Lying Through a Tech Interview

My friend literally gambled his interview by lying that he solved a question before and passed. I need to share this because it highlights how much of a joke/luck-based game these interviews can be. My friend was interviewing at a Big Tech company recently. The interviewer gave him a problem that he had absolutely no clue how to solve. He knew he was going to bomb it. Instead of trying and failing, he pulled a massive bluff. He told the interviewer: "To be honest, I have seen this problem before and solved it recently, so I dont want to have an unfair advantage." The interviewer appreciated the his honesty lol, scrapped the hard question, and gave him a different one. And the happened to know the pattern for the second one, crushed it and moved to the next round. Has anyone else heard of someone doing this? It feels wild that the optimal strategy for a hard question you dont know is to lie and pretend you do just to get a different random question!

A Reddit post describes a job candidate who bluffed during a Big Tech coding interview by claiming he had already solved a difficult problem. The interviewer replaced it with another question, which the candidate happened to know, so the lie paid off and he advanced. The joke is that luck and strategic dishonesty can sometimes matter more than preparation in interview processes. EN: A Reddit post describes a job candidate who bluffed during a Big Tech coding interview by claiming he had already solved a difficult problem. The interviewer replaced it with another question, which the candidate happened to know, so the lie paid off and he advanced. The joke is that luck and strategic dishonesty can sometimes matter more than preparation in interview processes.

• @ithueti / 18988 2026-10-19