. It is only open to foreigners, and it is almost always funded by a company or the government. Ostensibly this program exists because other countries have undergrad law degrees, but the reality imho is that it’s a juicy cash cow that also generates a strong network.
- Harvard EdM degrees are a 9-month program with no thesis — coursework only. There is nothing wrong with this, but it’s a very weak academic program imho. It might be a good practitioner degree, but that doesn’t seem very Harvard-esque.
- The MA degrees in the yard (esp arts and humanities) and the div school are pay-to-play ways for Ivy/Harvard wannabes to get the Harvard stamp of approval. You have to be a decent student to get in, but nothing exceptional (e.g., compared to doctoral students). The key point is that the student is willing to pay. These degrees don’t really say much about the program or the student other than they were an above-average college student who was willing to pay to get the Harvard badge.
I’ve seen similar programs at very good state schools, with the standards lowered a bit. You see a lot of foreign nationals (looking for h1b jobs after graduation) and vets on the gi bill (often coasting on the government dime with no academic skills or ambition) in these state school programs.
If a professor is from a foreign country and/or has a relationship with schools/businesses in foreign countries, it is very easy to use masters degrees as a gateway to employment and residence in the US, and the school largely doesn’t care as long as the student pays and (in some fields) is able to get a job.
Not op, but I can answer this.
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer:
Most non-terminal Masters degree programs are degree mills, even at well known universities. These are almost always pay-to-play with few opportunities for scholarships, TAships, or whatever.
Most “real” students will enter a doctoral program and take a masters if they decide a doctorate is not for them.
Note that there are exceptions, especially for folks who are changing their career/degree path from undergrad, but these are relatively rare in my experience (at least at good schools).
A few simple examples from Harvard:
- the LLM law degree is a cash cow for the law school. It is only open to foreigners, and it is almost always funded by a company or the government. Ostensibly this program exists because other countries have undergrad law degrees, but the reality imho is that it’s a juicy cash cow that also generates a strong network.
- Harvard EdM degrees are a 9-month program with no thesis — coursework only. There is nothing wrong with this, but it’s a very weak academic program imho. It might be a good practitioner degree, but that doesn’t seem very Harvard-esque.
- The MA degrees in the yard (esp arts and humanities) and the div school are pay-to-play ways for Ivy/Harvard wannabes to get the Harvard stamp of approval. You have to be a decent student to get in, but nothing exceptional (e.g., compared to doctoral students). The key point is that the student is willing to pay. These degrees don’t really say much about the program or the student other than they were an above-average college student who was willing to pay to get the Harvard badge.
I’ve seen similar programs at very good state schools, with the standards lowered a bit. You see a lot of foreign nationals (looking for h1b jobs after graduation) and vets on the gi bill (often coasting on the government dime with no academic skills or ambition) in these state school programs.
If a professor is from a foreign country and/or has a relationship with schools/businesses in foreign countries, it is very easy to use masters degrees as a gateway to employment and residence in the US, and the school largely doesn’t care as long as the student pays and (in some fields) is able to get a job.
I should also add that undergrads who do a 5-year dual degree (BA/MA or BS/MS) don’t fall into the “buying a degree” category. Often times the upper level undergrad courses are the exact same courses as the lower level masters courses, so this is just prudent in some fields and or student situations (e.g., wanting to extend time at school in order to improve professional opportunities after graduation ).
I interviewed at Oxford for an MSc in Software Engineering with no bachelors degree lol. There are sneaky gateways into a lot of top universities.
It used to be possible to do a research MSc at Northern Universities (Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, etc.) with no bachelors degree, just needed enough industry experience to satisfy the department.
Masters degrees not requiring a prior degree in the field seem to be common, at least as far as I saw when I looked into it circa 2014
Yeah it’s becoming more and more common that universities allow previous experience to count, probably after raising the number of student intakes allowed in the UK. Now if you can pay and if you will probably pass you’re allowed in, from what I gather.
Maybe it was an MEng (Master of Engineering), which is an undergraduate degree in UK?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Engineering#United_K...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Engineering#United_K...
Nope; definitely an MSc! It’s a bit of a cash cow course, ended up doing an MSc in CS at another university.
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I think that's why the most prestige for top universities is ascribed to those in the undergrad.
> MSc in Software Engineering
I think "Software engineering" degrees tend to be a strong signal: didn't study CS.
> MSc in Software Engineering
I think "Software engineering" degrees tend to be a strong signal: didn't study CS.
Yeah exactly.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with SE degrees, they can be as rigorous on CS topics while swapping later maths modules for engineering modules. I ended up taking an MSc in CS fwiw.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with SE degrees, they can be as rigorous on CS topics while swapping later maths modules for engineering modules. I ended up taking an MSc in CS fwiw.
I believe high quality programs exist, but I bet most that use the name (masters in particular) aren't.
I don’t know, I got an MSc in Math/Finance from Oxford and there were tough exams, the selection process was very strict (only 30 people got in), classmates seemed high quality, …
This one was a bit of a cash cow. I lived in Oxford for a few years while my wife worked on her DPhil and agree in general the other courses are much more difficult to get in.
No bachelors degree in any field or no cs bachelors?
I can imagine someone coming from a numerical field (e.g. EE, physics, maths) could gind such a programme very beneficial.
I can imagine someone coming from a numerical field (e.g. EE, physics, maths) could gind such a programme very beneficial.
No degree in any field. Ended up enrolling in an MSc in CS at another university though!
>MIS degree from a BUSINESS SCHOOL in TAMU that’s just an Indian immigrant degree mill churning out people without much coding abilities at all
I see what you mean (<https://mays.tamu.edu/ms-management-information-systems/>). Clear signaling toward foreign applicants.
I see what you mean (<https://mays.tamu.edu/ms-management-information-systems/>). Clear signaling toward foreign applicants.
You mentioned H-1Bs and I'm running with it.
H-1B visas should be given out using an auction system. The minimum salary for the position should be some percentage of resulting price.
I think this would go a long way to ensuring that companies use the program for what it was intended for and stop the abuses.
H-1B visas should be given out using an auction system. The minimum salary for the position should be some percentage of resulting price.
I think this would go a long way to ensuring that companies use the program for what it was intended for and stop the abuses.
I don't know how much I judge this candidate you're talking about. Somebody who can give you the right answer after 20 seconds despite apparently not knowing what he was talking about before seems like a pretty useful employee to me.
Many interview questions aren't about the right answer -- they are just questions that are designed to show how much the applicant knows about whatever is on the CV.
If you have Python on your CV, and I ask you how the garbage collector works, I don't want you to read some stack overflow summary to me. I want to hear your own description, so I can make a judgement how deep your knowledge of Python internals goes.
Anybody can type specific questions into Google. But if it comes to producing performant code, you need to have that knowledge in the back of your mind, because nobody is going to tell you to google that.
If you have Python on your CV, and I ask you how the garbage collector works, I don't want you to read some stack overflow summary to me. I want to hear your own description, so I can make a judgement how deep your knowledge of Python internals goes.
Anybody can type specific questions into Google. But if it comes to producing performant code, you need to have that knowledge in the back of your mind, because nobody is going to tell you to google that.
I'm a 10 year Python veteran and I've never had to think about garbage collection. Back in the day I did find out that del didn't actually free up memory (memory footprint could only ever increase for a process, only way to "free" memory would be to restart it). Don't know if it's still the case.
If asked today my very terse but immediate answer would be: "Rather poorly when I last checked. Haven't had to check for roughly 8 years."
Would that qualify as a "knowledgeable individual" in your books? (just curious)
If asked today my very terse but immediate answer would be: "Rather poorly when I last checked. Haven't had to check for roughly 8 years."
Would that qualify as a "knowledgeable individual" in your books? (just curious)
I think that would meet the definition of a "knowledgeable individual". Python does GC under the hood and most folks who use it extensively never see it at all. The wrong answer would be "what is garbage collection" or "its excellent, better that C++"
I think this is more a test of honesty.
It’s one thing to openly use web search as a tool and another to pretend you know something when you don’t.
It’s usually fine to say “I don’t know, I’d have to look that up”. That’s what you’d actually want on the job, honesty and professionalism.
People make mistakes all the time. What you want is a culture where they can admit those mistakes so that the team can engineer them away from happening again.
If a candidate is willing to lie over something so small as looking up an algorithm then that would be a big red flag to me.
It’s one thing to openly use web search as a tool and another to pretend you know something when you don’t.
It’s usually fine to say “I don’t know, I’d have to look that up”. That’s what you’d actually want on the job, honesty and professionalism.
People make mistakes all the time. What you want is a culture where they can admit those mistakes so that the team can engineer them away from happening again.
If a candidate is willing to lie over something so small as looking up an algorithm then that would be a big red flag to me.
Weird, number of the site has a voicemail with the company’s name ("Data Service Group") — did not expect that.
800 419 2567
800 419 2567
I've had this happen so I always check the websites of their last employer now specifically for copypasta.
It only happened once ever. But I just keep on checking.
It only happened once ever. But I just keep on checking.
The Google thing is very common now with remote interviews.
I've interviewed several candidates that were clearly googling questions. Some I thought were scammers, others not so much.
The funny thing is that they were all on camera. You can see the pause,you see the slight head turn and the eyes gaze away from the camera, you hear the click clack of typing and then the sudden recitation of a perfectly worded dictionary answer.
I've interviewed several candidates that were clearly googling questions. Some I thought were scammers, others not so much.
The funny thing is that they were all on camera. You can see the pause,you see the slight head turn and the eyes gaze away from the camera, you hear the click clack of typing and then the sudden recitation of a perfectly worded dictionary answer.
> The funny thing is that they were all on camera. You can see the pause,you see the slight head turn and the eyes gaze away from the camera, you hear the click clack of typing and then the sudden recitation of a perfectly worded dictionary answer.
What was your reaction? Would you prefer they be more subtle of the poorly kept secret that most of this job is simply trying to figure out why the code isn't running and looking for specific error codes from other people's projects?
I'm being sincere, because I'm studying AI and ML and I kind of doubt most CS majors could describe 85% of the concepts we cover at the undergrad level let alone describe the use of the sigmoid function and soft max when building a gradient descent algorithm in a NN if put on the spot; I know this because when I went searching for this they often say that even their professor sucked at describing it so much that they had just glossed over it entirely and admitted they would look it up when working with TF in the future.
What was your reaction? Would you prefer they be more subtle of the poorly kept secret that most of this job is simply trying to figure out why the code isn't running and looking for specific error codes from other people's projects?
I'm being sincere, because I'm studying AI and ML and I kind of doubt most CS majors could describe 85% of the concepts we cover at the undergrad level let alone describe the use of the sigmoid function and soft max when building a gradient descent algorithm in a NN if put on the spot; I know this because when I went searching for this they often say that even their professor sucked at describing it so much that they had just glossed over it entirely and admitted they would look it up when working with TF in the future.
This is really bizarre - one of the hits under that google search is for a university's IoT research group:
https://ceid.utsa.edu/iotsecuritylab/home-5/
https://ceid.utsa.edu/iotsecuritylab/home-5/
Early 2010's, Wall St software tech vendor: I had a candidate show up for an interview, in person, go through the preliminaries and then sit down in a meeting room for the detailed questions.
As we got into it, the candidate often asked me to repeat the question. I was happy to do so, but after a few times, I was already taking care to speak slowly and clearly, and it was still happening a lot.
Then I noticed a quiet murmuring sound after I'd asked a question. It was like .. a TV on in the next room or something. I ignored it at first, assuming it was someone else in the next room, but then it seemed like it was only happening after I'd asked a question, and before the candidate answered.
I was now pretty suspicious, but confused: what was going on? The candidate was flubbing the interview anyway -- their understanding was pretty shallow and they didn't appear at all confident in the material, so I wrapped up the interview, and showed them out.
As we were walking to the door, I stood beside them for the first time. And that's when I saw the earpiece: the candidate had a hearing aid-like earpiece in, with a wire running into their collar.
I was basically too surprised to do anything, and by this point we were at the elevator, so I just let them leave.
The way I figured it, afterwards, was that they had someone on a radio who they thought would help them with the interview. But either the radio was noisy or they just needed more time for the answer, so asking me to repeat the question was for the benefit of their remote assistant. If they'd been better at it, even had I seen the earpiece, I'd have assumed it was just a hearing aid. Fortunately, even with the remote assistance, they didn't pass.
Never happened again, but I can tell you I casually check everyone I've interviewed since for earpieces.
As we got into it, the candidate often asked me to repeat the question. I was happy to do so, but after a few times, I was already taking care to speak slowly and clearly, and it was still happening a lot.
Then I noticed a quiet murmuring sound after I'd asked a question. It was like .. a TV on in the next room or something. I ignored it at first, assuming it was someone else in the next room, but then it seemed like it was only happening after I'd asked a question, and before the candidate answered.
I was now pretty suspicious, but confused: what was going on? The candidate was flubbing the interview anyway -- their understanding was pretty shallow and they didn't appear at all confident in the material, so I wrapped up the interview, and showed them out.
As we were walking to the door, I stood beside them for the first time. And that's when I saw the earpiece: the candidate had a hearing aid-like earpiece in, with a wire running into their collar.
I was basically too surprised to do anything, and by this point we were at the elevator, so I just let them leave.
The way I figured it, afterwards, was that they had someone on a radio who they thought would help them with the interview. But either the radio was noisy or they just needed more time for the answer, so asking me to repeat the question was for the benefit of their remote assistant. If they'd been better at it, even had I seen the earpiece, I'd have assumed it was just a hearing aid. Fortunately, even with the remote assistance, they didn't pass.
Never happened again, but I can tell you I casually check everyone I've interviewed since for earpieces.
Plenty of this in remote interviews, even if it's just people googling answers. I was slightly frustrated with one candidate and spelled the term I'd just used for him so he could search for it.
Part of me suspects that this is a major reason for the push on RTO. If you hire people remote who used any one of dozens of mechanisms to cheat.. it can be hard to correct. You could have a candidate who does great on your interview then fails to produce a single PR in 3 months on the job.
Speculation aside, this means you have a bad interview process.
If your interview isn't screening for the work you want somebody to do then it's not a good metric for finding successful employees.
If your interview isn't screening for the work you want somebody to do then it's not a good metric for finding successful employees.
I think the fraud is asymmetric. It's relatively easy for me to hire someone to perform the work the employers wants for X hours one time (i.e. interview), but relatively difficult for me to subcontract it reliably for 40 hours every week.
This asymmetry exists regardless of how representative of real work the interview process is, short of a full-time engagement.
This asymmetry exists regardless of how representative of real work the interview process is, short of a full-time engagement.
If he fails to deliver on the job, put them on a PIP and get rid of them.
If he actually delivers good work, who cares if he cheats?
If he actually delivers good work, who cares if he cheats?
The loss is three months of salary and the cost of hiring a replacement. Taken en masse, especially for smaller firms, quite a debilitating sum.
Is he actually doing the work? Is just copying code from OSS projects and does not actually understand it? Not only will this cause legal liability, but when the team is under stress will he just disappear or be able to solve an issue?
He already lied once. Why not lie more?
He already lied once. Why not lie more?
Lying is already rampant on both sides of the hiring process, and expected. The high stakes and algorithmic nature of (tech) hiring is the real problem - the rewards are great and the exploits are obvious.
