Is cheating in OA really fine?

They'll get internships from it perhaps, maybe that will open future doors for them. Unfortunate truth is that the world isn't a fair place and people cheat to get the biggest advantage. People who cheat also get caught a lot as well, however - just look at the Varsity Blues scandal. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it.

I will say I feel greatly proud that I've never cheated on an OA, particularly after having secured a graduate position writing Haskell code in a live screen-shared zoom interview. I can sleep soundly at night knowing I earned the role.

I don’t think it’s possible to cheat on on-sites though 

Don’t cheat. The company is like your family. Companies would never do anything unethical to make a buck. Companies will always reward loyal employees. If you work hard at your job, you’ll get a raise and bonus guaranteed. 

 Be honest like the company you are applying for.

/s

Welcome to the real world though bro, it was actually only about winning the whole time.

The truth is some are willing to win by any means necessary. This is the reality. You are at a disadvantage if you're not "cheating" or trying to be clever and finding an appropriate strategy to win.

Nonetheless I'd say that if you want to sleep well at night and not have any imposter syndrome afterwards, playing the game fairly is the best one can do.

Nah fuck all that ethics shit, the company won’t give a fuck about you whether you get in or not, yet for you this will determine the quality of your life for the next X+ years (could be rest of your life for FAANG). The key is to be confident enough to do the OA without any help, but be able to fallback to other resources if necessary. The OA is just a high level filter to start the real interviews where you can’t cheat, except for some reason they occasionally just make the OA unreasonably more challenging than what you’d get in the interview. So yeah, fuck it cheat it on it. You’ll forever cope with failing the OA and not cheating, as opposed to if you cheat and do get through everything you’ll have mild imposter syndrome until you find out how little every other new hire knows too.

get to the point where you don’t need to cheat to succeed, and then cheat to extra ensure your success

I never cheated in school and stuff like that but I will often cheat on OAs. This is not a question of ethics. The company does not care about you and it's a very competitive market. I don't understand why people are all of a sudden getting on their high horse here; A real ethical question is working for a defense company to make software to kill people. Focus on the questions that actually matter lol.

Look EOD you are hired on to get tasks done. Work is not a unit test in high school….you have to learn to be resourceful. I am not promoting cheating on an OA but I don’t think it’s a big deal as you won’t get the job anyways if you can’t pass the technical interview. Be resourceful and don’t think about work as school.

Cheating is wrong, even if others do it. Don't compromise your ethics. Focus on learning from OAs & find honest ways to improve (study groups are OK, taking the OA yourself is essential). You'll be a better applicant in the long run.

I wouldn’t say it’s fine - but…

especially for something like Amazon new grad - if you ace the OA, you have the chance of just having a 30 min final interview where you just walk through your code with the interviewer (which you could easily study for if you screenshot your code). anecdotally, some people on here said their interview only lasted 5-10 minutes and they got the job soon after.

so the question is, would you rather battle it out in the rat race and potentially end up not getting a job, or would you rather cheat on one OA and potentially make $170k TC at a FAANG?

I guess it comes down to you and how far you’re willing to go to make it. for some people in this thread, their pride matters to them more than being employed. I’ve never cheated, mostly cause I’ve never had to, but I can understand why people do so.

Even if you do, you'll have trouble if you'll have to also do algorithms during the technical interview, and most big tech companies do that.

what IS OA and OQ ?

The fact that you can't come up with a solution to some leetcode question does not mean you are incompetent for the job

as others have said it's a very competitive market and finding a good job can have a significant impact on your quality of life

I'm not saying you shouldn't study well and grind leetcode, but in case you have an OA and you get a difficult question, just google it

It depends on how they're using them. If they're selecting only people who score 100% in under X minutes, I promise you they're only getting cheaters. You have to cheat to compete. When it comes down to it, they're not actually getting any value from that part of the interview process - cheating is just the price of admission. It's another cover letter.

"I feel like I am not competent enough for the job if I cheat to get it. "

I've worked with people who cheated their way through college, before, and some of them were utterly unprepared for the work.

Broadly, I can say that the industry is sick and tired of unqualified hires. We don't hire many non-CS majors anymore, in the hopes that the CS majors will be more prepared to hit-the-ground running when hired. But alas, many of them are not....

You will be shooting yourself in the foot if you don't make yourself competent. Just do it. Learn to code, learn your stuff. Move to NYC, Cali, or some other tech hub after graduating, even if you don't have a job. Apply for crappy roles at non-tech companies if you can't get a sexy tech job.

Define “cheating”.

I had to do a pretty simple code test, but in a coding language I wasn’t very familiar with. I had to look up some syntax documentation.

Did I cheat? or did I just look at the manual?

you should use every resources that are available to you fr. Use AI tools for OA, try to find problems answer on stackoverflow or github. Go to glassdoor and github/other websites to find what type of question they ask during tech interview.

