Codenation recently conducted a contest for hiring for its Intern & SDE roles. I am expert on Codeforces and the problems were little difficult for me. I tried my best, but only managed to solve 3 and partial in 1.
But recently I saw a linkedin post and realized the mass level of cheating that happened in the contest. I explored a little and these are the screenshots :
More than 2000 views 
These people can't even recognize the language and shamelessly copying the solution(this was the 6th problem btw,the 2nd most difficult problem of the contest) 
I know these incidences have happened before, but during those Codeforces rounds, I just told myself, I will ignore all these things and focus on my learning, but what about this. Due to these people, I don't know how many deserving ones are not getting their chances.
There can be a counterpoint that these people will get rejected in the interview rounds, but what about those people who are are missing their chances due to these shitheads.
This is a linkedin post mentioning previous such incidences
Ashishgup, I don't know who to tag, but can you look into this and forward it to someone at higher authority. Also I have sent you the links of those telegram groups for reference.
In total I found 4 groups/channels in which solutions were circulated. Also, This is the same group who were involved in the mass cheating in Good Bye 2020 Contest. These people will continue doing this and we will keep seeing these cheating threads like this in future if we don't take proper steps.
What proper steps would you suggest ? I think the most appropriate step would be to ignore them. Every platform has its plagiarism checkers and they are not there for nothing. Moreover this was a hiring challenge and the hiring company must have expected this amount of cheating (otherwise it must have asked interviewbit for a proctored test). There is no way anyone solving less than 6 problems is going to qualify for the next round (as many deserving participants have solved them all). The cheaters are on whole different levels of foolishness. Seriously, what's the point of cheating in a hiring challenge ? Even if they pass through this round, they will be filtered in the next one
One thing that can be done now is matching those codes which are circulated in these groups to the solutions and disqualifying them. There are a lot of smart cheaters, but there are equally dumb ones too who must have directly copy-pasted the codes. This would be easy to find.
Also, for the long run, I have no idea how to tackle this, These people are making groups and cheating in every other contest. And seeing the rise, In some time, I doubt a huge percentage of cheaters would be present in every contest, be it Codechef, Codeforces, or any hiring contest.
Sometimes people DM on Linkedin asking for help in an online test. Recent Msg. Idk how to respond to them.
Sometimes they even try to convince me saying I am from NON-CS, small institute and I will remain jobless, please help me. (Sometimes they even succeed in convincing and I feel very guilty not helping them)
Idk what to feel and how to respond to such people; they do not realise that this will reduce shortlisting changes, not just them but also all the off-campus hires.
Can someone tell me how to respond or at least feel less guilty, not helping?
Why should you feel guilty at the first place ? If someone asks you to help him rob a bank because he is poor and has a family to feed, then what will you do ? You just can't help anyone in doing anything wrong, otherwise you will also be equally punishable as him.
Talking of ethical ways, if you get DMs like that, then you can provide them resources / mentorship after the contest if you really want to help them, so that they can crack those interviews the next time. It will be the real "help" instead of just helping them pass through a coding round by providing solutions.
Sounds Reasonable
Thanks :)
How to respond?
First agree. Then give him wrong solutions to punish him for committing this sin.
punish? sin?
bruh, u need to get out of whatever cult u've joined, RIGHT NOW
I should stop using my main account for commenting. Some people seem to get offended no matter what I type. XD
did u just admit to owning an alt account on codeforces? No wonder people get offended no matter what you type.
says the one who's behind an alt.
wdym? this is my only account. what makes you think this is an alt? do i need to get those WAs to prove my existence?
If your only account name is "cheater_exposed" , I wonder what you do in your daily life.
What is your life goal? Exposing cheaters?
Wait, have you written in your Resume's work experience section "Cheater Exposer at Codeforces."?
sounds like u need to learn that not everyone thrusts their belief and identity into their username and every conversation.
and correction, the resume contains, "Cheater Exposer at Codechef". atleast whj chintu pays me some money to do it.
and sometime if somebody didnt know that hiring contest is going on the cheater will ask to them and gets the solution for problem indirectly:(
And the weirdest part is these people still don't crack the interview
The cheat all the academic exams/online rounds and still don't get nice cgpa/job.
shame on them
I mean how could they crack the interview of a company for which they have to cheat even in the screening test. Actually once they will go in the interview the interviewer will instantly know that the person has cheated to get here.But these people won't understand that.