Reminds me of an old Soviet comedy where a student taking exam in university with an ear piece.
https://youtu.be/vADlGmX7-qU
Or the over-the-top cheating scene with Chevy Chase from "Spies Like Us"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSUOFleNRU
It's nearly 40 years old and it still makes me laugh every time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSUOFleNRU
It's nearly 40 years old and it still makes me laugh every time.
Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor.
In my country this isn't "common" but it's way more common than in other countries.
There was a cheating scandal in Sweden a few years ago with students using earpieces and someone feeding them answers from a leaked test during the equivalent of SATs
Or getting questions to secure placement for future candidates.
Yeah, I did wonder about that, but they could've just recorded the interview.
Although that did happen, but I think that was the recruitment agencies: they'd debrief their candidates after their interviews, and the next time they sent someone in, they'd be prepped for the whiteboard design exercises we'd used previously. I ended up with a dozen different questions that I rotated, which seemed to be enough.
General interview questions were often prepped too. Our phone screen question list had to grow quite long before it seemed like the effort to cram/prep was too much trouble.
Although that did happen, but I think that was the recruitment agencies: they'd debrief their candidates after their interviews, and the next time they sent someone in, they'd be prepped for the whiteboard design exercises we'd used previously. I ended up with a dozen different questions that I rotated, which seemed to be enough.
General interview questions were often prepped too. Our phone screen question list had to grow quite long before it seemed like the effort to cram/prep was too much trouble.
Why would you continue to use that contracting agency if they were clearly gaming the interviews?
It's a tough call.
Firstly, all agencies prep their candidates to some extent. They know your stack, they know what skills and experience you're looking for, so they make sure the people they send in match the profile, and you know, just bone up on the important things a bit before the interview.
It's not a stretch to go from that to saying "and they'll ask about X and Y, so make sure you refresh your memory on that".
And then it's not far to outright "here's the list of stuff we know they've asked recently -- do your best!"
The worst offenders would get a grumpy phone call and sit out the next few rounds of recruitment, but ultimately you want the candidates, so ...
Firstly, all agencies prep their candidates to some extent. They know your stack, they know what skills and experience you're looking for, so they make sure the people they send in match the profile, and you know, just bone up on the important things a bit before the interview.
It's not a stretch to go from that to saying "and they'll ask about X and Y, so make sure you refresh your memory on that".
And then it's not far to outright "here's the list of stuff we know they've asked recently -- do your best!"
The worst offenders would get a grumpy phone call and sit out the next few rounds of recruitment, but ultimately you want the candidates, so ...
I had this happen in a remote interview recently. I think the candidates helper had a language barrier problem. They almost made it through.
The FBI and other US federal agencies have attributed similar tactics to North Koreans looking to infiltrate particular industries [1-3].
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korean-crypto-job-cand...
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/fbi_korea_freelancers...
[3] https://www.wired.com/story/north-korean-it-scammer-alert/
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korean-crypto-job-cand...
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/fbi_korea_freelancers...
[3] https://www.wired.com/story/north-korean-it-scammer-alert/
There is no reason an intelligence-gathering operation has to use someone who is totally incompetent at the job and comes across as suspicious.
Yes, there is. The reason is that they aren't superhuman, and aren't very popular anymore.
This is something I've argued before: In the 40s, the US intelligence services could call up famous, brilliant people like Claude Shannon, ask him to fix some problem and never talk about the problem or his solution to it.
If they tried that today, most would tell them to go fuck themselves.
Now you may think things would be different in North Korea. In some ways they might be, but they obviously have a lot less top talent to commandeer in the first place, with their lack of modern technology and childhood nutrition. And even then, there are less confrontational ways to say no where open defiance is out of the picture. In North Korea, if you're very competent at anything, you might be quite careful in who you reveal that to in the first place.
This is something I've argued before: In the 40s, the US intelligence services could call up famous, brilliant people like Claude Shannon, ask him to fix some problem and never talk about the problem or his solution to it.
If they tried that today, most would tell them to go fuck themselves.
Now you may think things would be different in North Korea. In some ways they might be, but they obviously have a lot less top talent to commandeer in the first place, with their lack of modern technology and childhood nutrition. And even then, there are less confrontational ways to say no where open defiance is out of the picture. In North Korea, if you're very competent at anything, you might be quite careful in who you reveal that to in the first place.
Why is money not a solution? A life-changing amount of money is peanuts to a government, and should convince the vast majority of people to take the job.
If money was what Shannon was primarily interested in, he wouldn't be in academia. This is true of almost all types of narrow domain experts. There are more parties than government that can offer them money, too.
For most academics (and more, the better they are), not being allowed to talk about what you're working on to the vast majority your peers, would be too high a price for money to make up for.
NSA circumvented this for many years by employing an obscene number of math graduates, effectively creating their own parallel academia. We can only imagine how expensive that was. Still, they were surpassed by the "open" world even in the narrow fields they were interested in, such as cryptography, by the late 90s at the latest. It's not just sad being cut off from the free world, it stunts you.
For most academics (and more, the better they are), not being allowed to talk about what you're working on to the vast majority your peers, would be too high a price for money to make up for.
NSA circumvented this for many years by employing an obscene number of math graduates, effectively creating their own parallel academia. We can only imagine how expensive that was. Still, they were surpassed by the "open" world even in the narrow fields they were interested in, such as cryptography, by the late 90s at the latest. It's not just sad being cut off from the free world, it stunts you.
There is no contradiction in being in academia because you want to spend your time doing research and accepting a nice bonus from the government now and then.
The contradiction is that you can't talk about what you worked on, and you need to be careful that what you write in public research doesn't reveal it. It's ten times worse than the corporate equivalent.
It is not for North Korea. Their APT groups switch between intelligence gathering and PayPal / crypto scams. They also have prominent ransomware groups. Crime pays for the hermit kingdom and they do need cash.
Now, to OPs point, on getting someone competent. Say, they want to infiltrate a crypto trading firm. Maybe the guy who knows crypto doesn't know English. So you end up with a team of guys playing telephone and hoping for the best.
Now, to OPs point, on getting someone competent. Say, they want to infiltrate a crypto trading firm. Maybe the guy who knows crypto doesn't know English. So you end up with a team of guys playing telephone and hoping for the best.
I have to work for a living. If I stop working, I'm homeless. Every agency in the entire US IC could ask me for help and offer me a billion dollars to do it, and I'd still tell those traitors, tyrants, and cowards to go rot in hell. Not that hell exists, but a person can dream, can't they?
Don't think I agree. You really just need 1 smart person per country to pass a meager interview process post learning the questions.
You need to identify him first, and remember, from the position of NOT being able to answer those questions yourself.
It is very hard to identify someone as smarter than you, if they try to avoid being identified as such. Even if we're talking about smartness in a very narrow technical sense.
It is very hard to identify someone as smarter than you, if they try to avoid being identified as such. Even if we're talking about smartness in a very narrow technical sense.
The intelligence community is a significant employer of tech talent, you'd think they could ask their own IT guys...
This shit has been going on for the last 5 years or more. I've seen it with non-asian candidates.
China employs non-Chinese to track and interfere with dissidents and critics of China in the US https://news.artnet.com/art-world/us-blames-china-operatives...
and of course, plenty of Russians and Iranians are non-Asian (in appearance, Persia is in Asia of course)
and of course, plenty of Russians and Iranians are non-Asian (in appearance, Persia is in Asia of course)
Russia is partly asia as well.
I hear you. Generally when Americans say, "Asian", they mean, people from China, Japan, the Koreas, and to a lesser extent Filipino, Thai, Indo, Malay.. but mostly.
Basically, if you have smaller eyes, then you are Asian. Otherwise, you are Russian or Indian .. etc, sort of like how some people consider people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as "brown".
Continental unity doesn't mean much for Asia as much as it does for Europe or Africa.
Good luck correcting the millions. Just roll with it. Concentrate on whats most important to you.
Basically, if you have smaller eyes, then you are Asian. Otherwise, you are Russian or Indian .. etc, sort of like how some people consider people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as "brown".
Continental unity doesn't mean much for Asia as much as it does for Europe or Africa.
Good luck correcting the millions. Just roll with it. Concentrate on whats most important to you.
Just because it's accepted widely doesn't mean its right - else we would be wrongly using "its" forever like I've just done. Indians are completely and wholly Asian.
Given the diversity and size of Asia, and the fact that it has the majority of the world's population, describing somebody as "Asian" is rather vague.
It's just shorthand in an old-fashioned slightly racist/ignorant way - they can't say "Yellow" or "Oriental" any more, and want a word to parallel "White" and "Black."
I look forward to a post-racial future...
I look forward to a post-racial future...
If the FBI is accusing others of doing it, they're probably doing the same, or a more sophisticated variant of the same.
It's a problem here too. Even if they use their camera, it doesn't mean they don't have someone feeding them answers to questions. Phone interviews are even more sketchy since the person who may be answering the questions is a completely different person who shows up on day 1.
We had one person we hired as a contractor, but then her voice changed on the phone, and started calling people by their last names in chat. It looked like it was someone that subcontracted another who then quit, and the first was trying to hold onto the contract as long as possible.
Another answered complex questions during the interview, but after the start they knew nothing.
A third contractor I knew was trying to do two jobs at the same time. Unfortunately while he was supposed to be working for one company he was making public github commits for the second. He was shown the door that day.
Tangentially, another contractor "lost" two macbooks assigned to him. Apparently right after travelling to Colorado after they legalized weed.
We had one person we hired as a contractor, but then her voice changed on the phone, and started calling people by their last names in chat. It looked like it was someone that subcontracted another who then quit, and the first was trying to hold onto the contract as long as possible.
Another answered complex questions during the interview, but after the start they knew nothing.
A third contractor I knew was trying to do two jobs at the same time. Unfortunately while he was supposed to be working for one company he was making public github commits for the second. He was shown the door that day.
Tangentially, another contractor "lost" two macbooks assigned to him. Apparently right after travelling to Colorado after they legalized weed.
> A third contractor I knew was trying to do two jobs at the same time.
I mean this literally how contractors work. Unless they were taking your IP and using it for another company I don’t see the issue.
I mean this literally how contractors work. Unless they were taking your IP and using it for another company I don’t see the issue.
At tech companies, "contractor" usually means someone contracted from a staffing company to work 40 hour weeks during normal business hours. They're not someone who is providing an end product with the freedom to set their own schedule, like you typically think of when you hear "contractor".
That very much depends on location.
In the UK a contractor could be someone from an outsourcing company as you suggest or they could be an independent service provider working on their own. This is very common in software dev here when you require someone with specific skills.
If you’re the latter kind then you’d be wise to bill on deliverables rather than time.
If you don’t you could run into a well known tax reg called HMRC IR35. It bars independent contractors from acting like “disguised” employees. It’s a world of pain if that happens.
In the UK a contractor could be someone from an outsourcing company as you suggest or they could be an independent service provider working on their own. This is very common in software dev here when you require someone with specific skills.
If you’re the latter kind then you’d be wise to bill on deliverables rather than time.
If you don’t you could run into a well known tax reg called HMRC IR35. It bars independent contractors from acting like “disguised” employees. It’s a world of pain if that happens.
> bars independent contractors from acting like “disguised” employees. It’s a world of pain if that happens.
The US allows companies to fire long-term employees without cause and replace them with indentured servants.
We're the ones who actually hosted the cotton fields full of slaves, after all.
The US allows companies to fire long-term employees without cause and replace them with indentured servants.
We're the ones who actually hosted the cotton fields full of slaves, after all.
That is not correct. I won't speak to relative prevalence as that depends on the size and type of tech company, but there are lots of freelance tech contractors.
Not if you're charging hourly, it's not. Then it's time fraud.
It's just like a lawyer's billable hours.
It's just like a lawyer's billable hours.
only if you charge hourly to two companies at the same time. Contractors can work multiple contracts, thats the name of the game.
That's exactly what he did -- charge two companies for 1 hour worked.
Even if he wasn't, he was a contractor, and checking code while being on site for another company was sus. Employment is "at will" in the US for the most part -- particularly contractors.
Even if he wasn't, he was a contractor, and checking code while being on site for another company was sus. Employment is "at will" in the US for the most part -- particularly contractors.
yeah, bogus... proper time keeping is key to being a contractor. If you are going to work multiple (which happens when you're brought on as an expert but there's spirts of work between lapses of down time) then you can't be doing one while on the clock for the other. Wage theft.
Not necessarily. It depends on the requirement. If I've completed or don't have any real work, but am expected to be around, then that's work. It's only if the second contract breaches the first or creates a conflict, and that's not inherent in time.
Edit: Misread your comment. If you're billing for specific and granular blocks of time, and doubling that up, then ya wage theft. But if you're doing that and also expected to be onsite anyway, then no not wage theft imo.
Edit: Misread your comment. If you're billing for specific and granular blocks of time, and doubling that up, then ya wage theft. But if you're doing that and also expected to be onsite anyway, then no not wage theft imo.
If you're a company and you see github commits through firewall, why take the chance unless he's really really good?
You wouldn't, I was saying that there could be situations where it wouldn't be a valid claim for wage theft. I would say that's also true of regular jobs where you're not necessarily even expected to be there all the time. I've made commits from my desk on side contracts, but if there's a conflict, I resolve it by sticking around longer. If my employer or client has a problem with me working on other shit, then they get to stop being my employer or client
By working two jobs at the same time, they mean working one hour and then billing two companies for that same hour of work.
> while he was supposed to be working for one company he was making public github commits for the second
If you're setting their hours, doesn't that make them an employee rather than a contractor, legally speaking?
If you're setting their hours, doesn't that make them an employee rather than a contractor, legally speaking?
Maybe it's not a real contractor. I had one job where I was a "contractor", I had set hours, got paid hourly, received a w2. It seemed like just an excuse to be cheap and not provide benefits.
You can be on a W2, but as soon as the contract ends, your employment ends since you're "at will" in the US.
Usually the W2 is provided through an agency and you're getting a paycheck from them while the agency is billing the company for hours at a negotiated rate, often much higher than you're being paid.
Usually the W2 is provided through an agency and you're getting a paycheck from them while the agency is billing the company for hours at a negotiated rate, often much higher than you're being paid.
Always ask your supervisor how much they're paying for you. You might not be allowed to work for that company soon (non-competes enforced at the agency side), but you can certainly get a better idea of your value.
Most likely they're going to be prohibited from telling you. The best way to do this is to take [person] out for a round of beers. Wait until 3 beers in and see what their number is.
My belief is that 20%-30% of what you're making is a fair number.
Though if it's somewhere where you could really get a foothold and make a lot of money as an employee, 50% might be acceptable.
My belief is that 20%-30% of what you're making is a fair number.
Though if it's somewhere where you could really get a foothold and make a lot of money as an employee, 50% might be acceptable.
May have billed a specific time span, but also had commits during that span. Dunno how they proved the github account belonged to the contractor though unless they just admitted to it or used the company email to register.
> Dunno how they proved
people who no longer trust you and don't want to work with you any more generally don't have to prove it.
people who no longer trust you and don't want to work with you any more generally don't have to prove it.
We had this happen to the company I was at around 2015. I heard about it after the fact, good phone interview, a Salesforce position, he's hired (contract I think). Day one the person that shows up barely speaks English and can barely log in to Salesforce. Maybe he thought he was going to a bigger department and could hide and blend in, but it was a small Salesforce team at a large company. He lasted less than a day and was escorted out. The placement agency apologized. A lot.