I know some ppl that gathered at 4-5 in the same room to do the GS OA which is 4 or 5 questions. They divide the questions among themselves and easily moved on to the next loop.

no it's not, there's a reason you feel it's wrong and you know it's not right

What is OA?

it takes a software programmer less than 5 minutes to figure out you cannot code

If you're good enough you wont need it.

If you're bad enough it might not even be enough to help you.

No, seriously, I had a class during my degree where over half the class cheated and the average was still near 50% because they are just stupid.

Aren’t OA’s proctored?

don’t cheat. If you get caught, recruiters will tell their friends at other companies and you’ll be black listed for multiple companies at once

Do you really think OAs test the competency for the job role? The interview process is full of flaws but the companies don't have any other options thats why they are continuing these leetcode style OAs and interviews. But they are not at all a good measure of competency for a job role.

In corporate, this is not the only thing illogical. A company will not promote its good employees or give them decent hikes but when they leave the company they will hire a replacement by spending more money on recruitment and giving more salary to the replacement. That's why switching is necessary.

There is morality in corporate. You play by the rules of the game. You cannot decide or change these rules. You have to do what is working.

If you get someone good, the type of person who you would want to work under, they will be able to tell from your first day on the job. If you just want a paycheck, it might work, but if you want a job with a good culture and smart coworkers this will get you roasted alive.

To those saying companies are unethical, so cheating is fine are the type of people who cause companies to be unethical.

It's extremely rare that a company is unethical by design and comprehensively.  It's usually bad apples that compromise their ethics to get ahead.  Some get to leadership positions and the behavior becomes normalized.

No it’s not fine, but no one is going to hunt you down for it.

Lots of people cheat and get away with it in the real world, and a few people don’t. For me personally I almost sort of respect the people who are self-absorbed enough to do it, the imposter syndrome would haunt me for years if I got in somewhere by cheating lol.

Any company that uses Leetcode in their OA without letting you search the internet, is dumb as shit (unfortunately all of FAANG). If you’re asked Leetcode questions in an OA please cheat. Use tools like ChatGPT or CheetCode (www.interview-buddy.com)

If however, you’re given a take home test, or its pair coding, then that company is not dumb as shit, and maybe don’t cheat, but feel free to use all resources to improve your solution.

I think there’s levels to it. Straight up copy pasting a solution to an OA is a sure way of getting hired for a position you might not be able to handle.

However there are also cases where you practice leetcode questions and get the exact question you practiced in an interview. Or you look up recent interview questions and get the same ones which you pre solve and think through which makes solving them in an interview way easier.

Sometimes there’s a factor of luck, but I would personally not feel good about having to copy paste a solution. I would feel like a fraud.

You will benefit more from learning the problem solving skills to do well in them on your own. And yeah, OAs are often off topic to what you actually do on the job but it still isn't fair to the honest people to cheat...

A lot of people here are so proud etc. I am proud that it took me a bare minimum to cheat into my internship where they taught me what I need and later, it was me who received the senior contract and not the proud hard worker who did not cheat and could not even socialize lmao.

Now downvote me for the jealousy xd

Tell truths

If you learn how to actually pass them without cheating it’ll be easier to recruit. Everyone cheats but those people ended up with mid jobs post grad anyways (most of them). Also you will feel better about your accomplishment once you get something.

It won’t matter for the first round. The following rounds will expose the cheaters

The web IDEs don’t have suggestions so i use my own ide with suggestions and paste it in, so idk if thats cheating

Just don’t get caught.

Wtf. Get better friends.

I haven't done anything like that and with my degree program, I don't think it would help me in the real world to do so. I can understand degree programs in more general fields where the material is pretty redundant but...I guess lol. I'm a firm believer that exams help you to make sure you're retaining/understanding information so I wouldn't cheat on an OA.

Speaking from similar experiences, as long as you’re good at what you’re prepping for, you’ll be fine. Most people say that people that cheat won’t go long, but that’s not fully true. I believed the same, but people who cheat are in better places than me. It’s purely luck.
All you can do is avoid thinking about others, and make sure you do your stuff right. Hustle, my friend.

Cheating on OAs is what has the current OAs being so outlandish.

The funny part is they cheat on the OA, fail the interview and pretend it’s the interview process that’s at fault.

Ethics/morals are a funny imaginary concept aren’t they?

asking it in this way will inevitably make all your answers geared towards that way.

i’ll just be honest, i cheated for sure. chatgpt, looked up answers, everything.

got the job, intern at faang, we vibing.

don’t regret it. it’s nowhere near the most important skills that you would need. i’m not bad at leading. i mean, i’ve never leetcoded basically, but i did usaco for two months and made it out of gold into plat way back in high school(without cheating). but its just far from necessary and idiotic that companies still require it. it’s like the sat, or democracy, not a good system, but just better and more efficient than anything else existing out there.

that being said, if ur other qualifications don’t meet the job and leetcoding is where u shine, you better grind that shit out lol

Not a good idea

The satisfaction of you landing the job after getting away with cheating (using ChatGPT when you weren’t supposed to or whatever), would be 0 and you’d regret it.