Neither they will get the job. Nor they will let another deserving candidate get the job. XD
Sadly, sometimes the screening test is much harder than the algorithmic interviews. As a result, I have seen undeserving people get in due to this, as they cheat in the screening test and then somehow manage the interview, which is sometimes easier (plus in interview, you don't always need a 100% correct solution)
You can think of the deserving person, who might lose a seat, if you participate in a coding test to "help" the guy DM'ed you (the nth person in the list who will get n+1 rank).
Plus, these people have almost no shame, often. Once a guy messaged me, who was from a tier-3 college, was 1000 or so rated on Codeforces and had 5 or 6 CGPA / CPI (out of 10) in college. He was asking for "help" in a Microsoft/Google level company coding test. When I told him I won't "help", he got angry.
I told him to give tests of many companies, in one or the other, he will surely be selected, no need to cheat. But, he wasn't even interested in sitting for companies below this level!! Imagine that!
He believes he "deserves" to get into some XYZ big company and was angry at me when I wasn't ready to "help" him! As if I am the wrong person here!
I felt very annoyed at the guy, really! I can't fully express in words. I do not have any sympathy for such cheaters.
Can you elaborate "he got angry" ? I wanna know how he tried to justify himself. XD
Mostly told about how I am being unfair and I am "not helpful at all". I might have given somewhat of a misleading impression in my original comment. He was not very very aggressive or anything. He was just irritated and angry.
But the most wonderful thing was that initially he was talking very nicely, and later became kind of rude (not very extreme rude or using curse words etc, but still rude).
Yeah I would also like to know how he tried to justify himself.
I think these hiring test should involve turning on the webcame+microphone+screensharing which is something standard happening with hiring tests I have taken on platforms like CodeSignal. There is not a guarantee that people can't cheat but it is way harder. One challenge would be that this would slower the process since they would need to check for malicious activities first, and then process the results but maybe there is a way to do this given that CodeSignal already does it.
Such dumb people, a person who could not even figure out from the code that for which question is it for are definitely not gonna qualify the recruitment process and I am pretty sure most of them have simply copy pasted by changing variable names, lol plagiarism.
Solution: I guess at some point, as codechef introduced ccdsap which is conducted under supervision, there should be something made compulsory for participating contest for indians, so that even if they cheat, people who have genuine certificate will only qualify or should be given more preference than rest with equal scores.
P.S. — I feel very bad for those people who did not cheat, they were asking me will I qualify on 4/5 questions solved.
Not trying to defend but sometimes C# and Java look really similar.
Don't worry bro, if you look at the comments below the solutions posted in the telegram grps, you will find that people have written "error in the code" or "wrong ans". I think somebody is trolling, so just relax and wait for the result.
I think given codes are enough to smart people to catch a hint for correct solution and people complaining don't know what to say about them
Fortunately, the code sender had made major changes in the code. To find the error, one will have to completely know the solution. Someone so smart will not spend time on telegram, instead will solve himself.
First, thanks a lot for brining this to notice, I think you should send a mail to support@interviewbit.com, cheating though has been happening for a long time, people have suggested us to focus on learning and not worry about it, it is like saying "focus on living, don't worry about cancer", cheating indeed is cancer to competitive coding, already freshers have very little off-campus opportunities, added to that, these turds are literally ruining lives.
I don't think there is much we can do.
Cheaters find one way or the other to cheat.
Plagarism detectors can only work if there are some pieces of code that are identical, but assuming these cheaters use atleast some brain, they would definitely change their copied code!
Just out of curiosity, at what codeforces rating ,i will be able to solve all the Codenation questions?
There is no correlation between Codeforces rating and Codenation questions.
That i know bro. I want to ask what is the dificulty level of codenation questions.