> was trying to do two jobs at the same time
Happened at a company I worked at many years ago. Working from home was new, one dude who we all thought was suspect anyway got a call from his bosses boss and answered the phone with the wrong company name and it was over.
To make an example of him they made him pay back some of his salary (his contract had him on call and available 24/7). Ran into him a while later and he confirmed he paid them back.
Not a fake candidate but a slimy guy.
Happened at a company I worked at many years ago. Working from home was new, one dude who we all thought was suspect anyway got a call from his bosses boss and answered the phone with the wrong company name and it was over.
To make an example of him they made him pay back some of his salary (his contract had him on call and available 24/7). Ran into him a while later and he confirmed he paid them back.
Not a fake candidate but a slimy guy.
This started to become much more common post-COVID.
/r/overemployed is a sub full of people sharing strategies about how to maintain multiple jobs at once. Some of those folks have 3 or more jobs. Industries of focus seem to be tech and sales.
/r/overemployed is a sub full of people sharing strategies about how to maintain multiple jobs at once. Some of those folks have 3 or more jobs. Industries of focus seem to be tech and sales.
I can never tell how much on reddit is creative writing for a cause, sometimes those stories sound more like elaborate / sophomoric morality tales / fantasies ... but I don't doubt folks do it.
Some time ago (~6 months) my company was looking to hire a programmer.
We don't have a established process for this as it was some years since we hired a coder, but then we are in the industry (hiring) so published a couple of adverts here and there and we got the thing rolling.
Most of the applicants were seriously under qualified, and my colleagues had to go through a lot of rubbish in the form of CVs in order to find suitable candidates.
But a few of them were good enough to at least make it to the interview step, and off the invitations went.
One of'em candidates - Let's call him "Rajeed" - promptly accepted the meeting, and due to the small amount of people that made it that far - let me remind you, first interview - my colleagues were slightly excited, but at the same time also weary as our experience with coders from India is far from stellar.
You can imagine my colleagues surprise when they opened the Zoom session and Rajeed was nowhere to be found. Instead, there were two person of whom we knew nothing about - apparently they were running some sort of coding shop - and when my colleagues asked for Rajeed they just said "Oh, it's OK, it's OK. You can talk to us."
For obvious reasons the meeting didn't last long.
We ended up hiring a coder from Poland that, even thought he was decent, was miles ahead of the rest of the candidates.
We don't have a established process for this as it was some years since we hired a coder, but then we are in the industry (hiring) so published a couple of adverts here and there and we got the thing rolling.
Most of the applicants were seriously under qualified, and my colleagues had to go through a lot of rubbish in the form of CVs in order to find suitable candidates.
But a few of them were good enough to at least make it to the interview step, and off the invitations went.
One of'em candidates - Let's call him "Rajeed" - promptly accepted the meeting, and due to the small amount of people that made it that far - let me remind you, first interview - my colleagues were slightly excited, but at the same time also weary as our experience with coders from India is far from stellar.
You can imagine my colleagues surprise when they opened the Zoom session and Rajeed was nowhere to be found. Instead, there were two person of whom we knew nothing about - apparently they were running some sort of coding shop - and when my colleagues asked for Rajeed they just said "Oh, it's OK, it's OK. You can talk to us."
For obvious reasons the meeting didn't last long.
We ended up hiring a coder from Poland that, even thought he was decent, was miles ahead of the rest of the candidates.
Something you want to keep in mind is that stellar coders from India (I don't know if they're a huge majority or minority or whatever, but they do exist) already have stellar jobs and won't be up for hire.
The random people who are up for hire from India — there's a good chance they're up for hire because they couldn't get anything else.
You get what you pay for. And the best are probably not even in the market.
The random people who are up for hire from India — there's a good chance they're up for hire because they couldn't get anything else.
You get what you pay for. And the best are probably not even in the market.
My UK employer in 2004 had the brilliant idea to save money by establishing a subsidiary in Bangalore. Find some awesome engineers and only have to pay Indian salaries & office rental! Took them a depressingly long time to understand that interviews are a two-way street and what most of the best candidates wanted was a multinational that would support them living and working in an exciting new environment for better money, i.e. moving to London and using the London salary to see the world and have fun. Some really good guys, but would have been cheaper and less disruptive just to recruit them straightforwardly. OTOH the director in charge of the project moved to Bangalore on a London salary with his housing costs and domestic staff paid for, living like a Maharajah and filing following progress reports. So the exercise wasn't entirely futile.
> Something you want to keep in mind is that stellar coders from India already have stellar jobs and won't be up for hire.
Precisely, and they know what they're worth, so they won't be cheaper anyway.
Precisely, and they know what they're worth, so they won't be cheaper anyway.
I agree whole hearteadly with your comment. We don't pay good rates (at least compared to the US) so obviously we don't attract quality coders, at least from India. We've had very good success with people from the Eastern block, thought.
There must have been a time in the past when those stellar coders were unemployed and up for hire...
Just want to say that I work with and have worked with many stellar coders from India. I'd suggest not writing off over a billion people.
Well, lucky you! ;)
I'm not "writing off" a billion people. But. It's like finding a needle in a haystack.
I did some research when this happened, and they even have a name for this [1]
Coincidentally, our experience with people from Easter Europe is quite the opposite: Of all the people we hired from there, all except one were stellar (And the "one" was also good, just that he had some greys ethically: Had a disagreement with our boss, and disappeared over a weekend after siphoning large amounts of data from our system)
[1] https://thepolicytimes.com/chalta-hai-attitude-holding-india...
I'm not "writing off" a billion people. But. It's like finding a needle in a haystack.
I did some research when this happened, and they even have a name for this [1]
Coincidentally, our experience with people from Easter Europe is quite the opposite: Of all the people we hired from there, all except one were stellar (And the "one" was also good, just that he had some greys ethically: Had a disagreement with our boss, and disappeared over a weekend after siphoning large amounts of data from our system)
[1] https://thepolicytimes.com/chalta-hai-attitude-holding-india...
You’ve missed the point entirely
Please don't post swipes to HN. It would be fine to explain what the point was, in a neutral way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yes. In a fairly large public company I worked at, I remember a DBA on contract got fired because he knew absolutely nothing.
But only a few weeks later he was back, in the same building, but using a different name on a different floor working as a Senior Software Architect.
He got caught because someone in the DB department recognized him, called him by his old name and they pretended they never new him.
But only a few weeks later he was back, in the same building, but using a different name on a different floor working as a Senior Software Architect.
He got caught because someone in the DB department recognized him, called him by his old name and they pretended they never new him.
I can’t imagine the stress of trying that. Work can be hard enough, why add the complexity of lying about your name in a company people know you
I knew someone who learned on the job until they got fired. They faired much better on the next job. Hard times call for hard people.
Not terribly surprising, since companies have more or less refused to actually train anybody since the 80s or so.
What’s the point of training people when there’s at will employment
"What if we train them, and they leave?" — "What if we don't train them, and they stay?"
"What if we only hire them if they are already trained?"
Then you'll create a stagnant environment and you'll never be able to move toward or adapt to change. You'll forever be stuck using VB6 and... Well... You could perhaps make good money that way. Never mind
What's your alternative to at will employment? You know employment has always been at will in the US, and companies used to train people, right?
Huh... not calling cap - but did they get hired via Agency or by different company on the same building? I would assume a large public company does Employment Eligibility Verification (1-9 in US for example) - unless of course he was using a fake SS and name even in paperwork.
it may be that the contractor is not at all in control of this, but is instead used as a pawn by others; perhaps harsh life circumstances or maladapted psychology sink the lockin.
About 5 years ago at a previous company we had someone who interviewed well, and then the person who showed up was totally not the same quality person we had talked to previously. I guess the placement strategy at some low quality placement agencies is to just put someone good on the interview and hope the hiring company doesn't notice.
I haven't seen it recently, but I am now in a position where we have good recruiters who filter people before I ever see them.
I haven't seen it recently, but I am now in a position where we have good recruiters who filter people before I ever see them.
I had this happen to me at a former large employer. I insisted on removing the agency from our list of approved agencies and was told that if we did that to every agency that did that sort of fraud then we’d have no agencies in our budget range.
The damage an individual can do by being overemployed or fraudulent pales in comparison to what some of those agencies do, and they can be fucking over the candidate and company at the same time since they are middlemen.
Tons of calls for technical tests of individuals to prevent fraud/bad hires. No one does a technical interview for talent agency recruiters to make sure their company can filter candidates well though.
Tons of calls for technical tests of individuals to prevent fraud/bad hires. No one does a technical interview for talent agency recruiters to make sure their company can filter candidates well though.
> The damage an individual can do by being overemployed....
What "damage" does being "overemployed" do in and of itself? If the person is meeting expectations, as long as they're not moonlighting for a competitor, who cares what other things they do to make money?
What "damage" does being "overemployed" do in and of itself? If the person is meeting expectations, as long as they're not moonlighting for a competitor, who cares what other things they do to make money?
They’re referring to people who are incompetent and take roles in which they are not qualified to take.
In the case I was referring to, the developer who showed up for the job couldn’t even write a single line of code. We caught this quickly, but not immediately. There were certainly monetary damages from onboarding costs and time wasted, and non monetary damages from reputation with our customers.
In the case I was referring to, the developer who showed up for the job couldn’t even write a single line of code. We caught this quickly, but not immediately. There were certainly monetary damages from onboarding costs and time wasted, and non monetary damages from reputation with our customers.
Just to be specific in case you didn't know, "overemployed" refers to the practice of having multiple jobs both secretly and simultaneously.
FWIW I too thought it meant the opposite of underemployed.
I didn’t realize the “fraudulent holding of two jobs simultaneously” had acquired this name.
Apparently there are other definitions as well, used in economics. One being when workers want to work less (even for less money) but can’t… which is sort of the opposite of the two-jobs thing I guess:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-soc...
I didn’t realize the “fraudulent holding of two jobs simultaneously” had acquired this name.
Apparently there are other definitions as well, used in economics. One being when workers want to work less (even for less money) but can’t… which is sort of the opposite of the two-jobs thing I guess:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-soc...
What's fraudulent about it, assuming it's not violating any employment agreements?
In that case it wouldn’t be, but from what I’ve seen online most of the forums, tips etc about this are for people with two full-time jobs they “work” simultaneously and not for people who legitimately go to their second job after finishing their first job.
Good luck finding an employer who agrees to that.
Good luck finding an employer who agrees to that.
> Good luck finding an employer who agrees to that.
Just look for the phrase "results only work environment."
Just look for the phrase "results only work environment."
Yeah, I know, but in context I think it was clear what was meant.
Given the other comments of the person I replied to on this story, I don't think that's it.
In our case, management was quite unhappy, and I believe legal got involved. As you say, budget certainly has a role in determining the cross section of applicants you get, so… that’s just one more reason they’re my former employer.
> we’d have no agencies in our budget range
Well you get what you pay for.
Well you get what you pay for.
Ug... as someone that one day would like to work remote this is infuriating.
Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us.
Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us.
Maybe if companies haven't been fucking over people, colluding to keep wages low, offshoring, unpaid overtime, layoffs to protect investors and not employees, etc etc, maybe, just maybe I would feel like I should be honest/hard working. But since in 20+ years the amount of shit I've seen companies do to their employees, I seriously don't care anymore.
And guess what, when I decided to be an asshole, think only of myself and not give a fuck about the companies, voila, my renumeration started to go up and up and up (making 10x more now than when I was a 'company man').
Stop being an idiot (not parent, in general) and start looking for yourself only, in a few years you will see the rewards.
And guess what, when I decided to be an asshole, think only of myself and not give a fuck about the companies, voila, my renumeration started to go up and up and up (making 10x more now than when I was a 'company man').
Stop being an idiot (not parent, in general) and start looking for yourself only, in a few years you will see the rewards.
You have to look out for yourself but fraud is not the way to go
As a current job searcher, I literally tried to explain this to my mother a few hours ago. Basically, "I can't get anyone to hire me despite the fact that I interview very well because there's literally no trust that I've done the things I say I've done/worked on, and that are hard to substantiate because of the simple fact that I was making the products instead of making landing pages for the products."
>"I was making the products instead of making landing pages for the products"
Designing and making products is what I do for living as my own business. Never really had people's distrust when explaining them what / how I've done things. Of course I also have list of clients and reference letters from them along with phone numbers so if someone is in doubt they can check.
Designing and making products is what I do for living as my own business. Never really had people's distrust when explaining them what / how I've done things. Of course I also have list of clients and reference letters from them along with phone numbers so if someone is in doubt they can check.
I'm not sure if it's just "remote" or also aiming for cheap overseas contractors.
As a senior remote US employee I don't see how any of the companies I interviewed with would even allow past screening not turning on camera or other tricks like this.
As a senior remote US employee I don't see how any of the companies I interviewed with would even allow past screening not turning on camera or other tricks like this.
Sometimes, the problem is just getting to that first call.
If a job offer results in 20 genuine applicants, the company might set up 20 calls.
If the same job offer results in 20 genuine applications and 480 fraudsters, the seconds spent on a CV need to drop drastically for a HR person to make the decision to interview a candidate. And if the fraudsters do well faking a CV, and HR only has time for 20 calls, there are going to be a lot of false negatives (genuine candidates not getting a call back).
If a job offer results in 20 genuine applicants, the company might set up 20 calls.
If the same job offer results in 20 genuine applications and 480 fraudsters, the seconds spent on a CV need to drop drastically for a HR person to make the decision to interview a candidate. And if the fraudsters do well faking a CV, and HR only has time for 20 calls, there are going to be a lot of false negatives (genuine candidates not getting a call back).
As a New Zealander, unfortunately, I fall into the category of cheap overseas contractor. With our weak dollar working for a US company is a good way to earn above average. We're still much more expensive than some of the cheaper countries. In fact we're currently working with a Vietnamese contractor. He is very good and much cheaper than a local hire.
Please don't go into remote work with this attitude.
We speak fluent English and if we get up early we have a great timezone overlap with the US. There's no reason to settle for NZ rates with a US company.
We speak fluent English and if we get up early we have a great timezone overlap with the US. There's no reason to settle for NZ rates with a US company.
If I were to get a job with a US company I'd be expecting US rates. That would be the point.
That was kind of my point that while getting US rates is still and advantage for us here in NZ we can't compete based on price.
That was kind of my point that while getting US rates is still and advantage for us here in NZ we can't compete based on price.
What is a US rate? I get $120NZD per hr from local companies
Is that for a salaried position? If so well done!
No, that's not market rate for salary. I thought we were talking about contracts.
Salary seems to be around 150k +- 50k
Salary seems to be around 150k +- 50k
> Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us.
Sadly, they don't care.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Sadly, they don't care.
This is why we can't have nice things.
On the other hand, next time I'm on a 30 minute screening and end up getting left with 10 minutes to show them I can write a functional program they will be too worn out to ding me for silly stuff like concatenating Strings instead of properly using StringBuilder.
"You really should have used the enhanced for loop for that .." or "You really should have used a Lambda there" etc.
After years of tech screens like this over the course of my coding career I can't say Im not enjoying a little schadenfreude over this.
"You really should have used the enhanced for loop for that .." or "You really should have used a Lambda there" etc.
