My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

It's pretty simple - people need to eat (and fulfill other basic needs, of course), to eat they need jobs, to get jobs they need to pass the interview. The hiring process in a lot of industries is heavily gamed at this point, to the point that not cheating is basically an automatic fail. So, if you want to eat, you cheat.

Doing whatever it takes to get the foot in the door may be encouraged, but only to a point and I think out and out cheating is probably crossing a line... As would murder, arson etc. etc.

If cheating means asking someone in the company you're interviewing for a peek at what will be asked then great. In my book that's using leverage.

Reviewing previously posted interview tests is probably recommended.

Hooking up a copilot to answer interview questions for you in real time is probably less so.

> The hiring process in a lot of industries is heavily gamed at this point, to the point that not cheating is basically an automatic fail.

This sound a bit of "thief thinks everyone steals". Interview preparation is normal and common but I don't think cheating is. May depend on the location of course.

The "heavily gaming" happens before the interview. When you reorder and edit your resume to have the right keywords to get on top of the LLM/intern sorted pile.

> If cheating means asking someone in the company you're interviewing for a peek at what will be asked then great. In my book that's using leverage.

In my book that is unambiguously unethical and should get the contact fired. I am shocked to see this approach promoted in such a blasé manner.

> if you want to eat, you cheat.

I can totally understand thinking this way out of desperation, and being lulled into thinking it’s this simple, but it seems short sighted with hidden complexities. First of all, it’s risky. If you get caught, you don’t eat, and it could follow you and prevent you from even getting in the door elsewhere. Companies are always going to be watching for cheaters, they are always going to have more visibility than you into what interviewees are doing, and they are always going to have more resources. Even if you do cheat and get hired, it quickly becomes obvious that you’re unqualified and can’t do what you claimed, and even if you don’t lose your job, you’re less likely to get promoted. Being lazy and amoral about interviews seems like a trap people set for themselves.

The good news is that a lot of companies are starting to allow AI during the interviews, and suddenly it’s not cheating. But of course that means you need to be good at using AI and interviewing and programming, you won’t be able to cheat and rely on the AI to do your talking for you.

How is it unethical? Say you ask whoever what's being asked and they say you need to sort a string in place and then discuss how a random forest gets trained... You still need to answer those questions AND know enough to answer the follow up questions. If you're no good you'll be still found out. It just means you'll have a head start over someone without those kinds of contacts. So what level of utilizing your professional network crosses a line? Does a recommendation cross a line because I know for a fact that internal recommendations are moved to the head of the queue in most companies.

Presumably the value in knowing "you need to sort a string in place and then discuss how a random forest gets trained" is that it impacts your answers - for instance, by allowing you to look this up before the interview while appearing to the interviewers to he operating unfer the dame conditions as the other candidates, who did not know to. Your performance then appears as a signal of broader inwoledge and capability than you possess - you have, as is the entire point here and which I should not need to spell out, gained an advantage over other candidates by virtue of the information which was intentionally leaked.

If the point of the interview were "answer those questions AND know enough to answer the follow up questions" _once told what to expect and prep_, they’d be sharing those questions with all candidates. If you feel that saying to the interviewers "by the way, I did know this because [X] told me they’d be here" wouldn’t impact outcomes, then great. If you feel you’d need to hide that, then you’re aware this involves dishonesty - and if you still struggle to see how that’s unethical, lets just make sure we never need to work together.

> lets just make sure we never need to work together

Seeing as how you seem to prefer to let everyone else steal a march on you in interviews in the interest of "fairness", that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

This is correct—I do not engage ethics only when it won’t cost me, nor take convenience into account when determining where my lines are. Perhaps I’m privileged to have that option.