Inside the Secret World of Technical Interview Cheating: Tactics, Temptations, and Terrible Consequences

A split screen showing a programmer in a remote interview with hidden cheating methods illustrated

Written by Massa Medi

There are two kinds of people in this world that I simply can’t trust: people who don’t sprinkle a healthy amount of swear words into their code comments, and people who don’t tell the truth. In the rapidly evolving landscape of remote work—and with the powerful emergence of large language models—one trend is all too clear: more and more candidates are trying to game the system during technical interviews. In fact, estimates suggest that up to 10% of interviewees now attempt some form of cheating. Today, let’s take a not-so-glamorous tour through the wildest cheating techniques hopeful developers employ to land that coveted, high-paying job in tech’s fiercely competitive sphere—as well as a sobering look at just how disastrous it can be when cheaters get caught.

It is April 26, 2025, and you’re reading The Code Report.

Role Models or Rule Breakers? A Quick Stroll Down Memory Lane

If we’re being honest, some of the people who inspired me as a kid weren’t exactly poster children for integrity—think Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, the entire Russian Olympic team (no, seriously—all of them), and Mike Tyson. Sure, all legendary athletes, but also, famous for “bending” rules in creative, if not always ethical, ways.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not advocating for biting your interviewer's ear off when you draw a blank on inverting a binary tree. But if we're willing to look at reality with unfiltered honesty, the competitive modern tech job market breeds—well—creative survival strategies. Sometimes they work, sometimes they spectacularly backfire, but make no mistake: cheating isn’t a new phenomenon, and it happens in practically every industry.

Now, while that last chess “enhancement” might be brilliant—if true—it probably wouldn’t fly in a coding interview. So what does work for would-be cheaters in tech? Let’s pull back the curtain.

The Low-Hanging Fruit: Cribbing Answers

Remember the age-old trick of jotting math equations in tiny pencil scribbles on your palm before a high school exam? In a remote technical interview, the digital equivalent is simple: keep a second, “off-webcam” laptop close at hand, loaded with browser tabs—each one opened to different LeetCode solutions and interview prep articles.

This method isn’t exactly subtle or flawless. It works primarily because many technical interview questions are recycled endlessly. How many times have you heard of “FizzBuzz,” “invert a binary tree,” or “magical string”? If you’re lucky, you can quietly glance at the secret laptop, pull up the right answer, and nail the coding portion.

But here’s the catch: technical interviews aren’t just about spewing correct code. They’re about demonstrating true understanding. If you fly through a problem without breaking a sweat yet can’t explain a single thing about how it works, the interviewer is going to have some thoughts:

In a solid technical interview, you’re expected to walk through your thought process, make some mistakes, and iteratively work toward the solution—as you would in real life. Many candidates get tripped up not because they can’t code, but because their “borrowed” solution has left them clueless about what’s actually happening.

There’s also the simple statistical reality: if your secret laptop doesn’t have the answer to a new or rare question, you’re sunk.

The Online Underground: Leaked Interview Questions

Moving up one rung on the cheating sophistication scale, we stumble into the digital underworld of leaked interview questions. While companies regularly update their question banks, people always manage to screenshot and share those prized queries—ferrying them to niche websites and secret Discord channels.

I’m not going to give you a directory of these places—actually, no, screw it. Leaked questions are everywhere. Try searching GitHub, or a somewhat cryptic Chinese website called 1point3acres.com. These platforms meticulously compile the most recently asked technical interview questions at household names like Meta, often boiled down to public LeetCode problems.

Where things veer into the grey area is when proprietary, non-standard questions start leaking out into the wild. For those, tracking down the original source can sometimes be like following a digital treasure map—murky, borderline-ethical, and risky.

But let’s be fair: talking shop with like-minded devs on reputable platforms isn’t the same as cheating. In fact, the sponsor of today’s video—Daily.dev—is a free, thriving social platform that curates the best developer content from across the internet and helps developers network. Why trawl through endless Reddit threads hoping for crumbs about your favorite JavaScript framework? Daily.dev pulls from over a thousand top sources into one polished, developer-focused feed. With its browser extension (highly recommended), you can make staying sharp an effortless daily habit. Curious? Join over a million developers on Daily.dev via my invite link.

Friends Don’t Let Friends... Wait, Actually, They Might

But what if neither your LeetCode-surfing skills nor your leaked-question-archive binge is enough? Some candidates hire their friends to act as covert code whisperers. Picture this: during your remote interview, your trusted “bros” sit off-camera, ready to deliver answers in sign language. This ballet of hand-flapping must take place in person—screen sharing software is often detected, thanks to pre-screening tests built into most remote interviewing tools.

The real obstacle, though? Most aspiring programmers don’t have a large enough friend circle to pull this off! Luckily, artificial intelligence has arrived to fill that gap.

Cheating with AI: ChatGPT, Claude, and the Future of Dishonesty

Modern AI tools have democratized cheating in ways we never imagined. Now, it’s not about having a wingman in your living room; it’s about screenshotting the challenge, feeding it to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whatever new bot is trending, and watching an answer appear.

But does this actually work? Earlier in 2024, Interviewio conducted a fascinating controlled study: interviewers were kept in the dark, with no idea that some candidates were using AI to “phone a friend.”

Here’s what they found:

While AI-generated solutions increasingly look legit, there’s a fundamental problem: those snippets often contain convincing rubbish. Try passing off a chunk of plausible-yet-totally-wrong code in a live interview, and your ruse will unravel spectacularly. That’s exactly what happened to a certain candidate who attempted to use Claude during an XAI interview—only to be called out by the interviewer, who then graciously explained how interview cheating happens in 2024.

It’s important to highlight that this study is now over a year old, and AI tools have only gotten sharper at rapid-fire coding since then. Yet, the chilling twist? In this experiment, no one actually got caught in the act.

Why Cheating Is—Still—a Terrible Idea

Here’s the thing: wriggling past an AI-laden phone screen is just Round 1. Interview with a FANG company, and you’ll face an in-person gauntlet—complete with whiteboards and hovering interviewers—where your only hope for cheating is via a neural implant, a telepathic connection, or possibly (if you dare) a remote-controlled suppository.

(If you manage to pull that level of sci-fi trickery off, honestly, maybe you’ve earned the job.)

But reality bites: cheaters almost always get caught, and when they do, the price is steep. Here’s what’s really at stake:

  1. Immediate rejection from the role—no appeals, no second chances.
  2. Blacklisting from future opportunities at that company.
  3. The tech world, for all its size, is surprisingly small: word gets around on Twitter, LinkedIn, and in private circles. A cheating scandal can stain your professional reputation—possibly forever.
  4. Deep personal embarrassment, and the kind of regret that will haunt you.
  5. On the off-chance you do snag the job, you’re likely to become a low performer, squarely in the crosshairs come layoff season.

At the end of the day, cheating is not just a slip-up—it’s a conscious decision. As tempting as “hacking the system” might seem, the risks and consequences far outweigh the rewards.

That wraps up this edition of The Code Report. Thank you for reading—and remember: make wise choices, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next one.