After years of tech screens like this over the course of my coding career I can't say Im not enjoying a little schadenfreude over this.
I get the feeling from this comment that tech interviewers would be very upset with how I write scripts in research. Part of the reason I will never shift to developer as a job is that the interview process is ridiculous. In universities, the uni hiring process is so imposing on the researcher's time that they just hire people they meet through informal processes outside the formal system. The informal system is usually a single interview, send your resume through, and the researcher checks your references to make sure you aren't lying scum.
> and the researcher checks your references to make sure you aren't lying scum.
That sounds way more professional than any interviewing process I've gone through in the industry /hj.
That sounds way more professional than any interviewing process I've gone through in the industry /hj.
Interesting! Maybe the stereotype of a tech interview is not the common experience of most developers? This would make more sense and leads me to think that HR is just justifying it's own existence with baroque processes that then make it even less relevant and useful.
FYI I went through a large phase in 2020-2021 where I responded to around 75 job offers and overall had 1-5 calls with ~35 companies each.
My cover letter contains a standard phrase about "references available on request".
No one requested them.
My cover letter contains a standard phrase about "references available on request".
No one requested them.
Every so often I come across a useful and hard to find data point - this is one of those times. Thanks for sharing this.
This is frequently how it works in smaller tech companies as well, although it's usually just getting sent straight through to the same final interview as everyone else.
Yeah, I know. I'm just venting really.
Um we can still have nice things if people stop being naive. It’s not hard to verify someone actually exists… there are ways.
The nice thing would be having a basic level of trust that the person you're interviewing is an actual person. If all job interviews need to start off with a CAPTCHA we'll be in a bad place.
I imagine these shell-game interview tricks work really well at large companies where the HR screen is considered to be perfect and thus managers rejecting numerous candidates at the interview layer will be penalized in some manner. "Look, Polly on the Cloud-X-AI team accepted 80% of applicants that reached the interview phase - why is your team accepting just 20%? Is this a culture fit issue that we'll need to intervene on?"
I imagine these shell-game interview tricks work really well at large companies where the HR screen is considered to be perfect and thus managers rejecting numerous candidates at the interview layer will be penalized in some manner. "Look, Polly on the Cloud-X-AI team accepted 80% of applicants that reached the interview phase - why is your team accepting just 20%? Is this a culture fit issue that we'll need to intervene on?"
I mean, I had a company asking me to send pictures of my passport and my residence permit by email in the first interview for a remote role. They acted very surprised when I flat out said "No, you can have them when you approach me with an offer. Then you can decide if my papers in order, not before"
Ended up not continuing the interview, as giving out very sensitive information like candies to companies on the first interviews is not a good idea at all.
Ended up not continuing the interview, as giving out very sensitive information like candies to companies on the first interviews is not a good idea at all.
I know. It was a joke.
I'm old, and have seen plenty of rejection, even though I'm "the real deal." But that kind of behavior has been used as an excuse for ignoring me. The icing on the cake, was when I was told that "I probably faked" my portfolio.
At that point, I realized that I am radioactive, and might as well just give up.
I'm old, and have seen plenty of rejection, even though I'm "the real deal." But that kind of behavior has been used as an excuse for ignoring me. The icing on the cake, was when I was told that "I probably faked" my portfolio.
At that point, I realized that I am radioactive, and might as well just give up.
Yeah, I've got that t-shirt. One guy flat out told me "I think your resume is a fraud". I'd had enough, and flatly said "I really don't give a flying fuck what you believe." It was worth it watching his partner beside him choking while drinking his water.
I followed up with a letter to the CEO with description of the event and proof of my credentials. No idea what happened to the interviewer, nor do I care.
I followed up with a letter to the CEO with description of the event and proof of my credentials. No idea what happened to the interviewer, nor do I care.
Holy cow, you can't get a job? What?!
That makes me feel better about not being able to.
That makes me feel better about not being able to.
I have been in the software industry, mostly writing code, for longer than some of the people interviewing me have been alive. It took me about a year of hunting to find my current job. I rejected a couple of offers. I walked away from a couple companies with too many red flags. And I got rejected over and over and over again.
It's just the way things are. Shrug it off. Don't take it personally. Move on.
It's just the way things are. Shrug it off. Don't take it personally. Move on.
I don't feel better. What hope is there for me then!? Fuck-em and their stupid snobby jobs anyway.
It makes me think that the r/cscareerquestions tack of forgetting everything else and focusing on just leetcode may actually have merit.
For what it's worth, I think Chris Marshall looks like a great developer and a professional I aspire to emulate. However, a lot of companies do make decisions based on metrics, keyword searches, and standardized tests like leetcode (aka stuff that misses out on the human element), so it makes sense to try and balance both if one hasn't done so already.
For what it's worth, I think Chris Marshall looks like a great developer and a professional I aspire to emulate. However, a lot of companies do make decisions based on metrics, keyword searches, and standardized tests like leetcode (aka stuff that misses out on the human element), so it makes sense to try and balance both if one hasn't done so already.
I'm sorry.
There's no hope for me either; I'm not a "good cultural fit" most of the time.
I agree with your last sentence, although I would word it a little differently. :)
There's no hope for me either; I'm not a "good cultural fit" most of the time.
I agree with your last sentence, although I would word it a little differently. :)
From your blog I expect that you'd be a cultural fit for the kind of place I'd like to work in. Unfortunately those places are not the that common.
Unfortunately, you're correct that they are not that common.
In fact, my last job was at a place where the salesman told me to not fix a bug I found until a customer ran into that bug so that "they'll remember why they need us." I was appalled.
I'm glad there are more programmers like me out there though. Thank you. :)
In fact, my last job was at a place where the salesman told me to not fix a bug I found until a customer ran into that bug so that "they'll remember why they need us." I was appalled.
I'm glad there are more programmers like me out there though. Thank you. :)
a magazine cover from the 90s really stands out in my mind (I was a professional C++ coder at the time). It was about some latest-thing code team management and the cover illustration was hand-drawn, of seven gray-beard guys, looking somewhat sagacious with an aura of wisdom and insight, all gathered in a semi-circle around a single whiteboard (like an easle) solving some serious, high skill problem. Anyone with training in classical (european) arts would recognize the council of sages, and the drawing was good. There was no questioning that these (perl programmers?) were at the top of the game on that magazine cover. then came The Google ! haunting image
Once worked at a 3rd party coding interview company as an interviewer, and we had a bunch of grad students from a college who were all clearly cheating. They solved the problem from the top of the page down (rather than organically, as someone would when doing actual programming) in a very specific way.
The company didn't want to disqualify those candidates, since we couldn't prove cheating, but it was pretty fascinating to witness.
The company didn't want to disqualify those candidates, since we couldn't prove cheating, but it was pretty fascinating to witness.
Fortunately our company gives us the option to reject a candidate if we feel they are cheating and can provide an explanation. Once had a candidate solve a problem extremely quickly but they could not explain how they solved it all. I then made a small modification to the problem which wouldn't have changed the solution much and they were completely lost.
This is the way. I believe a simple 45-minute exercise one-on-one between a programmer and a candidate is all you need to gather the necessary information to hire. Simple followup questions like, "Before you start coding, talk me through your thought process and let's discuss a few implementations", "What's another way to solve this problem?" will weed out any bullshitters, and even find hidden strengths in candidates that would never be discovered in an automated Leetcode type interview.
Real discussion between two programmers, sounds actually like real interview. Unlike robotic leetcode type: “problem prompt-memorized solution from LC.com-memorized BigO answer” type interview
I feel that most avid readers of the green book would behave like that. If you consider that cheating its probably better to find another interview method.
(I do hate code interviews)
(I do hate code interviews)
In my experience that isn't accurate. There are a lot of folks who studied Hacking the Coding Interview and are able to use the skills they've gained, but who aren't willing to cheat in the process.
What’s the green book?
ISBN-13: 978-0984782857
Cracking The Coding Interview
https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming...
https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming...
What happens to the ones who don’t cheat?
If there is a curve of some sort they can be screwed even if they are well qualified.
Probably, but small instances of cheating aren't going to push the curve all that much. We were mostly functioning as a first layer as well, so if the likely cheaters couldn't perform, they'd still get filtered out during the companies' onsites. At least that was the rationale.
Yes. I just had an odd
Interview a couple of weeks ago. We were looking for a contractor and interviewed someone. The location he gave was the middle of nowhere, British Columbia.
Turns out though, I don’t live that far away from there. I can see his window was full of heavy, dark clouds. However, there was a heat wave going on and there wasn’t a cloud for hundreds of miles.
“Huh. Odd that we’re so close, it’s almost 90 down here and it look like it’s about to pour rain up where you are…” I said.
Turns out though, I don’t live that far away from there. I can see his window was full of heavy, dark clouds. However, there was a heat wave going on and there wasn’t a cloud for hundreds of miles.
“Huh. Odd that we’re so close, it’s almost 90 down here and it look like it’s about to pour rain up where you are…” I said.
Oh you know that bc weather can get crazy
Interesting that this has increased recently from the perspective of OP, but it has always been the case, and it's an annoying timesink.
My favourite example of this was a interviewee for a post working on Oracle data warehouses. A colleague ran the guy's CV under my nose before the interview - it was strange - it kept on changing tense, and contained a bit too much random technical information about Oracle's tooling.
I Googled a random phrase, and discovered that 50% of the CV was directly lifted from the Oracle manual for their ETL and DW product.
The point is that despite being comically bad, he'll have interviewed somewhere else, got the job thanks to a clueless hiring manager, and have spent three months learning the product before getting canned (optimistically).
The last time I saw a boom in this behaviour was in 2007.
My favourite example of this was a interviewee for a post working on Oracle data warehouses. A colleague ran the guy's CV under my nose before the interview - it was strange - it kept on changing tense, and contained a bit too much random technical information about Oracle's tooling.
I Googled a random phrase, and discovered that 50% of the CV was directly lifted from the Oracle manual for their ETL and DW product.
The point is that despite being comically bad, he'll have interviewed somewhere else, got the job thanks to a clueless hiring manager, and have spent three months learning the product before getting canned (optimistically).
The last time I saw a boom in this behaviour was in 2007.
Ask HN: Anyone having issues with job description fraud?
The job market is a market. Nobody owes you anything. In most job fields the buyer has the leverage over the seller so the buyers will go out of their way to press that leverage (low pay, low benefits, impossible demands etc). It just happens that in a few fields the seller has the advantage so they're doing the same thing to you. My point is you have to accept it and move on, because things like this happen all the time and won't ever stop.
The job market is a market. Nobody owes you anything. In most job fields the buyer has the leverage over the seller so the buyers will go out of their way to press that leverage (low pay, low benefits, impossible demands etc). It just happens that in a few fields the seller has the advantage so they're doing the same thing to you. My point is you have to accept it and move on, because things like this happen all the time and won't ever stop.
I had an instance where I applied to a Fortune 500 company. The minimums were broken out as a survey, and you were automatically (and explicitly) disqualified if you answered "wrong". One of the minimums contradicted the posting, and being honest, I was disqualified.
Months later, after the summer, I got a frenzied email from HR asking me to apply again. Apparently the posting ruled out all the candidates, someone high-up thought for-sure "someone" was qualified.
Months later, after the summer, I got a frenzied email from HR asking me to apply again. Apparently the posting ruled out all the candidates, someone high-up thought for-sure "someone" was qualified.
I keep getting hired for programming roles then they have me do everything except program. Jira, terraform, code reviews, design docs, meetings, deploys, on calls... I get that this is the job, but I'm a really good programmer and it hardly gets used.
I'm currently looking for a job and I can't tell you the amount of times the job description or the experience required doesn't match what the team is actually looking for.
Also, I very clearly lay out in my resume and with the initial phone interview that I have 6 years Python experience and 1 year in C++. I've had recruiters reach out to me about positions requiring 5+ years of C++ experience when I am currently looking for Python jobs
Also, I very clearly lay out in my resume and with the initial phone interview that I have 6 years Python experience and 1 year in C++. I've had recruiters reach out to me about positions requiring 5+ years of C++ experience when I am currently looking for Python jobs
It used to happen alot with contract bodyshops, even in person.
Usually you’d get weird looking resumes from someone based out of New Jersey or Arizona. In most cases the employees were Indian and would phone screen well. When the person landed, usually they were green staff who would basically send their work back to a more senior person or team who would do the work elsewhere overnight.
With remote, there’s definitely more fraud in this space, from people lying about where they are, stealing information and just grifting.
Usually you’d get weird looking resumes from someone based out of New Jersey or Arizona. In most cases the employees were Indian and would phone screen well. When the person landed, usually they were green staff who would basically send their work back to a more senior person or team who would do the work elsewhere overnight.
With remote, there’s definitely more fraud in this space, from people lying about where they are, stealing information and just grifting.
One of my clients (where screening CVs was one of my duties) had a different kind of fraud.
On a particular week, we received a lot of CVs for a DevOps position. They shared a few common characteristics: were sent through Indeed, allegedly from Indians who emigrated to the USA, talked about skills and duties but not achievements, and were longer than one would normally write. Additionally, they used too-low-level phrases that one would never use in the CVs, like, e.g. when describing their experience with Ansible, "use the 'file' module to copy files to and from remote systems". I.e. phrases that would appear in a course curriculum, but not in a proper CV.
The final red flag for me was a phrase repeated word for word in two CVs allegedly from different people.
I don't really know how to react properly to this, in order to avoid lawsuits for rejecting candidates based on nationality and other kinds of discrimination (ans I was specifically instructed about discrimination-based lawsuits as a very real risk, something that happened before). So I just told about the problem to the head of HR, marked all CVs received through Indeed on that week as highly suspect (even those that a casual reader would mark as OK), and let him deal with it. I don't know what exactly he did.
On a particular week, we received a lot of CVs for a DevOps position. They shared a few common characteristics: were sent through Indeed, allegedly from Indians who emigrated to the USA, talked about skills and duties but not achievements, and were longer than one would normally write. Additionally, they used too-low-level phrases that one would never use in the CVs, like, e.g. when describing their experience with Ansible, "use the 'file' module to copy files to and from remote systems". I.e. phrases that would appear in a course curriculum, but not in a proper CV.
The final red flag for me was a phrase repeated word for word in two CVs allegedly from different people.
I don't really know how to react properly to this, in order to avoid lawsuits for rejecting candidates based on nationality and other kinds of discrimination (ans I was specifically instructed about discrimination-based lawsuits as a very real risk, something that happened before). So I just told about the problem to the head of HR, marked all CVs received through Indeed on that week as highly suspect (even those that a casual reader would mark as OK), and let him deal with it. I don't know what exactly he did.
I've seen this a lot this year.
Other red flags:
Resume says they live somewhere without large immigrant populations like some random town in the Midwest. Places that aren't really tech hubs so you wouldn't expect to find many immigrant tech workers there.
When you phone/video screen them. They are barely able to speak English to the point where you wonder how it's possible for them to survive in the area they claim to live in (again not areas known for large non-hispanic immigrant populations so you'd expect that a certain level of English competency is a required to function).
Sometimes they take the interview in what sounds like a noisy environment. Sounds a bit like a call center. You start to wonder if there are other "candidates" doing interviews for other companies in the same vicinity.