I’m a tech recruiter and recently had to reject someone that cheated on their tech screen.

This shouldn’t be a debate, man. Do what benefits you, not the corporation

I think it's difficult because often times the OA's and interview questions are much more difficult than or have nothing to do with the work on the actual job, so it can just be a point in the process to get through.

Ethically I'm all against it but since it can be between you and your future idk man, I can't really get mad at others for doing it.

What I can get mad at is people being bad at their jobs, so what I would recommend is getting really good anyways in general to solve OA's, interview problems and any task at the job.

Never cheated on OA, glad I didn't.

Firstly and most importantly, it's just not right. Sure you might never get caught, and sure maybe your friends do it too, and sure maybe the companies administering the OA's are not the most morally upright brands in the world, but none of those things make it right.

Secondly, when I passed the onsite for a MANGA company, the onsite was a lot more challenging and made the OA seem really simple by comparison. If I couldn't pass the OA's without cheating, I imagine I would have been destroyed by the onsite regardless. But everything I needed to pass the onsite and the OA's could be found within the CLRS textbook, so there was no need to cheat.

I don't think it's possible to cheat an OA, at least on platforms like Hackerank/Codesignal. They monitor your screen, record it. They also detect if you copied, switch tabs or have dual monitors. How are you gonna cheat?? Is it an offline assessment without video on?

Are you not using Google or StackOverFlow when you code projects? Are you not talking to coworkers when you need help with something? Do you really need to memorize bottom down DP solutions for the job?

An OA does a terrible job in determining someone’s actual ability to deliver working code. We all use resources around us to get there. No one just simply “uses their brain” to deliver a perfect solution. While you make think others cheat, they are in fact using the resources around them, which is precisely what you do to get the job done.

The real world is not like academics. We all have to grow up from that mentality.

When I was in University, there was this project that I wanted to be part of really badly. I prepared for like a week for the test. My test went very well. But, guess what happened? Many of the students cheated and they got selected. Even the most talented ones didn't get selected.

Now, you decide if you want to cheat or not.

As a software engineer, your job isn't to memorize a bunch of information that you can regurgitate on some multiple choice exam. Your job is to get the customer/employer the software they need in a usable way. You're going to constantly be hitting Google on the job, so why shouldn't you use those skills on a pre-interview exam?

why not? I am having the best days of my life and one door open to another and so many has opened. Thank god I did it!

it does not matter whether you cheat on OA or not. You should also get a call after the OA like in my case, I still haven't received any call from Qualcomm depsite submitting the assignment. So first submit the OA and then see whether you are going to get a call or not.

what’s OA?

I had a take home assignment for a company recently. I have never written production quality code. Never worked a real software job. So I had a buddy of mine do a code review with me over my solution. I think this is basically okay. I also used copilot a little bit to help me use a package I was less familiar with. Also okay.

But the solution is essentially mine. I designed it. I implement it 95%. I went through the review, explained everything, and took feedback. And I can answer any question they want to ask me about the code.

Which companies do OA? Is it all the FAANG?

No, just because other people do cheat doesn’t make it right. God sees it all. Don’t cheat; repent and believe in Jesus and you will be saved.

Cheating is never fine. Because at the end of the day you’re only cheating yourself. Once you actually get into the job they’ll realize your abilities actually suck and you’ll get fired.

My spouse and I have a CS background, we have hired, and I have a kid that recently graduated and landed a very competitive job that required a long and tedious OA as part of the hiring process.

What I would say is this. When you look for a job, you are looking for a FIT. If you try to FIT somewhere that isn't a good fit for you, it may not go well for you. My kid has been at an employer for about 9 months. This employer hires a lot of new grads. Hiring rate in the 1-3% area depending on timing and needs.

So this is just an example, I have heard examples of this at other employers. Amazon has a bad rep this way if you haven't read about it, to the point where I wouldn't recommend it for a new grad. Round about the 12-18 month mark, if you are not reasonably productive to expectation at this time, you may be let go or pushed out over time. They expect employees to basically be fast and motivated and self directing. It isn't great for your next job prospects to be one of these people and have to answer hard questions while trying to get a new job. And it may have been better for you out of the gate to find a job that played to your strengths.

I would also say interpersonal and communication skills are a lot more important than a lot of new grads seem to think. No one is working in a bubble.

Don't cheat. Here's why:

• Unethical & Hurts You: Cheating undermines your skills and hurts your long-term development.
• Risk Getting Caught: Companies have measures to detect cheating, and consequences can be severe.
• Honest Study Pays Off: Focus on learning from OAs (even if you don't pass). Honest effort makes you a stronger candidate.

You're not wrong for being honest. Find a supportive study group (solving problems together is okay) and focus on improvement.