from Hacker News

Ask HN: Interviewing at this point feels unfair due to cheaters. What now?

by volkk on 4/3/25, 3:20 PM with 7 comments

How do you all feel about interviewing and being compared against people that are straight up cheating with the rise of these tools that are hidden during screensharing?

I don't even want to interview anymore until I know a company does theirs in-person now. People have always been cheaters/liars to begin with, but now it's doubly worse with this new tool that blew up on twitter. It's extremely unfair for me to study my ass off only to be in a pool full of people who didn't do it fairly. Anyone else feeling this way?

  • by MilnerRoute on 4/3/25, 3:29 PM

    Think of it this way. If someone gets hired after cheating on an interview, they'll presumably not be as good as expected. They'll get fired, and the company will launch another round of interviews -- this time watching vigilantly for off-screen cheating.

    Maybe I'm saying that I reject the assumption that off-screen cheating is as effective as people think it is. (I really don't have any statistics for this, though -- does anyone? I'm just making my own assumption that it's not having a hugely noticeable impact on the overall pool of hired coders.)

    Either way, I can totally see why you'd be mad cheating exists. But maybe take some heart from the fact that employers don't like it either, and will be on the look-out for it? I mean, if you preemptively remove yourself from interviewing because "What's the point if there's cheaters out there" - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  • by bigyabai on 4/3/25, 3:24 PM

    I don't want to discourage you, but people have "cheated" on remote technical interviews for decades. It's a staple of the industry, HBO made like 5 Silicon Valley episodes about this.