It's definitely been a time waster but I obviously will not filter resumes based on nationality which I think is morally reprehensible (not to mention the legalities that you mentioned).
Other red flags:
Resume says they live somewhere without large immigrant populations like some random town in the Midwest. Places that aren't really tech hubs so you wouldn't expect to find many immigrant tech workers there.
When you phone/video screen them. They are barely able to speak English to the point where you wonder how it's possible for them to survive in the area they claim to live in (again not areas known for large non-hispanic immigrant populations so you'd expect that a certain level of English competency is a required to function).
Sometimes they take the interview in what sounds like a noisy environment. Sounds a bit like a call center. You start to wonder if there are other "candidates" doing interviews for other companies in the same vicinity.
It's definitely been a time waster but I obviously will not filter resumes based on nationality which I think is morally reprehensible (not to mention the legalities that you mentioned).
This is exactly why the technical interview process is what it is. No point wasting time asking about backgrounds and describing past projects (all of it can be easily faked). Make them write code in front of you live as part of the screening round.
The goal of an interview is to let great people through. It's not to see how well people code while you're watching their every keystroke.
I used to make people write code in front of me. I've missed out on some excellent candidates that don't perform at their best with that kind of pressure.
What I do now is ask people to share some code with me that they're proud of. Before the interview I look through it. Then on the call we'll have a quick talk through anything good or weird I've spotted. That helps me know if they've actually written it, and understand it.
Secondly I ask them to talk me through an interesting (to them) project they've worked. Then I dig into the how/why on project specifics to see how deep their understanding is. I tend to navigate to specifics that'll be important in the work I'm offering.
I also give candidates a heads up that that's what I'll be doing so they're not caught off guard. It's hard for them to know exactly the path of our conversation, but if they know what they've done and why they perform well.
With those tactics I've been able to hire some excellent engineers - several of which get quite anxious at the prospect of writing code in front of strangers.
I used to make people write code in front of me. I've missed out on some excellent candidates that don't perform at their best with that kind of pressure.
What I do now is ask people to share some code with me that they're proud of. Before the interview I look through it. Then on the call we'll have a quick talk through anything good or weird I've spotted. That helps me know if they've actually written it, and understand it.
Secondly I ask them to talk me through an interesting (to them) project they've worked. Then I dig into the how/why on project specifics to see how deep their understanding is. I tend to navigate to specifics that'll be important in the work I'm offering.
I also give candidates a heads up that that's what I'll be doing so they're not caught off guard. It's hard for them to know exactly the path of our conversation, but if they know what they've done and why they perform well.
With those tactics I've been able to hire some excellent engineers - several of which get quite anxious at the prospect of writing code in front of strangers.
> What I do now is ask people to share some code with me that they're proud of.
What if they dont have code to share?
What if they dont have code to share?
Good question. That can happen - though it's usually for more junior roles. In that case I give them a take home task. The important thing here is that whether or not the result is good, I commit to talking it through with them (provided it works).
You might ask "why spend your time walking through code for a candidate that won't make it through?" Well, it's important for me that if people aren't a good fit for the role, they would be happy recommend us to people that they think are a good fit. Interviewing with that mindset ensures I (and my team) treat candidates like people, instead of like numbers.
In the spirit of the actual Ask HN though, I have had a small number of candidates that were deceptive, or difficult. In those cases it's just a polite but firm "I'm going to have to draw this call to close because <xyz /> and I don't want to string you along." Fortunately I've not had a person different to the interview show up on day 1 though... that'd be a little more awkward.
You might ask "why spend your time walking through code for a candidate that won't make it through?" Well, it's important for me that if people aren't a good fit for the role, they would be happy recommend us to people that they think are a good fit. Interviewing with that mindset ensures I (and my team) treat candidates like people, instead of like numbers.
In the spirit of the actual Ask HN though, I have had a small number of candidates that were deceptive, or difficult. In those cases it's just a polite but firm "I'm going to have to draw this call to close because <xyz /> and I don't want to string you along." Fortunately I've not had a person different to the interview show up on day 1 though... that'd be a little more awkward.
I don't like making people write code live. Some really good coders just don't work well with people looking over their shoulder.
I prefer giving people a take-home with an original problem to solve. Then, follow that up with a live call where you ask them some questions about it.
I prefer giving people a take-home with an original problem to solve. Then, follow that up with a live call where you ask them some questions about it.
I've found that candidates have little or non appetite for take home problems.
If they are busy interviewing, putting aside 2-3 hours (which is not much really) per interview, limits how many they are willing to do per week. As its still a candidate driven market.
Keep in mind, people have to find the spare time while doing their jobs and living life. If they have a family - good luck finding spare time :-)
The best win/win I've found is to pair with someone for about 30 minutes. You help each other, just like you do in real life.
If they are busy interviewing, putting aside 2-3 hours (which is not much really) per interview, limits how many they are willing to do per week. As its still a candidate driven market.
Keep in mind, people have to find the spare time while doing their jobs and living life. If they have a family - good luck finding spare time :-)
The best win/win I've found is to pair with someone for about 30 minutes. You help each other, just like you do in real life.
You can still be coached through a take-home and follow-up though.
I like to ask a very easy problem to start (some candidates spend the full 45 minutes on it) and then ask a similar problem after to build on it. If you work for a company there is some expectation of being able to work while people watch you. I don't like asking crazy dynamic programming problems, etc, but something simple and something slightly harder should be fine for someone who's good at their job.
I like to ask a very easy problem to start (some candidates spend the full 45 minutes on it) and then ask a similar problem after to build on it. If you work for a company there is some expectation of being able to work while people watch you. I don't like asking crazy dynamic programming problems, etc, but something simple and something slightly harder should be fine for someone who's good at their job.
> If you work for a company there is some expectation of being able to work while people watch you.
I don't know what kind of company you work for, but, in spite of the fact that every single technical interview I've ever had involved live coding, I've literally never had to write code in front of anyone at work. By "write code" I mean "write code that's expected to compile and run." I've done plenty of whiteboarding at work, but never anything like what happens in a technical interview.
I don't know what kind of company you work for, but, in spite of the fact that every single technical interview I've ever had involved live coding, I've literally never had to write code in front of anyone at work. By "write code" I mean "write code that's expected to compile and run." I've done plenty of whiteboarding at work, but never anything like what happens in a technical interview.
you never had to work through some piece of code together with a team mate? to get help or to explain to them how something works?
That's not in any way comparable to live coding in an interview, for multiple reasons.
ok, you are right.
i brushed over this bit, which makes the critical difference:
write code that's expected to compile and run
for what it's worth, i never had an interview where this was required (except in a coding test, but that was without being watched while i worked on it) and to me it totally does not make sense especially for a whiteboard. making sure every semicolon or brace is in the right place would just be a colossal waste of time.
i brushed over this bit, which makes the critical difference:
write code that's expected to compile and run
for what it's worth, i never had an interview where this was required (except in a coding test, but that was without being watched while i worked on it) and to me it totally does not make sense especially for a whiteboard. making sure every semicolon or brace is in the right place would just be a colossal waste of time.
> You can still be coached through a take-home and follow-up though.
Of course. Anyone who lacks the ability to complete the assignment can submit a solution written by someone else and be told how it works. Where they’ll fail in follow-up questioning is when you dive into their decision making process.
I have only found one person to have cheated in an interview, and they were exceedingly easy to identify as a fraud when questioned in person.
Of course. Anyone who lacks the ability to complete the assignment can submit a solution written by someone else and be told how it works. Where they’ll fail in follow-up questioning is when you dive into their decision making process.
I have only found one person to have cheated in an interview, and they were exceedingly easy to identify as a fraud when questioned in person.
Personally, when a company asks me to do a take home, I say no.
What’s your approach? I don’t like giving take home because it’s too easy to cheat, and ends up being an exhibition in how much excessive effort someone will put in. But, I think it’s great if you can have a second discussion so they can explain what they wrote.
What do you prefer?
Yep, that's me. I feel like an experiment when people are watching what I'm doing, even if it's something as mundane as browsing the web.
I used to do a lot of work in an electronics lab that had a whole bunch of windows on one wall that looked out onto a hallway. That hallway was more or less the main passage through the building, so it was fairly high traffic. I used to tell people I felt like I was working in the engineer exhibit at the zoo.
i feel uncomfortable when people watch me browsing or worse reading email or the like, but not when coding. especially not when it's colleagues, since it is their project too
They sometimes literally have a different person do the interview than shows up in person; no interview process catches that.
how about ID check? (if interview is conducted onsite in the office)
My understanding is that the scams usually target hiring processes that are all remote, often the applicants are from far away.
> Make them write code in front of you live as part of the screening round.
I think there's always lots of arguing over what's the correct way to do this.
Ideally, I think you'd basically have any number of options, from which you (the candidate) could pick whatever feels the most suitable:
Then again, many companies/countries out there have a sort of grace period, for example, in Latvia that is 3 months - during which an employee's suitability for the work environment is assessed.
So, give them low priority issues to solve in non-core products, or even additional code tests to work on or prototypes to build, which should very quickly show whether they're suited or not.
More so, in some companies your salary during this period can be lower and the laws around quitting (or being fired) can also be more streamlined.
Of course, one could argue that some would exploit this to just rotate people after 3 months for low salaries, but I would at least hope that such attempts would be glaringly obvious and not much would get done in just 3 months of work.
I think there's always lots of arguing over what's the correct way to do this.
Ideally, I think you'd basically have any number of options, from which you (the candidate) could pick whatever feels the most suitable:
[ ] - solve an algorithmic problem in person, show code, discuss now
[ ] - solve an algorithmic problem later, share Git repo, discuss later
[ ] - solve a real world problem in person, show code, discuss now
[ ] - solve a real world problem later, share Git repo, discuss later
Then again, many companies/countries out there have a sort of grace period, for example, in Latvia that is 3 months - during which an employee's suitability for the work environment is assessed.
So, give them low priority issues to solve in non-core products, or even additional code tests to work on or prototypes to build, which should very quickly show whether they're suited or not.
More so, in some companies your salary during this period can be lower and the laws around quitting (or being fired) can also be more streamlined.
Of course, one could argue that some would exploit this to just rotate people after 3 months for low salaries, but I would at least hope that such attempts would be glaringly obvious and not much would get done in just 3 months of work.
> Of course, one could argue that some would exploit this to just rotate people after 3 months for low salaries, but I would at least hope that such attempts would be glaringly obvious and not much would get done in just 3 months of work.
As a candidate you should be able to detect easily during the interview that it would a bad place to work for.
As a candidate you should be able to detect easily during the interview that it would a bad place to work for.
The coding portion is the easiest to cheat on. I know because I interviewed someone who did cheat. She shared her screen with someone else and had someone talking her through the interview. Somehow the audio feeds crossed, and I heard the guy speaking.
The person on the other end is probably just googling keywords from whatever question you ask. You can throw them off by asking followup questions or adding new constraints.
The person on the other end is probably just googling keywords from whatever question you ask. You can throw them off by asking followup questions or adding new constraints.
> You can throw them off by asking followup questions or adding new constraints.
This only works if the helper couldn’t get the job. I just experienced one of these, and I don’t know what to do to protect us.
This only works if the helper couldn’t get the job. I just experienced one of these, and I don’t know what to do to protect us.
Yes, that's true. My company has made a number of questionable hires since the pandemic, when companies stopped doing in-person interviews. There will always be people who cheat but maybe requiring a few in-person interviews and imposing financial penalties will discourage this sort of behavior.
> who refuse to use their cameras during Zoom interviews and who often can't answer specific questions about their backgrounds.
Glad someone said this. Also most programmers and developers knows how tech works, they just don't want to be profiled by some AI algorithm. And why use Zoom, or any of close source, when you have jitsi to use for a video/voice chat?
Glad someone said this. Also most programmers and developers knows how tech works, they just don't want to be profiled by some AI algorithm. And why use Zoom, or any of close source, when you have jitsi to use for a video/voice chat?
Someone I know hired an experienced programmer from Indian who interviewed well. When his first day started, he seemed extremely junior - needed basic things explained to him like command line usage. One of the people who interviewed him saw him on camera and told the EM he was pretty sure it was a different guy. The EM confronted him and he admitted it, so they let him go.
Makes me wonder what % of the time this actually works and no one is willing to fire them, or if it's just worth the salary of collecting a month of pay before you're found out.
Makes me wonder what % of the time this actually works and no one is willing to fire them, or if it's just worth the salary of collecting a month of pay before you're found out.
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One thing that is really fascinating after reading many of the comments here is how hard people try to leap over the fence into the job-world of tech. Sure, if you have the experience or education, it's not that hard. But if you never had the opportunity to learn it or work it, a tech job may as far away as Elysium.
Conversely, anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can learn most tech topics. With the right amount of self study, personal project work and focus, you can acquire the skills needed to land an entry level job and then work your way up.
Maybe it just boils down to the fact that there are always people who try to short cut the path to senior dev salaries.
Conversely, anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can learn most tech topics. With the right amount of self study, personal project work and focus, you can acquire the skills needed to land an entry level job and then work your way up.
Maybe it just boils down to the fact that there are always people who try to short cut the path to senior dev salaries.
Asserting that "anyone can learn moderately complex subject X if they just study enough" differs very little from conservatives saying "anyone can get a good job if they work hard enough".
Some humans have limiting factors beyond a lack of education and/or work ethic. For example, someone who lacks the cognitive ability for abstract thought, or the working memory to chain multiple mental constructs together is probably never going to understand pointers, no matter how hard they try or how long they study them.
They may eventually be able to replicate examples they were shown with enough repetition, but purely as a function of memory recall, not a function of understanding what's actually going on.
These kinds of assertions can come across as very disempowering and dismissive to such people, just a heads up.
Some humans have limiting factors beyond a lack of education and/or work ethic. For example, someone who lacks the cognitive ability for abstract thought, or the working memory to chain multiple mental constructs together is probably never going to understand pointers, no matter how hard they try or how long they study them.
They may eventually be able to replicate examples they were shown with enough repetition, but purely as a function of memory recall, not a function of understanding what's actually going on.
These kinds of assertions can come across as very disempowering and dismissive to such people, just a heads up.
I think they were just getting at the fact most people see programming as a black box, or were scared off from the math requirements to ever consider it in school. Whereas we all know if you can write an email, you can write a script.
We had an issue with a candidate who was attempting to use our access to processing networks to facilitate financial crime. It was a coordinated state actor tactic.
Happy to share more info with founders over email or IM; I don’t want to publicly draw the ire of those who attempted this.
Happy to share more info with founders over email or IM; I don’t want to publicly draw the ire of those who attempted this.
I’m certainly curious. In a role that deals with large money movement.
Feel free to email the address in my profile.
Eastern european cc fraud rings do that, there is black market for these type services like merchant and bank accounts to run stolen cc through
Not only have I seen this several times, I've also encountered multiple instances of "over-employed" software engineers, who are doing 2-3 full time salaried positions from home, at the same time. This is surprisingly easy to get away with unnoticed in the US tax system, as you get a separate W2 from each employer. It's genuinely a lot more difficult to do this in some other countries. There's even this service now offered to let employers try to catch this:
> https://theworknumber.com/
> https://theworknumber.com/
Although most "office worker" contracts disallow this, it's not illegal for an American to work two fulltime jobs, and many people do something similar out of necessity.
