5 ms·

what even is cheating on an algorithm problem? looking up an answer online? asking someone in your social network to help you work through the problem? because

what even is cheating on an algorithm problem? looking up an answer online? asking someone in your social network to help you work through the problem? because that's what you actually do in the real world. as long as you can explain / defend your solution what does cheating even mean.

halflings 7y ago
That's an idealistic way of looking at things. People would look-up solutions to that exact problem; it's very hard to come up with a unique problem that was never asked before, and questions leak pretty quickly. (especially at larger companies) The goal of a test is to evaluate whether you'd be a good employee; I agree algorithmic questions are not representative of day-to-day work, but evaluating your friend's ability to help you is out of scope. Companies want to hire someone that has decent programming skills; you can't rely on other people to solve all your problems, you need to have a minimum level of skill. [again, playing devil's advocate here; we all agree the process is suboptimal, but let's not ignore the negatives of some of the alternatives suggested here]
- greggman2 7y ago
  how many things did you learn by seeing / being taught the solution and how many did you re-invent as you're basically asked to do at an interview? To give maybe a bad example, I don't know how to do a quicksort. I've written it maybe twice in my life by either being taught by a teacher or by looking it up on wikipedia. I didn't have to think of the solution on the spot. I'm not saying I can't think of solutions but still, the majority of my knowledge comes from having been taught and then using that taught knowledge over and over, not from re-invention. Note I agree we have the same goals to hire people that can do the work not people whose friends can do the work but I'm not convinced that the typical interview puzzles (find the longest segment of an array that contain 3 values) has anything to do with actual work skills. Maybe it would be better with more typical tasks? If the person claims to be back end engineer ask them to write a query to select all people between the ages of 30 and 35 in Nebraska? Maybe if they are front end ask them to implement a select/option UI?

halflings 7y ago

That's an idealistic way of looking at things. People would look-up solutions to that exact problem; it's very hard to come up with a unique problem that was never asked before, and questions leak pretty quickly. (especially at larger companies) The goal of a test is to evaluate whether you'd be a good employee; I agree algorithmic questions are not representative of day-to-day work, but evaluating your friend's ability to help you is out of scope. Companies want to hire someone that has decent programming skills; you can't rely on other people to solve all your problems, you need to have a minimum level of skill. [again, playing devil's advocate here; we all agree the process is suboptimal, but let's not ignore the negatives of some of the alternatives suggested here]

greggman2 7y ago
how many things did you learn by seeing / being taught the solution and how many did you re-invent as you're basically asked to do at an interview? To give maybe a bad example, I don't know how to do a quicksort. I've written it maybe twice in my life by either being taught by a teacher or by looking it up on wikipedia. I didn't have to think of the solution on the spot. I'm not saying I can't think of solutions but still, the majority of my knowledge comes from having been taught and then using that taught knowledge over and over, not from re-invention. Note I agree we have the same goals to hire people that can do the work not people whose friends can do the work but I'm not convinced that the typical interview puzzles (find the longest segment of an array that contain 3 values) has anything to do with actual work skills. Maybe it would be better with more typical tasks? If the person claims to be back end engineer ask them to write a query to select all people between the ages of 30 and 35 in Nebraska? Maybe if they are front end ask them to implement a select/option UI?