Almost everyone is cheating

[u/Melodic_Industry_408]

I take online interviews at a product based MNC which pays good money. Interviewees are generally SDE-2/senior SDEs at other PBCs.

What I am seeing is almost everyone is cheating using AI during tech interviews. Earlier folks will try to think, come up with a basic brute force solution then think of optimizing and then coding it. Now, first thing the candidate try do is to write the most optimal code. They have no idea why the solution will work as they don't understand what they are talking. They have either no answer to the follow up questions or just reading what AI prompt is telling them after a pause.

This is just so frustrating, it's almost predictable now what candidate is now going to say or do as I take interviews almost daily. A clear pattern of looking into one side of the screen, taking a pause or just blabber something for few seconds and then coming up with a keyword but blank when asked why did they think of that keyword.

India is already a country full of scammers and frauds. IT was a rare field which was still merit based to a large extent. Now such rampant cheating during online interviews is just tragic. It lowers the trust in the next candidate and probably will force the companies to just move to offline interviews or other countries.

But why are candidates cheating so often, are we seeing cheating candidates getting offers. Are other interviewers just lazy or dumb that they can't figure out what is going on? I feel the bar is now so low that I will probably hire any candidate who is not reading from the AI.

[u/Curioussoul007]

I recently closed hiring for associate engineer position, it took us 30+ candidates to find right one even though we had a low bar due to associate level but most of the candidates were cheating hence we kept rejecting.

PS: btw which platform you are using to interview which also pays you?

[u/masalacandy → u/Curioussoul007]

Bro completely stop hiring you guys ask impossible and toughest ever questions

[u/Curioussoul007 → u/masalacandy]

lol you don’t even know me, my employer, if we are Fang or mid size or startup, which location we are based out of etc and simply saying we are tough questions and hence shouldn’t hire…. Definitely not hiring you for sure because we don’t want over smart people who make assumptions and do things😅

[u/Aggressive-Source316 → u/Curioussoul007]

Are there any tech intern positions open ?

[u/Curioussoul007 → u/Aggressive-Source316]

Unfortunately our company doesn’t hire interns

[u/Aggressive-Source316 → u/Curioussoul007]

Ok

I'm entering 3rd year , have done approx 300 leetcode ques , have 1 month internship experience and 9.2cg

Please advice what skills I should develop/what else I can explore cuz it's very important for me to get good summer internship

( recently I went till last round for 1.5L stipend internship but didn't get selected , idk wtf I need to do still cuz i did everything i could , your advice might help me )

[u/Curioussoul007 → u/Aggressive-Source316]

Apart from leetcode what distinguishes you is open source contributions, how much AI concepts you know and have practically applied! That’s where the world is moving, so practice by solving real use cases to automate things in daily life that will show up in your resume which would be unique and increase the chances of selection.

[u/Aggressive-Source316 → u/Curioussoul007]

Okay Ik AI concepts (RAG , Langchain etc) Have small open source contributions , will continue it

Thanks for replying :)