Yeah but that doesn't look fun. My roommate is doing this now. I think it's insane, they sit at their desk with three computers working all day long. They're stressed out and burning out rapidly.
No thanks.
No thanks.
Maybe they want to do this for a couple of years and save money for a house deposit, once you get the house, just stick to one job.
Just give them a simple screening coding challenge like copying a file to s3, then if their code looks OK ask them to justify their decisions, eg error handling, testing, etc. Tell them not to spend more than 1 hour on it. Google won't help much.
I've had people use IDEs to auto create empty test cases, hard code file paths etc. No point wasting time on an interview and anyone competent will smash it.
I've had people use IDEs to auto create empty test cases, hard code file paths etc. No point wasting time on an interview and anyone competent will smash it.
I believe this is reasonable advice but I believe it can be simplified even further.
Live-coding in an interview be it in a text editor (shitty or otherwise - those web based platforms can be really painful and slow to use when sharing a screen with zoom, e.g.) or on a whiteboard is a skill, and I’m not sure it is one that is worth optimizing for because I’m not sure that this particular skill really has much to do with day-to-day software development. I am sure it doesn’t hurt to be able to perform in a foreign environment with someone judging you over your shoulder but I hope dev work in general possesses as little of this type of work as possible.
But you can simplify the problem considerably and ask someone to solve a fairly easy problem in just about any live coding fashion. To wit: I learned Java in school, spent some time at a job using other languages, then interviewed for an intermediate software developer position. The hiring manager asked me to write fizzbuzz in Java. I had never heard of the fizz buzz problem and I hadn’t written Java in some time. Still, I was able to successfully solve the problem with a minimum of difficulty (though admittedly a maximum of nerves). He asked me a few questions about how to improve the solution, and I mumbled some stuff about combining string concatenation statements instead of simply appending to the string, something which made him nod his head sagely and that I still consider to be a largely useless micro-optimization, but the main thing, the important part, is that I demonstrated some coding ability in a matter of minutes, right in front of his eyes.
It’s something that sticks with me and I think it’s a valuable type of interview question.
I got the job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_buzz
Live-coding in an interview be it in a text editor (shitty or otherwise - those web based platforms can be really painful and slow to use when sharing a screen with zoom, e.g.) or on a whiteboard is a skill, and I’m not sure it is one that is worth optimizing for because I’m not sure that this particular skill really has much to do with day-to-day software development. I am sure it doesn’t hurt to be able to perform in a foreign environment with someone judging you over your shoulder but I hope dev work in general possesses as little of this type of work as possible.
But you can simplify the problem considerably and ask someone to solve a fairly easy problem in just about any live coding fashion. To wit: I learned Java in school, spent some time at a job using other languages, then interviewed for an intermediate software developer position. The hiring manager asked me to write fizzbuzz in Java. I had never heard of the fizz buzz problem and I hadn’t written Java in some time. Still, I was able to successfully solve the problem with a minimum of difficulty (though admittedly a maximum of nerves). He asked me a few questions about how to improve the solution, and I mumbled some stuff about combining string concatenation statements instead of simply appending to the string, something which made him nod his head sagely and that I still consider to be a largely useless micro-optimization, but the main thing, the important part, is that I demonstrated some coding ability in a matter of minutes, right in front of his eyes.
It’s something that sticks with me and I think it’s a valuable type of interview question.
I got the job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_buzz
Writing fizz buzz is practically a meme, but worse, what can you really talk about?
I agree about live coding which is why we send that test to them pre-interview - it's to screen potential candidates.
If they get to an interview, a reasonable amount of it is to ask what they've done and why, e.g.
* Did they write a CLI parser?
* If so, did they add sensible options (e.g. to force overwriting files that exist on the destination or not), or aren't they bothering to check whether files already exist on the destination
* Did they add/stub out tests? If so, to test what?
* What does error handling look like? Boto performs retries by default. Is this their justification or didn't they think about it?
* How else could they have done it (e.g. use a library vs shelling out to the aws cli binary).
It's complicated enough that it helps show their proactiveness. The instructions include 'making it good', and also say they can just stub out/write comments for what they would do if they were doing it for real.
It's saved loads of time in the past by filtering out people who don't even have the basics, and it's relevant to the work.
I agree about live coding which is why we send that test to them pre-interview - it's to screen potential candidates.
If they get to an interview, a reasonable amount of it is to ask what they've done and why, e.g.
* Did they write a CLI parser?
* If so, did they add sensible options (e.g. to force overwriting files that exist on the destination or not), or aren't they bothering to check whether files already exist on the destination
* Did they add/stub out tests? If so, to test what?
* What does error handling look like? Boto performs retries by default. Is this their justification or didn't they think about it?
* How else could they have done it (e.g. use a library vs shelling out to the aws cli binary).
It's complicated enough that it helps show their proactiveness. The instructions include 'making it good', and also say they can just stub out/write comments for what they would do if they were doing it for real.
It's saved loads of time in the past by filtering out people who don't even have the basics, and it's relevant to the work.
I understand that your task which maxes out at one hour has some value. I have written such tests as a candidate and some have been good. I have iterated on the development of such tests as an interviewer. I feel that they can offer a candidate an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities without a big investment of time.
But there still is the matter of that one hour. If I am applying to a job that has a hard limit on the amount of time that I can spend on that task, and I really want that job, you can bet that if I can figure out how to arrange my schedule so that I can spend more than an hour, and if I can figure out how to make it look like I spent no more than one hour, I will. And I believe there are those candidates who may not have the time to spend on unpaid work. It may be harder than it appears on the surface: There are quite likely other commitments in the candidate's life. There may be other interviews that the candidate is facing, each with its own technical requirements, some of which may requiring learning, study, or refreshing (as may your own). There may be other job application processes that the candidate is dealing with that also have one-hour pre-interview coding tasks.
There is also the fact that the candidate has to trust that you will evaluate them fairly. I believe that a published rubric can go a long way to alleviate this particular concern.
I'm not saying I have all the answers, as I know that I do not. But I believe that asking a candidate to take "one hour" of their lives for a simple coding task, unpaid, can sometimes cost more than is obvious.
If I can ask someone to solve a question (fizzbuzz, the find method in a binary search tree, ...) in real-time, I feel it is sometimes more respectful of the candidate's time. If the candidate has the time and the inclination to code a pre-interview task, by all means, it is a great method of assessment.
But there still is the matter of that one hour. If I am applying to a job that has a hard limit on the amount of time that I can spend on that task, and I really want that job, you can bet that if I can figure out how to arrange my schedule so that I can spend more than an hour, and if I can figure out how to make it look like I spent no more than one hour, I will. And I believe there are those candidates who may not have the time to spend on unpaid work. It may be harder than it appears on the surface: There are quite likely other commitments in the candidate's life. There may be other interviews that the candidate is facing, each with its own technical requirements, some of which may requiring learning, study, or refreshing (as may your own). There may be other job application processes that the candidate is dealing with that also have one-hour pre-interview coding tasks.
There is also the fact that the candidate has to trust that you will evaluate them fairly. I believe that a published rubric can go a long way to alleviate this particular concern.
I'm not saying I have all the answers, as I know that I do not. But I believe that asking a candidate to take "one hour" of their lives for a simple coding task, unpaid, can sometimes cost more than is obvious.
If I can ask someone to solve a question (fizzbuzz, the find method in a binary search tree, ...) in real-time, I feel it is sometimes more respectful of the candidate's time. If the candidate has the time and the inclination to code a pre-interview task, by all means, it is a great method of assessment.
A link to github or other coding sample is also accepted. It's a starting point for asking questions.
Simple - just auto-reject anyone who refuses to use a camera or answer specifics.
That still costs you (the employer) money. It's like a DoS attack for your hiring system.
E.g. a nefarious actor could harm a competitor by overwhelming them with fake applicants that it takes time to sift through.
E.g. a nefarious actor could harm a competitor by overwhelming them with fake applicants that it takes time to sift through.
This is the reason why employee recommendation have far higher success rate.
Now someone just needs to tell companies that the way to reward those is with significant cash in hand.
I've had companies offer $500 for a referral, if that person took the job and stayed with the company for at least 6 months (this was for a position with a salary of ~50$ per hour).
I've had companies offer $500 for a referral, if that person took the job and stayed with the company for at least 6 months (this was for a position with a salary of ~50$ per hour).
In my experience, most halfway respectable companies already do?
500 bucks is IMO on the low side for an employee referral in the US if it's for software engineering... the amount of money you save the hiring team alone in recruiting efforts is often in the thousands of dollars, and they often stay longer and are often the best hires - not surprising if former colleagues they like are already there...
For roles I've worked, I've never seen less than $2k offered for a successfully recommended technical hire, both at startups and BigCos. Most places I've worked have offered around $5k.
500 bucks is IMO on the low side for an employee referral in the US if it's for software engineering... the amount of money you save the hiring team alone in recruiting efforts is often in the thousands of dollars, and they often stay longer and are often the best hires - not surprising if former colleagues they like are already there...
For roles I've worked, I've never seen less than $2k offered for a successfully recommended technical hire, both at startups and BigCos. Most places I've worked have offered around $5k.
I've never seen less than $5k, and for much needed roles it's usually at least $10k.
I think it just comes down to the quality of company.
I think it just comes down to the quality of company.
True, but it costs you less if you just do it from minute 1 instead of letting them go through the process.
You'll be missing out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674503
Yes we’re having problems along those lines. We don’t proceed with interviews unless video is available
- Multiple candidates with the same resume
- Resume doesn’t include full name, location or LinkedIn
- Candidate blatantly lies during interview
- Candidate is observed copying answers from the web, unable to explain how it works
- Language barrier issues
- Candidate applying for a senior role can’t solve simple problem
- Job hopping every 6 months or 1 year
- Multiple candidates with the same resume
- Resume doesn’t include full name, location or LinkedIn
- Candidate blatantly lies during interview
- Candidate is observed copying answers from the web, unable to explain how it works
- Language barrier issues
- Candidate applying for a senior role can’t solve simple problem
- Job hopping every 6 months or 1 year
> We don’t proceed with interviews unless video is available
Just throwing this out there. I've been interviewing lately and on more than one occasion now I've had the recruiter/screener pull the "oh, haha, my camera's not working" gag. Mistakes happen, but I wasn't born yesterday. So now I don't switch on my camera until I see the interviewer first. Needs to be a level playing field. I'm not interviewing through a one-way mirror.
You need to be clear when sending out the Zoom/Teams/WebEx invite that there will be video.
I had one screener kind of act annoyed that I didn't have video and I'm thinking to myself, "This is a phone call pal, your camera is off too." More than likely the WFH screener is just chilling in his or her bath robe or footy pajamas.
Just throwing this out there. I've been interviewing lately and on more than one occasion now I've had the recruiter/screener pull the "oh, haha, my camera's not working" gag. Mistakes happen, but I wasn't born yesterday. So now I don't switch on my camera until I see the interviewer first. Needs to be a level playing field. I'm not interviewing through a one-way mirror.
You need to be clear when sending out the Zoom/Teams/WebEx invite that there will be video.
I had one screener kind of act annoyed that I didn't have video and I'm thinking to myself, "This is a phone call pal, your camera is off too." More than likely the WFH screener is just chilling in his or her bath robe or footy pajamas.
Shameless plug - I've been building the startup Wedge[0]. In addition to helping prevent application fraud, I deeply believe applicants are _people_ and have more to share beyond a resume.
We enable companies to asynchronously collect a short series of video responses from an applicant either at application time or later in the process.
[0]https://www.wedgehr.com/product
We enable companies to asynchronously collect a short series of video responses from an applicant either at application time or later in the process.
[0]https://www.wedgehr.com/product
Under no circumstance would I apply to any job that required me to record videos of myself as part of the application process.
I’m curious how many people feel the same way.
I’m curious how many people feel the same way.
I worked at a BigCo for 5 years. 3/4 of our department was offshore and we generally did not interview them. It was more like our offshore vendor filled seats when they were empty and we would occasionally fire them.
One of the offshore folks was amazing so we offered him an on-shore position and moved him here. He told us insane horror stories about how the offshore team worked. Basically 1-2 people did all the work for everyone to turn in. The managers were in on it and sometimes were one of the few competent people who did the work. As he described it, it was corruption from top to bottom. We were paying for 10-15 workers but really getting 1-3.
One of the offshore folks was amazing so we offered him an on-shore position and moved him here. He told us insane horror stories about how the offshore team worked. Basically 1-2 people did all the work for everyone to turn in. The managers were in on it and sometimes were one of the few competent people who did the work. As he described it, it was corruption from top to bottom. We were paying for 10-15 workers but really getting 1-3.
I had an unsolicited email offer to pay $5k upfront cash to use my github profile to solicit and perform work, plus monthly percentage of their earnings. I presumed it was spam, but they had done significant research as they knew the projects I participated in, and so on.
I was hired as the engineering lead earlier this year at a company. It was packed full of “senior” engineers who wrote nested loops, each screen was a monolithic program with no abstractions etc. as I let them go we hired two more (we have a consultant that hired me and has been interviewing them) who were the exact same. Senior engineer, 15 years experience, etc.
Yes all of them appear to work a couple hours of day and I’d wager they get 3-4 jobs and work a few hours a day on each
Yes all of them appear to work a couple hours of day and I’d wager they get 3-4 jobs and work a few hours a day on each
> who wrote nested loops
What is this supposed to be the connotation here?
What is this supposed to be the connotation here?
This suggests runtime complexity will be O(n^2), which is rarely an optimal solution to a problem.
Unless they verify the source code of every library they use and verify the entire call stack; it probably has a nested for loop somewhere. Good thing computers are fast!
Depending on n, oftentimes nested loops are more readable and maintainable than the optimal solution.
Of course too many levels of nesting is inherently a code smell that indicates other issues.
Of course too many levels of nesting is inherently a code smell that indicates other issues.
Some common cases (that wouldn't be considered algorithms) are:
- working with grids (rows and columns)
- iterating over nested data structures (eg. all people in a group).
- working with grids (rows and columns)
- iterating over nested data structures (eg. all people in a group).
Perhaps, but “nested loops” by itself is an odd way to describe that.
that says nothing if you don't know the size of the input and the problem at hand. Sometimes the best you can do is N^2.
That there’s almost always a more optimal solution than a triple nested loop in a useEffect. Any senior level engineer should be architecting said optimal solutions
Curious where the candidates are being sourced from - my hunch is that whatever source they're coming from is suddenly being exploited by such people for some reason. I've seen a general increase over the last 1-2 years (so, post-COVID) of candidates who exhibit similar behavior, but it hasn't been the majority of the candidates. I've just chalked it up to remote work being more normal and some people actually being able to get away with this for some time: Googling their way into a few months of employment before being found out for good.
My friend has personally interviewed 3 people in the last 2 months who were lip synching answers. One was a woman who was trying to lip sync to a man’s voice. It’s really insane what’s going on right now.
The increase in remote jobs, remote interviewing, automated interviewing, and use of AI systems for interviewing is directly correlated with people gaming the system. There really is very little good substitute for in-person interviewing. Or at least if you are committed to a fully remote experience, then you'll have to accept a greater likelihood of fraud, deception, and misbehavior as part of the tradeoff between in-person and remote and manage those expectations.
Every part of this rings true. We interviewed a guy for a front-end position, on his resume he mentioned react and svelte with 3 years of experience with both and was open for contact work. We exchanged a few emails and set up a call. Then it got weird.