Problems were between Easy to Medium. Problem 5th was medium-hard for me.
Were you able to solve all the questions during online test?
My approximation is 1st ~ 1700. 4th ~ 1700. 5th ~ 2100+. 6th ~ 1800-1900.
Didn't read other problems. Though it seems they were among the easier ones.
I feel it's better to ignore this. The reason is, there isn't much we can do about this. If we stop the 10 ways they chose to copy, another way comes up. There should be a change from their own side, we can't artificially change their intent. I have seen a couple of comments on various Youtube videos and got fully convinced that their fundamental view of CP is very different from what it has to be — thanks to the so-called, self-proclaimed CP-(fake)-gurus. For these people there isn't much difference between hiring tests, practice contests etc. — They only seem them in one perspective — a wrong perspective.
lmao I should've seen this coming. This has become a norm
Oh my god they have completely ruined this test for many people like me who have done only 3 and partial for some other problems, as the solution is of the problem with second most highest score.Here I was thinking I might have a slight chance but looking at this I should just forget about getting selected from this test.
I also doesn't care about cheating in contests but in hiring tests I didn't thought that some would share the solution of difficult problems as it might hinder his own chances as well.
Maybe they could also consider the resumes of the people as well for shortlisting, but it wouldn't help much.Time to say goodbye to this opportunity.Thanks for bringing this to light indians_cheaters, as I would have never guessed that this level of cheating is going on and would have felt ashamed of my perfomance after the ranklist comes out.
Spoiler 8 literally shattered all my hopes with 3 questions done :( Anyways, back to work for the next drive.
Why are you posting this on codeforces? If you want to raise voice against this issue do it where people from codenation hangout, here people will agree with the cause but can't do anything about it unless you are proposing some solution that is new.
Most of the serious participants who gave test yesterday are also users of codeforces. So codeforces is appropriate place to bring this topic up.
This post brought this matter to light so that others who gave the test yesterday and solved only 3-4 don't get too hopeful of getting interview call.
I don't think I have to mention how big of an opportunity this was for so many people. They have the right to know what actually happened.
Codeforces is where the people from codenation hangout
At this point I am not even surprised, and that's kinda sad.
Sadly, I have personally witnessed a few (yes, that means more than one) cases of a person getting a job using methods like these, or similar to these.
That probably has more to do with their luck, than coding test scores, or perhaps they might have some good projects / other skills that would have helped them get through the interview.
The point is if a company actually wants people with good problem-solving skills then someone who has cheated definitely won't get through the interview, and if they do, that means the company wasn't looking for high problem-solving ability and you would have done just fine without cheating.
For example, if someone does get an interview at CodeNation after cheating on the test, they won't make it past the second round (DSA round). While if a company is looking for people with good projects or proficiency in some technology, they would shortlist a deserving candidate even with a relatively low score on the coding test. At least that's what I have seen.
Work very hard to solve 1-2 problems , then see this, very disheartened if it was done in codenation test then surely it will be again practiced in other hiring contest too... Being a tier3 college student whose only hope is to get through with the off campus placement , i don't know what to do next :(
Improve to beat the cheaters ofc.
The only way to not be affected by these clowns is to get better than all of them combined. I.e become like um_nik equal to 1000 cyans
Quora ruined by jee cat posts Linkedin by fake "know it all" youtubers. Now cp too.
Best solution we should all join these groups in next contest and post extremely wrong solutions, which on surface looks legit.
tbh... there is no solution for this secondly i don't think any deserving candidate will be devoid of the chance coz, even though there were 6 problems i am sure that easy top tier candidates would be able to solve 5-6 problems , even i solved 2-3 problems,
thirdly , these groups are full of procrastinating dumb heads, none of them will be able to solve that many questions, until a CF GM level has a mood for charity and starts donating the answers.
fourth, Code-nation peeps are not DUMB, they r pretty smart, they know everything, STOP POSTING THESE IMAGES, this will have a bad influence on the NEW CANDIDATES. Stop mentioning the Source... just address the issues... THANK YOU. :)