On his resume his name was Daniel, but when he joined the zoom call he introduced himself as Andrew. Moreover the photo on his LinkedIn was of Asian appearance but this guy had a very White American accent. I asked him to turn his video on and he fumbled around for a bit and then said his camera was broken, so giving him the benefit of the doubt I jumped into asking him about his experience with svelte. He asked asked me what svelte was, I thought that was weird given it was one of the buzzwords on his resume, but 20 seconds later he all of a sudden knew what svelte was.
I reminded him that in our email exchange he said he had worked with svelte for 3 years and I'd like to hear more about what he had built. He told me, and no joke, he had worked in the same office as some guys who had used svelte.
On his resume his name was Daniel, but when he joined the zoom call he introduced himself as Andrew. Moreover the photo on his LinkedIn was of Asian appearance but this guy had a very White American accent. I asked him to turn his video on and he fumbled around for a bit and then said his camera was broken, so giving him the benefit of the doubt I jumped into asking him about his experience with svelte. He asked asked me what svelte was, I thought that was weird given it was one of the buzzwords on his resume, but 20 seconds later he all of a sudden knew what svelte was.
I reminded him that in our email exchange he said he had worked with svelte for 3 years and I'd like to hear more about what he had built. He told me, and no joke, he had worked in the same office as some guys who had used svelte.
> asking him about his experience with svelte. He asked asked me what svelte was
https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/issues/3287
https://github.com/sveltejs/svelte/issues/3287
Slightly tangential, but I wonder how long before you have people using deepfakes to look and sound like someone else on camera to perpetrate this kind of fraud. It seems like all of the pieces are mostly there.
Happens with Elon Musk deep fake crypto schemes
> We've wasted a significant amount of time on comms and interviews with over a dozen of these candidates.
this is what happens when you filter people based on keywords. they game the system.
this is what happens when you filter people based on keywords. they game the system.
And they never learn...
They just keep adding more keywords, hoping to narrow the search, but end up broadening it.
They just keep adding more keywords, hoping to narrow the search, but end up broadening it.
I have been involved in hiring for years. I saw this happen for the first time a month ago. It makes me wonder if some Discord/Slack/Telegram group has recently been organized around this dubious "life hack" strategy.
Perhaps in-person interview requirement would help eliminate such fake candidates?
But I know it's not very practical in the remote work age and maybe it explains why you're seeing drastic increase.
While not as bad as fake candidates, professional interviewers who interview really well but cannot deliver a lick on the job are also very problematic. Once hired someome who sounded perfect for the role (even in person) - relocated him - but months into the job they couldn't deliver.
That said, I just hired someone without meeting them in person (just Zoom call) and they're pretty good thus far! I guess you just have to be lucky.
While not as bad as fake candidates, professional interviewers who interview really well but cannot deliver a lick on the job are also very problematic. Once hired someome who sounded perfect for the role (even in person) - relocated him - but months into the job they couldn't deliver.
That said, I just hired someone without meeting them in person (just Zoom call) and they're pretty good thus far! I guess you just have to be lucky.
This sounds like what I wanted to do once I realized how insanely easy remote work was. I do my wife's code for her dev job and it honestly works out to like 2 hours a week for me. She spends maybe 10 hours in meetings, so it totally makes sense to put 3 or 4 front people in positions to handle the meetings and just funnel the work back to me. Sounds like they are doing a bait and switch strategy though. You should just give them a coding test and see if they actually have a senior dev behind these guys. If so, quit pestering the front person who takes your order and be happy with the finished product.
> I do my wife's code for her dev job and it honestly works out to like 2 hours a week for me.
>She spends maybe 10 hours in meetings
Watch out, if she attends all those productivity sapping meetings, and turns in good code then she'll quickly be promoted to a position that requires no coding. Then that'll be the end of the fun coding :)
Watch out, if she attends all those productivity sapping meetings, and turns in good code then she'll quickly be promoted to a position that requires no coding. Then that'll be the end of the fun coding :)
[deleted]
Yes.
Prior to my current company I think I'd only met two candidates face-to-face who had sent misleading CVs (one of whom memorably tried to tell me MooTools was a new Linux based operating system.)
But so far this year I've cut short half a dozen interviews once it became clear the candidate was hopeless, despite having good CVs. In some cases they seemed to struggle to even to use their own computer.
And in the last 12 months we've also cut ties with somebody who joined during lockdown after it became clear that they'd falsified details of their background and experience.
Prior to my current company I think I'd only met two candidates face-to-face who had sent misleading CVs (one of whom memorably tried to tell me MooTools was a new Linux based operating system.)
But so far this year I've cut short half a dozen interviews once it became clear the candidate was hopeless, despite having good CVs. In some cases they seemed to struggle to even to use their own computer.
And in the last 12 months we've also cut ties with somebody who joined during lockdown after it became clear that they'd falsified details of their background and experience.
Anecdotal datapoint to add to the heap: a friend had someone show up to their first day of 100% remote work who was decidedly NOT the person that they interviewed. Obviously that was also their last day.
For engineering, screen them with a verbal technical questionaire over zoom with camera before the actual interview. This would replace the "phone screen".
It's disrespectful to the candidates, you will lose valuable ones just because of that.
I don't get it, why? Screening questions and zoom interviews are very common.
I run software engineering for a 100% remote company with ~35 developers on 5 continents. In April 2022 I interviewed a senior Python developer from Austin Texas - camera on, full pair-programming exercise, etc. 3 interviews, the guy was awesome. We hired him and assigned him to a development team. A month later I hear from the team that the guy sucks, doesn't know how to program, thick accent, and says his camera is broken even though we just shipped him a brand new machine. We set up a sting operation, forced him to present/share his screen over zoom, and recorded the call. It was some random person in India connecting via a VPN in Dallas to mask the origin of his network calls. In the screenshare recording you could see him quickly switch to a chat window and ask someone else how to answer the question. We fired him and only lost 1 month of salary + a very nice laptop we'll never see again. I learned a valuable management lesson from that one. I bet at a larger company this guy could have flown under the radar for a lot longer than 1 month.
I'm not saying this isn't happening, but I want to mention that I often refuse to do stuff that my interviewers ask me to. Reasons being any of: I consider it useless for the evaluation, I consider it doesn't correctly asses my expertise, I consider it would put me in a bad situation etc. Of course, I can do all this because the market allows me to do it.
Isn't facial expression and your communication skills considered a part of your "expertise"?
I personally prefer asking the person to open the camera or reschedule to a later date if they can't.
I personally prefer asking the person to open the camera or reschedule to a later date if they can't.
I personally agree which is why I also join every interview with my camera on. Objectively though you have to consider that the job market is a MARKET, and if the seller (candidate) considers they can do just fine without the camera (or anything else really) then you have to accept that fact and move on to another candidate if you can or just go forward with them without camera. Nobody owes anything to anyone here.
Recently I did a few rounds of interviews. I found that I was bombing the phone only interviews but doing well with the camera on. I'm all in for basing part of the interview based on looks vs how someone sounds but I do think stereotypes play a part.
Has that worked? Have you got any offers doing that?
It seems like good interview questions (for all candidates) could be "how should we stop interview and employment fraud, what are your ideas?" You want candidates who are clever at analyzing a new problem, and it puts the issue on the table in a cooperative way.
I don’t know. If someone was interviewing me and asked how they should stop interview fraud, I’m pretty sure I’d wonder if they were passive-aggressively accusing me of it. At the least I’d feel self-conscious. Which would probably not be conducive to a good interview for either side.
If you approach the question transparently it would work - just explain the problem that you've had a lot of candidates trying to abuse the system and would like to get their thoughts on the issue.
We had third party recruiters sit/listen in on interviews with their clients. Those recruiters would then use that knowledge to feed answers to the next candidate, usually during the interview.
Those who don't sit in ask the candidates what they were asked for anyway.
Once had a Ph.D. who wasn't until somebody checked up and referred the issue to HR who did the background check. This was using an old-school in person interviewing method.
Once I had a love and it was a gas
Soon turned out had a heart of glass
Seemed like the real thing, only to find
Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind
Yup am seeing this weekly now when hiring. Pretty sure these are just companies who are employing cheap foreign labor and acquiring higher paying American jobs. Wage arbitrage?
I had someone interview for a job and then a different person showed up to orientation. Locked their accounts immediately and nobody show up the next day. Fired.
When does this work?
When does this work?
You hear these stories so much but what I don't get is how these people get past the HireRight checks, do the companies this happens to just not use HireRight?
I'm in the situation of apply for jobs and feels like I'm screened out of everything because my resume doesn't have exact matches for every buzzword. I don't really want to buzzword pad but kind of feels like I need to do that.
I got 25 years of varied experience(network admin, server admin, cloud stuff, scripting, etl and actual development) and now feels like being a jack of all trades is screwing me :)
I got 25 years of varied experience(network admin, server admin, cloud stuff, scripting, etl and actual development) and now feels like being a jack of all trades is screwing me :)
I know this is going to be controversial comment and I'm sad to say it... But quite frankly, I can safely say that just about every Indian developer that applied to my jobs and made it passed the initial filters STILL turned out to be a scammer of sorts. Either fake skills background listed; they must be getting away with it at least to some degree if I'm coming across it at this scale!!
This sounds like fraud, and possibly organized crime.
I don't know whether an AG's office would be interested in hearing about it, but you could try calling.
I don't know whether an AG's office would be interested in hearing about it, but you could try calling.
Yes, I had a candidate turn up for a physical interview who clearly was not the person on the phone screen.
[deleted]
I've always wondered how those recruiting studies where they send out a lot of fake resumes that differ only on one attribute play out for the other side. That was my first thought, but your experience might also be something different.
I had a candidate like this. 7 years of Ruby, but didn’t know keyword parameters.
On the CV there were some companies with dubious consulting websites, super generic. I emailed them, no reply.
If I wouldn’t have given him a live coding test I wouldn’t have known.
On the CV there were some companies with dubious consulting websites, super generic. I emailed them, no reply.
If I wouldn’t have given him a live coding test I wouldn’t have known.
You guys conduct interviews without even seeing the face of candidates?
I screened a candidate last month who insisted on keeping the camera off. Gave perfectly worded answers. Several things were off, e.g. not knowing certain industry acronyms etc.
How many of these are candidates trying to game the interview into a remote dev position to sell the work to high experience cheap remote labor options in 3rd world countries?
There was a darknet diaries episode about something like this. Can't remember what the conclusion was (something about NK espionage ?).
what exactly is the endgame?
I imagine either:
a) Get hired, collect a paycheck or two while doing the absolute bare minimum (filling out onboarding forms, etc - no real work) and then move on to the next victim company.
or
b) Get hired with the goal of getting access to improperly secured company or user data.
I imagine a) is vastly more common than b).
a) Get hired, collect a paycheck or two while doing the absolute bare minimum (filling out onboarding forms, etc - no real work) and then move on to the next victim company.
or
b) Get hired with the goal of getting access to improperly secured company or user data.
I imagine a) is vastly more common than b).
It could also be to get the job. People often feel entitled but believe they are disadvantaged by some factor outside their control and use that to justify cheating, believing they will be able to do the job once they get there. Another version of this is people who apply for a job and actually are just posers who can't code at all. In both cases the employer failed to weed them out, even if the first version is a more overt kind of cheating, the outcome isn't much different than the second version
But, the thing is, the companies are putting down very sophisticated hiring methods that are not relevant to the job itself at all (e.g. hiring someone that can write quicksort in 30 minutes).
I presume, after passing the gatekeepers, most of the people can hold and do the job required from them at bare minimum. The fakers who can not code at all will be found, but someone with an average amount of talent should be able to collect the fat paycheck for several years, as most of the jobs do not require much anyways.
I presume, after passing the gatekeepers, most of the people can hold and do the job required from them at bare minimum. The fakers who can not code at all will be found, but someone with an average amount of talent should be able to collect the fat paycheck for several years, as most of the jobs do not require much anyways.
> companies are putting down very sophisticated hiring methods that are not relevant to the job itself
Well, I guess this is really just a version of what I'm saying, about being feeling entitled but thwarted by forces outside one's control
"I'm a good coder, why do the expect me to 'grind on leetcode' and know how to invert a binary tree"
I agree largely, but if that's what they want and you don't want to do it, don't apply. Justifying cheating because of your perception isn't right
Well, I guess this is really just a version of what I'm saying, about being feeling entitled but thwarted by forces outside one's control
"I'm a good coder, why do the expect me to 'grind on leetcode' and know how to invert a binary tree"
I agree largely, but if that's what they want and you don't want to do it, don't apply. Justifying cheating because of your perception isn't right
I am pointing out the warped process of hiring within our industry, I am not justifying anything here.
People are doing this, because probably, they think it does work. They probably passed some interviews like this before and landed on their job, which is just mundane configuration update tasks, or just making a new integration with a new data source, and realized that there isn't a connection on what is expected on the interviews and what is expected on their daily jobs.
Maybe we should be looking at the core cause instead, the interview processes being not aligned with the daily jobs.
People are doing this, because probably, they think it does work. They probably passed some interviews like this before and landed on their job, which is just mundane configuration update tasks, or just making a new integration with a new data source, and realized that there isn't a connection on what is expected on the interviews and what is expected on their daily jobs.
Maybe we should be looking at the core cause instead, the interview processes being not aligned with the daily jobs.
I strongly believe there is also
a*) Get hired, collect paychecks until somebody notices, but then still stay employed because the KPI of a HR person in a fast-growing company is to fill seats, and firing people, no matter how terrible they are at their job, goes against that.
a*) Get hired, collect paychecks until somebody notices, but then still stay employed because the KPI of a HR person in a fast-growing company is to fill seats, and firing people, no matter how terrible they are at their job, goes against that.
With b), they are actually likely to be the real thing; just treacherous.
It seems based on the two times I saw it that it is mostly delusion. The idea appears to be that you can learn to do something complex on the job with a slight amount of experience and a lookup site, like stackoverflow or rose. I assume this would be sufficient if you assume really non-technical management, incapable of gauging progress.
Good question. As an educational note, please be careful and tell your kids some - unbalanced - people have no other endgame than to annoy you and play with your emotions. To destroy you mentally (sometimes physically as well). Thats their kick. Pretty sure this applies in this case as well. Dont get me wrong, they are humans and deserve respect.
> Dont get me wrong, they are humans and deserve respect.
But why? I feel like we devalue true respect by repeating phrases like this. I'm not saying they deserve to be abused, but why do they deserve respect for solely existing?
EDIT: All the replies seem to be conflating dignity with respect. Your birth gave you the right to your dignity, and no should be able to take that from you. Respect must be earned, and can only be given to you by others.
But why? I feel like we devalue true respect by repeating phrases like this. I'm not saying they deserve to be abused, but why do they deserve respect for solely existing?
EDIT: All the replies seem to be conflating dignity with respect. Your birth gave you the right to your dignity, and no should be able to take that from you. Respect must be earned, and can only be given to you by others.
There's a baseline of respect people get for being human, they have wants, needs, beliefs, belong to cultures, they get hungry, feel pain, don't want to needlessly suffer or die, etc and those aspects are universal.
I'd use the word humanity to describe that level of respect, to contrast it with something more or less universally regarded as the lack of humanity, things we might even consider crimes against humanity, where people are deprived of the respect towards their humanity, denying them food, inflicting pain, eradication of culture, systematic murder, etc.
Obviously there's a lot of gray room between the two where, for example, cruelty for the sake of cruelty, in most circumstances, could be considered a lack of respect that people deserve for solely existing. That's certainly not on the level of crimes against humanity, but I wouldn't say that's respectful, either.
I'd use the word humanity to describe that level of respect, to contrast it with something more or less universally regarded as the lack of humanity, things we might even consider crimes against humanity, where people are deprived of the respect towards their humanity, denying them food, inflicting pain, eradication of culture, systematic murder, etc.
Obviously there's a lot of gray room between the two where, for example, cruelty for the sake of cruelty, in most circumstances, could be considered a lack of respect that people deserve for solely existing. That's certainly not on the level of crimes against humanity, but I wouldn't say that's respectful, either.
What you are describing is dignity, not respect.
From https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dignity/201304/what-...
"The most common response people offer is that dignity is about respect. To the contrary, dignity is not the same as respect. Dignity is our inherent value and worth as human beings; everyone is born with it. Respect, on the other hand, is earned through one’s actions."
From https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dignity/201304/what-...
"The most common response people offer is that dignity is about respect. To the contrary, dignity is not the same as respect. Dignity is our inherent value and worth as human beings; everyone is born with it. Respect, on the other hand, is earned through one’s actions."
You're right, thanks for the link.
You think you are not like them because of your choices when it's actually because of sheer luck. I respect them for carrying such a shitty poker hand their whole life.
Anyway, you still gota defend yourself like they are monsters. Tell your kids: they are masterful liers and manipulators, they look normal, they have a cover (they have jobs and all, they can go undetected for decades, their whole life even) and more importantly: pain is pleasure, even theirs, especially yours (not always physically but mentally as well). That last bit is the endgame but you and me dont have that so its very difficult to comprehend. They come in variations (think Joker and DoubleFace). Oh and one last thing: they are not rare (between 0.7% and 1% of the population afaik).
Anyway, you still gota defend yourself like they are monsters. Tell your kids: they are masterful liers and manipulators, they look normal, they have a cover (they have jobs and all, they can go undetected for decades, their whole life even) and more importantly: pain is pleasure, even theirs, especially yours (not always physically but mentally as well). That last bit is the endgame but you and me dont have that so its very difficult to comprehend. They come in variations (think Joker and DoubleFace). Oh and one last thing: they are not rare (between 0.7% and 1% of the population afaik).
this entirely relies on your own interpretation of respect. respecting nature sometimes means staying the fuck away
If we don't have some base level of respect for people just because they're people ("for solely existing") then we can justify treating marginalized people even worse than we already are. Some of them already have it pretty bad! Seems evil!
This goes back to OPs point about devaluing the concept of respect.
I'm generally polite to stangers I meet. Not because I respect them (how could I? I don't know them), but because it's morally good to behave decently.
By conflating respect with basic manners/decency, you really devalue what it means to deserve respect and to be respected.
I'm generally polite to stangers I meet. Not because I respect them (how could I? I don't know them), but because it's morally good to behave decently.
By conflating respect with basic manners/decency, you really devalue what it means to deserve respect and to be respected.
You treat others with dignity.
Paradox of tolerance.
Ironically, this is similar to how regular people think of "hackers"
There are a lot of people who believe they can fake it until they make it, and they also often think that everyone fakes it until they make it, as well. That's the end game, doing whatever it takes until they make it.
Once they make it into an organization, they often do very well.
Perhaps, but I've seen more than a handful of the hustle culture types crash and burn once they could no longer fake it sufficiently.
Some things you really do need the knowledge, experience and time spent on to navigate successfully, and you just can't fake that consistently as time goes on, especially around other people who do have that knowledge and experience.
Some things you really do need the knowledge, experience and time spent on to navigate successfully, and you just can't fake that consistently as time goes on, especially around other people who do have that knowledge and experience.
Pretty much every new grad is faking it until they make it.
I'd agree if, outside of nepotism, new grads were faking it into senior or higher level positions that necessitate knowledge and experience that they truly don't possess.
If they get the person in the door (hired) a chunk of their paycheck goes to the referring agency. And a month employed might be a year's salary back home.
[deleted]
I have also experienced the same with recruiters and companies. Who should I be appealing to?
Don't hire remotely. Fly them out. Like a pre-COVID YC Interview.
Do you still have a Pre-Covid budget, and pre-Covid funding from vc’s?
Let me give you a perspective of why people might legitimately not want to do camera during interviews.
A little about me: I've started doing remote work 15 years ago - long, long before the modern remote push. I've been coding for 30 years; I started with 8 bit micros; I can probably work with any technology and any deep problem you throw at me; I've led and launched projects worth billions of dollars. I prefer to work remotely because I hate commuting and open plan.
I've started denying camera interviews for a while now. I still do voice, but no camera, for the following reasons:
1. It impacts not just my earnings, but whether I'll be considered in the first place. There's a lot of sexism and racism happening in tech.
Sexism: if you're presenting as female, or presenting as male but don't look like Jim Halpert from the office, you can get looked at differently, which happened to me. This applies to people who are older, people who have visible tattoos or piercings, people who have blue hair, scars, etc.
Racism: you only need to look at other replies here with people talking about how bad eg Indian developers are. This extends to people of other skin color as well. In Europe there is a huge amount of racism against white Europeans from eastern Europe and from the Balkans and Europeans from Latin countries; in Asia there is racism against people ethnically from other Asian countries; in America there's racism against pretty much everyone; etc. This is endemic. One look at someone's face can be enough to disqualify them at a company that has this problem.
Ageism doesn't even need to be explained.
Based on the three points above, by demanding camera interviews you betray yourself as a company which doesn't have the issue of systemic bias against minorities figured out yet.
Incidental information leaks: The background - the location where you are - is important as well. Is the person located in their bedroom with a single bed? Probably a flat share, pay them less, they'll take it. Are they in their garden? Hmm, they are probably worth what they ask for. Is it dark outside whereas it's light where you are? Uh oh, remote work with someone who's not in your time zone! Better start worrying!
Especially the last one is egregious. Dev work is mostly solitary, asynchronous work; most of the time there's a lot of overlap even between eastern Europe and west coast US which is plenty of time for meetings and pair programming if necessary. People who insist on such things are usually inexperienced with remote work. Misconceptions like these destroy opportunities that can work out very well otherwise. I've had people make comments about "oh it's light out over there" many times in my career and it's always lead to a no-hire.
2. Issues that remote work solves can be brought to light in an ugly manner. For example, maybe the person feels they are not attractive, and are just generally shy around people in person - something that a lot of technical people share; their performance in front of a camera will be worse. Being shy when physically around other people perfectly fine for remote work. Maybe the person has special needs. Maybe they have to use an oxygen tank, or are missing an eye, or teeth, or a hand, or are sitting in a wheel chair, or are obese. Maybe the tapestry on their wall falling off and they haven't had money to fix it due to an economic downturn or because someone in the family had cancer so that's where the money went. None of this is stuff that the employer needs to know - but they are things that none the less can impact the recruitment and later career by a lot.
3. I experience fewer of the issues brought up in 1 and 2 than most others; however, I still deny camera interviews to see what will happen. Being this worried about job applicant fraud betrays that you likely can't afford it. Job applicant fraud is a little time off your hands and a little money as well. That fraudulent applicant wasted maybe 3 hours through interviews across people in your company, and maybe up to $10k wasted money. If you can't factor this into your business, it means to me - an experienced developer who has plenty of choice - that you can't afford me at all, and that working for you, should it happen, will be precarious. I'll probably skip over you. It is my experience that the most resilient companies - and ones that are well established already - absolutely don't care about seeing your face on camera.
Additional wasted time after the hire is mostly on your hands: either it's a complete bait and switch (smart person interviewed, substituted by someone unsuited) - and that's something you figure out on the first day - or it's someone who's never been good enough, and you weren't a good enough interviewer to figure this out in the several hours you've spent with them; at that point you'll probably take a few weeks to figure out that they're not great at their job, but that's on you.
--------
TLDR: a camera interview is purely a disadvantage to minorities and people who aren't well off by leaking things that are for good reason illegal to ask about; a job interview where this is demanded or implied betrays the company is standing on a shaky foundation.
A little about me: I've started doing remote work 15 years ago - long, long before the modern remote push. I've been coding for 30 years; I started with 8 bit micros; I can probably work with any technology and any deep problem you throw at me; I've led and launched projects worth billions of dollars. I prefer to work remotely because I hate commuting and open plan.
I've started denying camera interviews for a while now. I still do voice, but no camera, for the following reasons:
1. It impacts not just my earnings, but whether I'll be considered in the first place. There's a lot of sexism and racism happening in tech.
Sexism: if you're presenting as female, or presenting as male but don't look like Jim Halpert from the office, you can get looked at differently, which happened to me. This applies to people who are older, people who have visible tattoos or piercings, people who have blue hair, scars, etc.
Racism: you only need to look at other replies here with people talking about how bad eg Indian developers are. This extends to people of other skin color as well. In Europe there is a huge amount of racism against white Europeans from eastern Europe and from the Balkans and Europeans from Latin countries; in Asia there is racism against people ethnically from other Asian countries; in America there's racism against pretty much everyone; etc. This is endemic. One look at someone's face can be enough to disqualify them at a company that has this problem.
Ageism doesn't even need to be explained.
Based on the three points above, by demanding camera interviews you betray yourself as a company which doesn't have the issue of systemic bias against minorities figured out yet.
Incidental information leaks: The background - the location where you are - is important as well. Is the person located in their bedroom with a single bed? Probably a flat share, pay them less, they'll take it. Are they in their garden? Hmm, they are probably worth what they ask for. Is it dark outside whereas it's light where you are? Uh oh, remote work with someone who's not in your time zone! Better start worrying!
Especially the last one is egregious. Dev work is mostly solitary, asynchronous work; most of the time there's a lot of overlap even between eastern Europe and west coast US which is plenty of time for meetings and pair programming if necessary. People who insist on such things are usually inexperienced with remote work. Misconceptions like these destroy opportunities that can work out very well otherwise. I've had people make comments about "oh it's light out over there" many times in my career and it's always lead to a no-hire.
2. Issues that remote work solves can be brought to light in an ugly manner. For example, maybe the person feels they are not attractive, and are just generally shy around people in person - something that a lot of technical people share; their performance in front of a camera will be worse. Being shy when physically around other people perfectly fine for remote work. Maybe the person has special needs. Maybe they have to use an oxygen tank, or are missing an eye, or teeth, or a hand, or are sitting in a wheel chair, or are obese. Maybe the tapestry on their wall falling off and they haven't had money to fix it due to an economic downturn or because someone in the family had cancer so that's where the money went. None of this is stuff that the employer needs to know - but they are things that none the less can impact the recruitment and later career by a lot.
3. I experience fewer of the issues brought up in 1 and 2 than most others; however, I still deny camera interviews to see what will happen. Being this worried about job applicant fraud betrays that you likely can't afford it. Job applicant fraud is a little time off your hands and a little money as well. That fraudulent applicant wasted maybe 3 hours through interviews across people in your company, and maybe up to $10k wasted money. If you can't factor this into your business, it means to me - an experienced developer who has plenty of choice - that you can't afford me at all, and that working for you, should it happen, will be precarious. I'll probably skip over you. It is my experience that the most resilient companies - and ones that are well established already - absolutely don't care about seeing your face on camera.
Additional wasted time after the hire is mostly on your hands: either it's a complete bait and switch (smart person interviewed, substituted by someone unsuited) - and that's something you figure out on the first day - or it's someone who's never been good enough, and you weren't a good enough interviewer to figure this out in the several hours you've spent with them; at that point you'll probably take a few weeks to figure out that they're not great at their job, but that's on you.
--------
TLDR: a camera interview is purely a disadvantage to minorities and people who aren't well off by leaking things that are for good reason illegal to ask about; a job interview where this is demanded or implied betrays the company is standing on a shaky foundation.
I think this is an important perspective and worth remembering.
One of the beautiful things about code and about tech is (used to be?) the leveling of the playing field down to simply ability. In my opinion, it should not matter whether a person is ugly, fat, skinny, fit, short, tall, old, young, gay, straight, nonbinary, trans, cis, what color their skin is from, etc., if they can get the work done and get along with their teammates.
I feel that we have lost something valuable in the remote working world when we demand that everyone turn on their video cameras at all time; we have lost the ability to appreciate people for solely for their ideas and their accomplishments and their aptitudes. We make it about the way they look, which has so many negative ramifications associated with it.
I'm not disabled beyond needing to wear glasses, but for more than a decade I had low self esteem and was unhappy with my appearance. I was ashamed of how I looked. I felt really bad about it. Today, I am quite happy to get on camera and as a tangent to whatever activity I'm doing show off my fitness. But I will never forget that I used to hate it, and it made me feel very uncomfortable. I believe that appearance and bias can reduce opportunity for those with the requisite ability.
One of the beautiful things about code and about tech is (used to be?) the leveling of the playing field down to simply ability. In my opinion, it should not matter whether a person is ugly, fat, skinny, fit, short, tall, old, young, gay, straight, nonbinary, trans, cis, what color their skin is from, etc., if they can get the work done and get along with their teammates.
I feel that we have lost something valuable in the remote working world when we demand that everyone turn on their video cameras at all time; we have lost the ability to appreciate people for solely for their ideas and their accomplishments and their aptitudes. We make it about the way they look, which has so many negative ramifications associated with it.
I'm not disabled beyond needing to wear glasses, but for more than a decade I had low self esteem and was unhappy with my appearance. I was ashamed of how I looked. I felt really bad about it. Today, I am quite happy to get on camera and as a tangent to whatever activity I'm doing show off my fitness. But I will never forget that I used to hate it, and it made me feel very uncomfortable. I believe that appearance and bias can reduce opportunity for those with the requisite ability.
If a company is going to discriminate against me, I want it done early, before both parties waste their time. Interviews are a two way street.
It's not as easy as that. First of all, you might be discriminated against by the HR jockstrap, whereas the people you'd be actually working with wouldn't be suffering from such delusions. You'll likely never hear from HR again after accepting the job.
Second of all, it's not like you "can vote with your feet". If you're being discriminated against, it's not going to be one place. It's endemic - it happens, for better or worse, "everywhere", especially if you have many characteristics which are targeted, like many people do.
Third of all, not having cameras on removes to a large extent the worry that you _have_ been discriminated against, which is a large part of the stress for a person who does get discriminated against with some frequency.
Second of all, it's not like you "can vote with your feet". If you're being discriminated against, it's not going to be one place. It's endemic - it happens, for better or worse, "everywhere", especially if you have many characteristics which are targeted, like many people do.
Third of all, not having cameras on removes to a large extent the worry that you _have_ been discriminated against, which is a large part of the stress for a person who does get discriminated against with some frequency.
Been happening for a decade, it ebbs and flows.
You look for a fraud in every real human professional directly applying, so that now all you're left with are real frauds. Sorry, not sorry.
berkserbet(1)
syngrog66(2)
I've had plenty of issues with job ad fraud. My last three jobs have been completely oversold and misdescribed in the ads and interviews. I think it's only fair that applicants retaliate with the same ammunition.